Happy Wednesday, Wise Owl Nation!

The pursuit of wisdom is a strange journey, especially in a world where misleading headlines, a 24-hour news cycle, and news channels unquenchable desire to draw eyeballs are the norm.

The age of the internet and the rise of social media has created an unlimited amount of information to consume. Both Social Media and Mainstream Media have, over time, become remarkably efficient at taking in original content (be videos, articles, newsletters, research papers, etc.) and consolidating it into bite-sized, quickly consumable forms that seem easy to digest.

This "processed information" lacks nuance, context, and the right amount of information to form an unbiased opinion, and is the theme of this week's issue.

How can anyone become wiser, healthier, and wealthier if so much of the information thrown at us is overly processed crap?

Let's discuss.

P.s. - I've considered making a "Wise Owl Reading List" of all of the books I have read in my life that I think are worth reading to improve yourself. Is this something you all would be interested in? If so, reply to this email and let me know!

You can find all past issues (including this one) here.

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🧠 Wisdom Thought of The Week: The Dangers of Processed Information

Every single week I write this newsletter I struggle with one eternal question.

How can I increase the value of what I write, while decreasing the amount I write?

Most weeks I end up writing a lot anyway but try to provide links to additional information so you all can do your own research. I can see how many times these links get clicked on, so I can tell how few of you take the time to do deeper research! Shame on you 😂.

I'm kidding. I know that it's hard to find the time or energy to seek out all of the information, to form the whole story in your mind, and to draw accurate conclusions from what you learn.

It's so much easier to just consume the "hot take," meme, or infographic at face value and move on with your day.

This is why processed information has become the go-to style of reporting, news sharing, and social media uploading.

It is why Tik Tok and Instagram are so popular. A constant stream of entertainment, basic advice, and mind-numbing opinions, right at your fingertips.

Processed Information was coined by Dr. Alan Levinovitz, and I first heard the term mentioned on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast. It got me thinking about how prevalent processed information is and got me thinking about ways to offset it.

Ways to offset processed information:

Always maintain a healthy amount of skepticism

This is important to remember when learning about anything. If something seems too good to be true, then it is too good to be true. Every. Single. Time.

When anyone can write their opinions on the internet, you need to start from the viewpoint of "this is probably wrong until I can verify it's true."

It's okay to be skeptical, even about this newsletter. I can't tell you how many times being skeptical of something has saved me from getting scammed. Just remember to actually verify things so you can find out who is eventually worth listening to and learning from.

Consume books on base principles and work your way up - Naval Ravikant has spoken at length about using base principles to build a foundation of knowledge around topics.

The idea here is that if you want to truly understand a topic, you need to start at the original ideas, then go from there.

Listen to long-form podcasts that discuss actual concepts at length and allow actual back and forth dialogue

My personal favorites are:

• The Joe Rogan Experience
• The Portal with Eric Weinstein
• The Bankless Podcast (on Crypto)
• The Michael Shermer show (formerly Science Salon) - He's a professional skeptic by the way
• The progressive podcast Making Sense by Sam Harris and the conservative podcast The Ben Shapiro Show by Ben Shapiro
• Rising with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti - a political show with a democrat and a republican. They have real, intellectual conversations about real policies.

Read local newspapers as your main source of news

Local newspapers know they are writing for a local audience, and thus tend to dial down the clickbait. The only way they can compete with the national news outlets is to provide high-quality information for their local readers.

Consuming and understanding both sides of an argument or viewpoint

The podcasts I listed above cover a variety of topics and discuss those topics from a variety of viewpoints. It is extremely important to get information, especially information prone to strong opinions, from multiple perspectives. This will help you create a more complete picture of the news or events, as well as offset the echo-chamber that can occur when you only consume one form of news.

🥑 Common forms of Processed Information around Health

The health and nutrition industries are some of the absolute worst perpetrators of pushing processed information. Why?

Because we all feel we could be in better shape, and all of us are desperate to find the magic pill that removes body fat and will help us live longer. We know this doesn't exist, but we still look for it anyway.

Diets are one of the biggest ways this kind of processed information takes form. People pushing fad diets always talk about how great it is for you, how easy it is, how amazing they feel, or how impressive their results are.

Despite the fact that science has proven that the only way you are going to lose weight is if you create a caloric deficit.

Here are an example of some of the most common fad diets:

• The Keto Diet
• The Paleo Diet
• The Carnivore Diet
• The Vegan Diet

There are literally groups of people that believe exact opposite ideologies about what is the best food to eat.

I've written before about places you can find ethical and honest nutritionists that discuss proper science in long-form. In the end your body is unique, and unless you take the time and energy to learn what foods your body can make the best use of, you won't really know what diet is best for you.

For me I always go back to a few base principles:

• To lose weight I need to consume fewer calories than my body uses for fuel
• Carbs, Protein, and Fat all serve a biological purpose. To fuel and maintain the health of the human body.
• Process foods sacrifice nutrition for flavor and shelf-life. Avoid them if possible.

💲 Common forms of Processed Information around Wealth

Money is a weird topic for a lot of people. Most of us could use more money, and almost all of us wish we didn't need to worry about money.

Because the current state of humanity requires money to survive, there will always be people that want to cut corners, cheat, scam, or lie about money in order to get more of it.

The world of finance is a complex and weird place. For example, we are currently experiencing a global pandemic in which economies around the world were forced to close for periods of time. This means that the global economies have taken a legitimate hit.

Does that stock market reflect this? No. Not it doesn't. Why doesn't it reflect reality? The answer is convoluted at best, and no one really knows the answer. Basically, the stock market is no longer an accurate reflection of how economics works.

Every year, people come up with new ways to try to sell crap to each other, low and behold, processed information leads the way in attempts to deceive and mislead others.

Remember our rules for seeing through processed information.

Rule #1 is to always be skeptical.

Then let's remember Naval Ravikant's eternal wisdom on getting rich quickly.

So if you ever have friends that approach you with a "great business opportunity" be very skeptical, and remember that any business model that asks you to recruit more people is bullshit.

Processed Information in a Time of Crypto

I would be remiss if I didn't discuss Crypto. Just like all markets, the crypto market has issues with processed information as well.

In later 2017 hundreds of "Crypto-gurus" cropped up claiming to be able to predict the "next big coin" that could make you "1,000,000% returns!"

These were 95% scams. Total bullshit designed to create a sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) to get uneducated consumers to buy their crappy products or buy their useless coins.

I navigated these waters by studying the base principles of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain and establishing a checklist around what makes a coin worth a damn.

My checklist was:

• The coin must be decentralized
• The coin must solve a problem people are experiencing right now
• The team building it must have a plan to eventually seed governance to its users and not keep control themselves
• The team needs to constantly be "shipping" or deploying new code that showcases their ability to iterate quickly
• The team building it must prioritize building their solution over marketing their solution

These days this checklist is still somewhat valuable, but there are far fewer new cryptocurrencies hitting the market, but for the most part the real winners in this space have emerged.

Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Sure there are other coins that are doing good things, but only Bitcoin and Ethereum have risen to the top, stood the test of time, and have the capabilities necessary to change the world of money.

Quote of the week:

If this quote was true during the time of Marcus Aurelius, imagine how much truer it is now, in the time of processed information.

Now, everything we hear is a filtered opinion, not a fact.

Everything we see is a condensed bias perspective, not the truth.

Have a great week!

This concludes our issue this week, I hope it gave you some perspective or injected a little motivation into your life!

If it helped, let me know! I read every newsletter response I receive, and I absolutely love hearing from all of you. This newsletter is for you, so I need your help to make it as great as possible.

If you'd like to show me some love for writing all this free stuff, you can always buy me a coffee.

More Resources

I will be adding to this section over time as we find resources that will help you all.

• Check out the Wise Owl Store
• All Wise Healthy Wealthy Articles on Medium
• Start your own Sendfox Newsletter
• Free products to help you level up

Crypto Resources:

The Bankless Podcast: This is a link to the bankless podcast on Spotify. Start from the very beginning and learn why I am so positive about the power of Crypto and Ethereum in particular. You can find the podcast easily on the internet, but I am linking to episode 1 on Spotify for your convenience.

Buy your first ETH or BTC:

• On Coinbase - this is the easiest starting place for the newest beginners
• On Gemini - Another great option founded by the Winklevoss brothers. They are based out of New York.
• On Kraken - Kraken has a bit of a harder user interface, but they already have ETH staking enabled with the push of a single button.

BlockFi - Earn interest on your crypto. Currently, you can earn 6% interest on BTC, 5.25% interest on ETH, and a whopping 8.6% on stable coins like USDC.

Use the referral code b09f24fd to support the newsletter.

I've earned thousands of dollars (in crypto) using blockfi the last few years.