We have too much information. It`s making us stupid.
Did you know, just to take one recent disclosure, that the average member of a high school student council spends 2.4 hours a day watching television and goes to 2.4 movies a month? Now that you know this, is your life richer?
Actually, you don`t know it. All anyone knows is that a report, based on a survey, asserted this transcendental truth about students. And it turns out that the survey was just a questionnaire distributed at a convention of student council members, where delegates filled them out, no doubt rather quickly, according to their memories and self-images.
None of which prevented the findings from being reported as facts. This is accurate to the extent that the findings were found. Whether the findings themselves reflected reality, much less meaningful reality, is another question. It is a question rarely asked.
Instead, any finding found by any study is duly passed on. That`s because it`s a number, and a number is a fact, relevant or not.
Nor is there sufficient examination of the . . . well, let`s call it the parentage of a fact. Another recent study concluded that if advertising were taxed, hundreds of thousands of people would lose their jobs. This study was commissioned by the advertising industry, which could hardly be expected to hire people to conclude otherwise.
It is arguable that the thirst for meaningless information was first established by baseball. Thus, earlier this year came the news that a certain pitcher had a better record in odd-numbered years. Unless the pitcher is what the ballplayers call a head case, this makes no difference at all. But because the computer spewed it forth, and because it was a fact, it was reported, thus becoming another piece of information that clutters brains best left to ponder other matters.
Now they are giving the won-lost records of catchers. A shrewd catcher can make a difference in a tight game, but calling exactly the right pitches for Roger Clemens is a lot easier than calling them for, say, Jose DeLeon, and a catcher whose team bats .275 will have a far better won-lost record than one whose team hits .220.
Then there are polls. In the recent election for mayor of Denver, the newspapers there took to reporting the daily results of tracking polls, taking note of one- or two-point changes in a candidate`s support. Anyone who knows much about polling can sum up in a word what a one-point jump in one day of tracking means: nothing.
But the Denver papers found meaning, concluding that the results indicated that the front-runner would be forced into a run-off against the fellow who was coming in second. There was a third candidate but nobody took him seriously because he had very little money, and like poll results and won- lost records, money is countable, a quality that these days renders it significant.
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As it turned out, the front-runner was indeed forced into a run-off. With the guy who was running third. The one with no money. The one who is now the mayor.
It isn`t that public opinion polls are wrong. It`s just that they are often meaningless, and not only because the public frequently changes its opinion. Sometimes the public doesn`t have much of an opinion. But because people tend to be polite, should someone from a polling firm call a person and ask for a vote pro or con on some bill pending before Congress or the state legislature, he or she is likely to comply.
The resulting headline is then shown to lawmakers, whose collective courage may politely be compared to that of a very small rabbit, and who proceed to vote as they think the public wishes, never pausing to wonder whether the public cared two hoots about the whole thing.
Sometimes public opinion has not had time to form. As soon as Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court, a polling firm was asking people whether they agreed with his views, of which they were then largely ignorant. A small majority said they agreed anyway.
Furthermore, sometimes there shouldn`t be any public opinion. Or at least it shouldn`t matter. After some celebrated trials, pollsters have taken to their telephones to find out whether the public thinks the convicted defendant should go to prison, and for how long.
This is not a decision for the public to make. It is a decision for a judge, based on the law and the judge`s discretion. Not every issue in our democracy is to be put to referendum. No one should care (and the judge should not know) what the public thinks.
Modern technology has made it easier to find things out. It has made it no easier to find out what ought to be found out. The result is a plethora of meaningless, if accurate, bits of data that we`d all be smarter if we didn`t know.