Michael Lissack of unnecessary information about unnecessary subjects for unnecessary examinations to get unnecessary grades. The cure is very simple; the key to learning is remembering what you are interested in and that through interest comes understanding." "Overload amnesia. This is a permutation of the Chinese-dinner mem- ory dysfunction that occurs more specifically as a response to overloading yourself with data. When overtaxed, your memory will not only release the data that you were trying to retain, but may arbitrarily download other files as well. This is often experienced when trying to assimilate data over which you cannot control the flow-such as in a classroom, conference, or lecture. This is why after listening to a particularly ponderous speech, not only can you not remember a thing the speaker said, but you forget where you parked your car, too." "The expert-opinion syndrome. There is a tendency to believe that the more expert opinions we get-be they legal, medical, automotive, or otherwise-the more informed we will be. But we tend to forget that expert opinion is by no means synonymous with objective opinion. Unfortunately, most experts come with a professional bias that makes obtaining truly objec- tive information almost impossible. Take the second-opinion movement in medicine that is even being promoted by health-insurance programs, where patients are encouraged to consult more than one doctor before undergoing nonemergency surgery. Surgeons are trained to respond to problems by performing surgery, so it is likely that they will see surgery as the solution to a patient's problem." The columnist George Will likes to quote a line that he says Cardinal Wolsey uttered about Henry VIII: "Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out." The relevance of that description is not limited to kings. Things we learn when young remain to almost all of us the deepest truths we know throughout life. Inertia governs when it comes to information. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, we are hardly ever ready to accept that these early "truths" are, and always were, falsehoods. What occurs is that each of us when faced with an overwhelming
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