The Knowledge Inequality Gap

Welcome to the 460 new readers who have joined us since last week! If you haven’t subscribed, join 1900+ smart, curious folks by subscribing here:

A bunch of you likely came from my ‘Life in Dots’ project. If you didn’t, here’s the gist:

I’ve always loved Tim Urban’s ‘The Tail End’, so I created an app where you can input your age, daily hours of sleep, daily screen time, and screen time goal and see your remaining life and screen time in dots (and save it as a phone wallpaper).

It’s a bit eerie to look at, but it’s a sobering reminder to invest your time into the right things.

Also, don’t be afraid to reply and say hey. I love learning more about who’s reading, hearing your feedback (good or bad!), and discussing any new ideas.

Onto today’s piece…

We live in a world of limitless information, yet our capacity for understanding feels increasingly constrained. 

From speaking with hundreds of people about their digital habits, I’ve found that one of the most underrated challenges is creating a "content diet" that actually nourishes our minds.

We know deep down that our consumption shapes us and that what we feed our brains will determine the quality of our thoughts, focus, and ambitions.

But still, most of us are trapped in an endless loop of mental junk food.

On the surface, this feels like progress. Information has never been more accessible. 

But under this convenience lies a growing crisis: the erosion of depth, patience, and critical thinking. 

This crisis affects us on two levels.

1) Individually, we’re trapped in cycles of shallow consumption and atrophying critical thought.

2) Societally, it’s widening the gap in knowledge inequality between those who think deeply and those who skim. A divide that influences nearly everything that we do.

This dynamic can be best understood through what I call the junk food economy of information.

The Junk Food Economy of Information

Imagine a world where your food choices were dictated entirely by what grocery stores wanted to sell, rather than what you needed.

That’s the internet in a nutshell.

Platforms don’t care about your intellectual well-being. Their goal is to maximize engagement. And the best way to do that is to serve you more of what’s easy to consume, polarizing, and shareable.

We snack on quick viral memes, hot political takes, and general brainrot, binging without reflection. But much like an endless diet of sugar and salt erodes physical health, this kind of consumption erodes our mental acuity.

It leaves us distracted, impatient, and less capable of engaging with the deeper, more nourishing ideas that truly expand our minds.

This imbalance is especially notable for career-driven high performers who need to be constantly plugged in and rely on social media to stay informed about what’s happening in their respective fields but are forced to wade through noise to find the signal. 

Ask any founder, and they’ll tell you the same thing: 90% of the content they encounter on these platforms is a waste of time, even detrimental to their development.

But it’s that elusive 10% (the videos that spark new ideas, the essays that reshape your perspective, etc) that keeps them stuck to the feed.

The most valuable content (long-form essays, deeply researched documentaries, timeless books, etc) is out there, but it doesn’t get algorithmic priority.

And because we can’t find it as easily and it naturally requires more effort and time to consume, we consume less of it. 

The Hidden Cost of Summarization

As tech acceleration continues, so does the ability to quickly distill complex ideas into summaries: a five-minute recap of a 500-page book, a TikTok dissecting years of research, a tweetstorm of overgeneralizations replacing nuanced arguments.

Apps like Blinkist and Headway have made bank on this trend, generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue by delivering sub-15 minute book summaries that promise to make you the “most interesting person in the room”.

Ironically, these apps often position themselves as antidotes to doomscrolling.

While these shortcuts make knowledge more superficially accessible, they also come with a hidden cost.

People who rely on summaries know the “what” but not the “why” or “how.”, compared to those who build intellectual resilience with books, research, and long-form content.

In return, the continue to compound their critical thinking skills, the ability to synthesize ideas, and the capacity for innovation. All traits that are becoming increasingly rare and disproportionately valuable.

As someone who loves a good shortcut, I get the appeal of boiled-down content:

Why spend hours reading when you can get the highlights in minutes?

But this efficiency is deceptive. The human mind is a web of connections, not a database.

True understanding comes from connecting the dots between thoughts, getting stuck on an idea, doing the work. Not skimming the surface as quickly as possible and moving on to the next idea.

As a result of having our entire history of information available at our fingertips, we’ve traded depth for breadth, creating a society where many people know a little about everything but can’t think deeply about anything.

And that’s exactly what scares me about this next question…

How will we solve complex societal issues of the next century (climate change, economic inequality, technological ethics, etc) when the majority of the population lacks the cognitive horsepower to think deeply about them?

Attention has always been a resource. Limited, but harnessable. Great breakthroughs in art, science, and technology came from sustained thought, where attention evolved into focus, and focus turned into insight.

Today, attention is a social commodity, unevenly distributed. Those who can focus deeply will earn outsized paychecks, solve problems, and shape culture. Those who can’t will be left behind, trapped in a cycle of distraction and surface-level education.

Wild stuff.

We can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube (nor do I think we should, the past few decades of innovation have undeniably improved the average person’s life), but I truly believe this is a challenge that must be addressed on a cultural level.

As part of making ‘being offline’ attractive, we need to reframe depth as a virtue. Just as society now celebrates the TikToker with a million followers or the get-rich-quick crypto entrepreneur, we must begin to celebrate the thinker, the scholar, the astronaut and scientist, and the creatives who digs deep into the subject matter and uses their critical thinking.

But all collective change starts with individual action. So as always, I’ll leave you with a challenge:

Step 1: Awareness

Audit your content diet. How much of the time that you spend on social yields genuine value? Find both the content that energizes and educates you and the content that leaves you drained. Add more of the good, less of the bad.

Also consider the opportunity cost: what are you missing out on because you’re stuck in the feed?

Step 2: Test Your Attention Span

One exercise I’ve found helpful is to measure how long you can sit with a long-form piece of content before feeling the itch to check your phone or open a new tab.

I call this is your ‘attention fitness’ level, and like any fitness, it can be improved.

Can you sit through a 10-minute podcast without checking your phone? A 30-minute article? A 2-hour book?

Attention is like a muscle, so the more you practice sustained focus, the easier it becomes to lock into a longer, more ‘nutrient-dense’ form of content.

Step 3: Substitution

Replace the junk with substance. Start small. Instead of going to Twitter for your news or niche rsesearch, find a daily newsletter that curates the most important stories each day.

(I wanted to stay up-to-date with AI but didn’t want to spend hours on Twitter so I subscribed to The Neuron instead. I’ve learned more, spent less time scrolling, and it’s become a fun part of my morning routine).

Subscribe to one great newsletter or commit to reading/watching at least one long-form essay or YouTube video each week.

You can also set up tools like Feedly and RSS readers so you can follow high-quality sources directly without needing to fall into the infinite scroll of the newsfeed. Feedly even has newsletter and Reddit integrations too which is pretty cool.

Lastly, it doesn’t need to be all or nothing. If you want to cut out Twitter / Instagram, etc, but don’t want to get off it entirely, you can create a separate account specifically for one niche / interest, and only follow a few select accounts in that field.

I have a burner Twitter specifically for sports news where I follow ~10 accounts. I go on once per day, get my updates for 15 min, and that’s it.

Step 4: Recalibration

Test your attention span again. Can you now go longer without distraction?
Progress may be slow, but like anything, it compounds over time.

Repeat this process for a few months and I guarantee you’ll notice a difference.

👋 I’m finally on YouTube

I posted this last week, but resurfacing for all the new readers…

I'm diving into YouTube in 2025. Here's why:

→ YouTube is the second most popular social media network globally and the second biggest search engine (big reach)

→ It's a powerhouse for building trust through long-form content (aligns with my content goals and my consumer’s ideal content diets)

→ YouTube videos can still be discovered years after they were posted (much longer half-life than TikTok or Reels)

Plus, I'm always thinking about how I can create content that truly helps people. Like we just discussed, long-form video provides more educational value and people naturally improve their attention spans by watching them.

Feels crazy typing that out but it's true.

My first video is up, and I'm committed to posting every two weeks. Next one comes out later this week.

All subscribes and engagement is greatly appreciated and feedback is always welcome (seriously, i’m a noob and this is the worst it will ever be).

Other Resources

Kanso Digital Wellness: A 1:1 accountability system for those looking to break their digital addictions, reduce dopamine burnout, and unlock more focus, clarity, and success. Sign up here.

The Digital Reset Journal: The first mindfulness journal specifically geared towards building a healthier relationship with technology. If your New Year’s resolution includes “less screen time” or “being more present,” I guarantee this will help. Check it out here.

Roast My Screen Time: Upload screenshots of your screen time data and get ruthlessly roasted by AI. Give it a spin here.

Digital Detox Tools: A free directory of 75+ digital wellness products, software, and services. Access it here.

That’s all for this week. Now stop scrolling and go do something great!

Thanks for reading,

Randy