We should know less not more to be smarter ...

[kiwitt]

According this article the more you know does not make you smarter.

Are smarter people better at ignoring things?

People frequently complain that they can't remember things -- and they wish their brains had more storage capacity, like today's ever-expanding computer hard drives and RAM. If we could just improve the sheer size of our memory, we'd be able to retain and manipulate more data, and we'd become smarter and smarter -- right?

Not according to an intriguing new experiment by brain scientists at the University of Oregon. Edward Vogel and a team of students took a handful of volunteers and tested their "visual working memory" -- their ability to maintain awareness of events and objects around them. The test asked them to pay attention to red or blue bricks in a visual picture.

Now, visual working memory is highly correlated to intelligence: People with a bigger VWM tend to score much better on an array of cognitive challenges. For years, scientists have assumed that VWM is roughly analogous to cramming info into your head: The more you can fit in there, the smarter you are.

But when Vogel mapped the brain-wave activity of the volunteers, he noticed something much weirder. The people with the largest capacity in their VWM weren't retaining tons of information. No, they were being quite selective. Their genius lay in being able to strip out inessential information: To pay attention only to the red bricks -- to hold only those "in mind" -- and to ignore the blue ones. The upshot, as the editors at Nature summarize, is that ...

... this also implies that an individual's effective memory capacity may not simply reflect storage space, as it does with a hard disk. It may also reflect how efficiently irrelevant information is excluded from using up vital storage capacity.

That chart above shows this relationship: The more efficiently the subjects' brain worked, the bigger their memory capacity. This is not to say that people who can't screen out stimuli are dumber. As Vogel noted, "Being a bit scattered tends to be a trait of highly imaginative people." The more you rattle the marbles around in your brain, the more creative new connections you make, as it were -- connections that might be lost on those focusing intently on just the red ones.

I am inclined to believe this.

More data isn't always a good thing. As has been pointed out plenty of times, efforts for things like data retention often have the opposite of the intended effect (catching criminals) because it hides the good data with all the bad data. Is it any surprise that our brains feel the same way? Clive Thompson is talking about some research that took people by surprise, noting that smarter people tend to be better at ignoring useless data, rather than storing more data. Traditionally, it's been assumed that the brain is sort of like a big hard drive -- and people who can remember more tend to be smarter. However, this research suggests that it's not the ability to remember more, but to remember the right things. In some ways this isn't that surprising. After all, intelligence often seems to come from the ability to do better pattern matching than others -- and having the right data, rather than too much data can often help make those patterns clearer. It would be interesting to see what sort of impact this would have on artificial intelligence research. Many AI projects seem to have worked on the basis of cramming the system with more and more and more data in the hopes that some sort of intelligence would eventually emerge. Perhaps the focus should be more on teaching it how to ignore data.

And the author

A Study In Scarlet has Sherlock Holmes say:
"You see," he explained, "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 is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."

I believe the brain is made of 4 main components

Information = What facts we know. More reading and experiences.
Wisdom = What we have learnt with experience. Gets better with time
Intelligence = How we combine these to acheive results. Improves with solving challenges
Intuition = What we feel is the right answer. This is linked to emotion

You need to keep all these in balance.

[Byzantine Prince]

He is wisest who knows nothing. - Socrates

Nothing new under the sun.

[bmolsson]

So if I don't have a clue on what you are talking about, that makes me smart ??

[A.Saturnus]

Don´t draw premature conclusions. The working memory is not the storage of the things you have learned. It is the storage of the things you currently work with and it cannot store more than 4 to 7 "chunks". You do not become smarter by knowing less but by being able to identify the knowledge you need.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I can remember oodles of useless trivia! Scads of historical anecdotes!

Now, where did I put my keys.....

[Rodion Romanovich]

He is wisest who knows nothing. - Socrates

Nothing new under the sun.

Socrates never ceases to amaze me with his wisdom

[Papewaio]

this also implies that an individual's effective memory capacity may not simply reflect storage space, as it does with a hard disk. It may also reflect how efficiently irrelevant information is excluded from using up vital storage capacity.

The hard disk parallel is incorrect. Depending on the file storage system more or less of the hard disk can be used, it can be faster or slower, and it may use different size chunks of memory to store the same information.

Compare FAT with NTFS.

File Allocation Table started off only able to store a maximum volume of 32MB with FAT12.

While FAT32 has a maximum volume of 2TB... 2,000,000MB.

NTFS is faster then FAT and can hold up to 16EB or 16,000,000TB = 16,000,000,000,000.

So just like the human brain it is not just the capacity of the Harddisk or the speed of it, or the cache size on board, it is also the manner in which the information is stored that effects capacity and speed on a Harddisk.

[LeftEyeNine]

I hate who forwards passages when talking about a topic (Remember "Did you ever Das Kapital ?!" ?), he talks talks talks of passages.. talks talks... ARGH! Don't you have a f***in' brain that can compose, analyze, comment and compare ?! How does it make you more "dependable" since you are reading more books?

The world is turning towards me - so is the science.. I'll bless you all