Availability Cascade and The Power of Others Ideas

This might surprise some of my readers, but I don't digest the news very much. Wait, what do you mean? I mean, I don't tune into news stations on any regular to semi regular basis or subscribe to any news source. Most of the news I hear about comes from word of mouth or media storms so big I can't ignore them. Yes, this leaves me ignorant of many things that occur in the world around me, but I have found that this hasn't impacted my life to any significant degree. Yes, I don't have current news items to discuss around the office watering hole, but as I said, it hasn't impacted my life to any significant degree.

Since college, information overload is something I have taken seriously. I apply the brain attic idea to my day to day life. In A Study In Scarlet, Watson is surprised by how ignorant Holmes is about things that primary school students would understand. Holmes gives him his idea about the matter,

“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best