Clay Johnson

Wow, I had a very similar thought when I first read about infovegan - that it was a poor term for what he was trying to describe. I posted this comment on the "Why Infovegan" page a few months ago:

>I wish the term gave more clues as to its meaning. Dozens of diets are about intentionally restricting foods for health reasons. Veganism doesn't have a monopoly on dietary restriction. Nor does it imply avoiding processed foods or additives. In fact, several other diets have those guidelines baked right into their core philosophies (e.g. raw diets). You're probably too invested at this point, but I think "infoforager" would be more indicative of the meaning here (carrying a lot less baggage too, but perhaps that is a disadvantage for you).

http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/why-infovegan

>Once that basic idea — that in the timeline of human history and pre-history we simply haven’t had time to adapt to our new circumstances — took root in my brain it seemed natural to apply it to other domains besides food.

Indeed, it's an incredibly powerful and flexible idea (exhibit A: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html)! Unfortunately, many circles (e.g. skeptical community) will dismiss it out of hand because it smells like the naturalistic fallacy... also because skeptics tend to treat anything other than unquestioning embrace of new technologies as anti-science.

Sorry I am late getting back on this. Long day!

I think the best thing I can do to explain this is to actually watch the video at http://informationdiet.com/live. It'll take you some time. I'm carving it up now.

But there's a lot in there.

The overarching theme though is that good persuasion is a function with two parameters: sacrifice, and effort. The more sacrifice and effort involved in your persuasion to Congress, the more likely it is to be well received. Thus, a visit to Washington, DC is much more effective than a phone call. A phone call is much more effective than an email. An email is much more effective than a form email. A form email is much more effective than a form fax. And so on.

Here are some tips:

http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-be-a-better-activist

and

http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/how-to-talk-to-congress

Not sure if it was intentional, but Crichton here uses the same Pollan metaphor that Johnson makes in his book, The Information Diet. In fact the tagline is right on his site: http://informationdiet.com/

I just got finished reading the Information Diet a couple weeks ago and was pretty disappointed in the book overall. Same with this article. Both seem to have a problem that I agree with: we should be more intentional about the information we consume. However, the "solution" in both isn't fully realized or it's tainted with an agenda of some sort.

I'm really ready for a good book on this topic as I raise my kids in the junk knowledge/misinformation age.

Anybody have any recommendations?

This is a laudable idea.

Unfortunately, the key challenge with the problem isn't architecting a DVCS-like service for legal documents (for an MVP, you could easily get by simply designing a novel frontend to git), it's an adoption problem. The current system is flawed, yes, but merely offering a superior product for less money isn't enough to make a dent in the bureaucratic nightmare of modern-day Washington.

I'm reminded of an article I saw here on HN a few months back: http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/dear-internet-its-no-longer-ok-to-not-know-how-congress-works-

This strikes me as an emerging area for application trustworthiness and privacy issues.

In some ways it's an extension of This strikes me as an extension of the dark patterns work (https://www.darkpatterns.org/) or in a different way the work on addictive apps by Tristan Harris and his "Time Well Spent" (http://www.timewellspent.io/) efforts. Somewhat related from a self-help perspective is Clay Johnson's "Information Diet" (http://informationdiet.com/) model (See also and https://player.vimeo.com/video/63368251)

I don't have specific advice, as your particular causes may be very different than mine. I would however recomend the following books as good starting points:

"The Information Diet": http://www.informationdiet.com/

"Mindset": https://mindsetonline.com/thebook/buythebook/index.html

"Peak":: http://peakthebook.com/

"Deep Work": http://calnewport.com/books/deep-work/