In a busy, busy world, there's so much to read that no one could possibly keep up with it all. You can't not prioritize what you pay attention to and (even more so) what you respond to. Everyone and her dog tells herself a story that she wants to pay attention to "good" (true, useful) information and ignore "bad" (false, useless) information.

Keeping the story true turns out to be a harder problem than it sounds. Everyone and her dog knows that the map is not the territory, but the reason we need a whole slogan about it is because we never actually have unmediated access to the territory. Everything we think we know about the territory is actually just part of our map (the world-simulation our brains construct from sensory data), which makes it easy to lose track of whether your actions are improving the real territory, or just your view of it on your map.

For example, I like it when I have good ideas. It makes sense for me to like that. I endorse taking actions that will result in world-states in which I have good ideas.

The problem is that I might [...]

---

Outline:

(02:33) Filtering Interlocutors

(06:59) Filtering Information Sources

(12:46) Suppressing Information Sources

(17:17) An Analogy to Reinforcement Learning From Human Feedback

---

First published:
February 13th, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MjutwGzoLrTTodeTf/hazards-of-selection-effects-on-approved-information-1

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Hazards of Selection Effects on Approved Information” by Zack_M_Davis

LessWrong (30+ Karma)