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information overload

the state that occurs when the amount or intensity of information exceeds the individual’s processing capacity, leading to anxiety, poor decision making, and other undesirable consequences. Different people respond differently to information overload, and individuals with conditions such as autism can be especially sensitive to it. Thus, the subjective condition of the person is as important as the absolute amount of informational stimulation he or she encounters. See also cognitive overload; communication overload; sensory overload; stimulus overload.

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Psychology term of the day

January 30th 2025

Gödel’s proof

Gödel’s proof

a proof that in any logic system at least as powerful as arithmetic it is possible to state theorems that can be proved to be neither true nor false, using only the proof rules of that system. Published in 1931, this incompleteness result was very challenging to the mathematics of the time. British mathematician Alan Turing (1912–1954), with his proof of the undecidability of the halting problem, extended this result to computation (see Turing machine). [Kurt Gödel (1906–1978), Austrian-born U.S. mathematician]