How many times a day do you have to fill out a form of some sort? How many forms does it take for you to interact with your bank, your local government, your vendor of choice for whatever gotta-have-it you gotta have today? I know most of us don't read the Terms of Service, and even if we start to, they're written in legalese to discourage all but the most bloody-minded to give up, scroll to the bottom, and hit "I Agree" even though you're pretty sure you don't.

Autocomplete makes some forms tolerable and password managers make others easy enough to forego the usual "do I really want to sign up for this?" soul-searching. But it is all information...your information. You are your information.

Author Sunstein (Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America, Impeachment: A Citizen's Guide) was the Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, as well as the Harry Kalven Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago Law School; he is currently Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. In other words, this is someone who really knows what information is used for, and has an unaralleled grasp of the costs that gathering, storing, and manipulating all this information costs at every end of the transaction.

What this book did for me was to make me think through the mindless "I Agree"-clicking I do when I am online. Service providers are required to disclose things to us for a reason, and it isn't *our* protection. Author Sunstein doesn't provide panaceas or one-size-fits-all solutions to the issue of information overload. He offers a considered, informed insider's look at how the constant demand for your information, the constant barrage of their legally-required information to you, leads to the fatigue of indifference.

This doesn't make it sound like a #Booksgiving gift. It should be one you gift yourself, but as the demand for and deluge of information grows more and more overwhelming, it's a great time to think of the consequences as we head into the presidential election cycle of 2024. Your politically active pals could use this readable, thoughtful treatment of the complex issue of how much is too much information...in or out...and how to manage, parse, and organize that information as presented to you.

Valuable information (!) for your engaged, aware friend.

Is it a need-to-know basis? Is it your right to know? In fact, what do you know??

In this book Cass Sunstein reflects on when the information at hand is just TOO MUCH INFORMATION.

A really thought provoking read - had me questioning the ethics behind when the information should be provided, or when it should just remain private.

3 stars ⭐⭐⭐

Special thanks to Netgalley for providing me with this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Excellent. The idea equivalent of an earworm. I have already mentioned it in correspondence and I will probably mention this Cass Sunstein book in future reviews of other books.

Is knowledge power?

Sometimes it is. But sometimes it’s not. Sometimes, as we say, “Ignorance is bliss.”

This book helps us measure how much we need to know for our own good. The author goes through many examples to help us understand that sometimes knowing more can hurt us more. But sometimes knowing less can also hurt us.

Finding the right balance of knowledge is apparently much harder than it seems. I may want to enjoy my popcorn at the movies, but when you give me too much bad nutritional information, it ruins it for me.

“Most people (53 percent) said that they did not want to know if they will get Alzheimer’s disease.”

“About 57 percent would like to know whether their partner or spouse ever cheats on them. Only 42 percent would like to know what their friends and family members really think about them!”

The book also delves into how much we would pay to know something. Or how much would we pay to NOT know something.

For example, if you’re already a Facebook user, how much would you pay per month to keep using Facebook if it were no longer free? On the other hand, how much money would you accept per month to stay OFF Facebook?

Surprisingly, those numbers aren’t the same when users were surveyed.

A final topic the book addresses is sludge. It’s the red-tape that we suffer through to get the things we want. If we can reduce sludge, should we? Or is it better to make people work a little bit to get the things they want, if the quantities are in short supply?

“We are better off with stop signs, with warnings on cigarette packages and prescription drugs, with GPS devices, with reminders that bills are due or that doctors’ appointments are upcoming. But sometimes less is more. What is needed, for the future, is much more clarity about what information is actually doing or achieving. If we focus insistently on that question and on how to answer it, we will be able to make people’s lives happier, freer, longer, and better.”

I recommend this book if you want to think smarter about information.

My thanks to Net Galley for the review copy of this book.

I picked up a review copy of this book because I've read Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, a very good book which was co-authored by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler.

Too Much Information has some very interesting points, explaining things like why marketing does not have to tell you the reasons the company did something but rather why it benefits you as a consumer, and how the presentation of information matters while a reduction in disclosures increases the saliency of the more important ones, and how disclosure requirements tend to be imposed "when less informed consumers interact with better-informed sellers and when the incentives of the consumers and sellers are at least arguably misaligned."

I would suggest this book for those who want to know more about the topic, especially given that the author was advisor to President Obama. However, it is a little drier than Nudge and does not provide a significant amount of new information if you have read Nudge or similar books. 3.5 stars

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for a review copy.

Is there too much information out there? Is too much information demanded of us? These are the two pivotal questions Cass Sunstein treats in Too Much Information. He’s a good one to ask them, because President Barack Obama placed him where he could see and recommend changes in the way the government deals with the public. Nothing has changed, however. It is bad and getting worse.

It is not easy to slash and burn here. There are impossible paradoxes to consider before simply saying there is too much of both. One example Sunstein gives is the Health Department asking for so much information from patients it could be discouraging women from getting abortions. For many, this is a travesty. For just as many, this is a blessing. It is the patient, naturally, who loses.

The government does ask for a lot. So much so it can be confusing when not impossible to comply. Loans are not made, people are distressed, and progress is held up. Sunstein shows that the federal government forces the public to consume nearly 10 billion hours a year filling out its forms. To no one’s great shock, the IRS leads by a mile of totally unproductive time consumed.

The Paperwork Reduction Act and the office charged with reducing paperwork are, if I may, paper tigers. They have no way to force or enforce. There is no mechanism whereby a citizen can sue over the abusive and excessive demand for data . Sunstein says “Administrative burden can impose excessive costs (north of $200 billion), frustrate enjoyment of rights, and prevent access to important benefits of multiple sorts. The $200 billion figure greatly understates the actual impact, economic and psychological.” Is information overload worth $200 billion? (Is it crazy to bother trying to put a figure on it?)

Do government and healthcare need all that data? Do they make any use of it at all? Can’t they prepopulate forms since they already have so much of this data, several times over? Sadly, these are questions for the ages, not for immediate action.

On the other side of the coin is the flood of data everyone deals with daily. It has changed the way we live (Facebook, Twitter…). And made it more complicated to get through a day. Everything comes with terms of use, terms and conditions and privacy statements. From the coffee pot to the car and everything on the internet. There isn’t enough time in a day to read them, let alone digest them or make decisions based on them. Just because a company has a privacy statement on its website does not mean it shields users’ privacy. It might very well admit to selling all the data on users to all comers, repeatedly. Customers can’t know unless they read the policy. And when a simple search leads to an answer on a web page, the very last thing anyone does is stop to consider the privacy policy before reading. It’s a bizarre system.

Sunstein cites numerous studies showing, among other things, how unhappy services like Facebook make users feel. He asked study participants how much they would pay for the service if they had to, and also how much money they would accept to drop it completely. It is well known that people value what they have far more than what they would pay if they had to, so the book doesn’t lend itself to any sort of insight or direction on this issue. All it shows is the lengths Sunstein goes to in examining his topic. Too much information doesn’t clear the air.

Then there’s information that is useless precisely because it is offered. If a financial advisor admits to a conflict of interest, he is suddenly free to advise a client on his admittedly biased choices. This is called moral licensing. It empowers the dishonest and puts the customer in a hole. This is too much information because the advisor should not even be allowed in the room. Empowering him like this is (or should be) criminal. But in our system, the confession is off his chest and it’s now the customer’s problem.

There is a lot of information no one asked for, like the number of calories per plate on a restaurant menu. He calls this “ruining the popcorn,” as in: what if there were printed warnings about how fattening cinema popcorn slathered in chemical butter really is.

On the other hand, this is precisely the kind of nudging Sunstein has backed in previous books. The way to get people to change their behavior without them feeling they’ve been denied a choice. Let them opt out rather than be aggravated trying to subscribe for example. Show them the calorie counts and maybe they’ll look farther down the list.

Another nudge would be to list companies by their privacy scores from most private to least, rather than looking at a list of companies and trying to determine who is better than whom. We can definitely nudge our way to making information actually useful instead of just more.

In ruining the popcorn, Sunstein brings up the issue of hedonic choice. People make choices for pleasure, and denying them their pleasure can be an infringement of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But then, what to do about an ex-Marine who is used to killing people at will? That sort of thing is frowned upon back home, which leads to a lot of anger, frustration and unrequited hate. Yet that is basically the argument of smokers or anti-abortionists, who demand their choice be imposed on everyone, despite all the information, evidence and opinion to the contrary. Personal freedoms and information often don’t work well together. Hedonics can really the muddy the waters of information glut.

There is also a cost to all these laws, notices, policies and so on. Billions. Restaurants need to calculate calorie counts, for example, and revise them with changes in recipes or items or weights. So Sunstein asks the fairly ridiculous question: how much would you pay to have warnings put on cigarette packs and wine bottles? Because in a real sense, you are paying anyway. How much better off would society and consumers be without those hidden costs? Or without those informational notices at all? There’s lots of food for thought in Too Much Information.

Sunstein‘s writing walks the talk. He is economical, direct and very easy to read. The book moves quickly and covers a lot of ground. Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide any solace. Life always gets more complicated, never less. This is where we are today. Deal with it.

David Wineberg

Am a follower of Sunstein’s work and appreciated the chance to give this book a look. Hoping for its success in the marketplace.

Thank you Netalley and publishers for the book.
It was a great read about the information we handle and how to use it

We usually think that more information is always better, but could it in fact cause harm? This book explores that question, with a fascinating look at how the information era has led to more information being available than ever before, but also brought with it a whole new set of problems.

For example, choice fatigue and the paradox of choice are a phenomenon that is plaguing people in today's world, as we have endless options and opportunities for our partners, careers, even what we're going to have for dinner. Rather than this amount of choice is positive, it has resulted in a lot of anxiety and dissatisfaction, as the grass always looks greener on the other side, versus the times when you were naive to the possibilities that existed outside of your bubble. This often leads people to make worse decisions than they are increasingly unhappy with, even though most people believe that having more choices ahs the opposite effect.

Fascinating topic and insights are found in this book!

This is an academic overview of few narrow domains related to information access and information sharing. I doubt I had ever previously given any in-depth thought to the topic, but if asked I probably would have come down on the side of "right to know" - that individuals should be given as much information as possible in order to help them make decisions. The author does a great job of delineating the ways that more information may in fact be less helpful - particularly when it is likely to be unused even when provided, or when receiving it diminishes well-being (he shares an anecdote early on about having "ruined the popcorn" by being part of the team responsible for mandating calorie disclosures on restaurant and movie theater menus).

The book shines most during its analysis of HOW information should be provided. A key example is the redesign of the Food Pyramid from the 80s/90s actual pyramid illustrated to an almost incomprehensible design in 2005, before being replaced by My Plate. in 2011. Or the fact that when calories are presented to the left of the image of the food, that information leads to healthier choices, but doesn't have the same effect when presented to the right of an image (at least in languages that are read left-to-right; a study was replicated in Hebrew which is read right to left to find that the reverse is true, so it does seem as if encountering calorie info before imagery is more helpful).

In some places, the book becomes more dense than a popularly accessible nonfiction text generally does, but overall there's a lot to enjoy in this fairly short read.

Thanks NET GALLEY for the ARC

A bit dry, and yet with just enough humor to perhaps make you miss the author's point that the GOVERNMENT is here to help.

Beware America, but read this to know.

I selected this book solely because I have been told that Mr. Sunstein is one of the smartest liberals in the US. Boy was that wrong! Mr. Sunstein has chosen a vapid topic and his treatment of "Too Much Information" is very subpar. I will avoid Sunstein's books in the future.

"Too Much Information", by Cass Sunstein, is a treatise on the advantages and disadvantages of receiving too much information. This book discusses topics such as education, politics, religion, health, and social media. While there are many benefits to being well-informed, the author posits that the stress brought into our lives by too much information is detrimental to our wellbeing. This book was well-written, if a little dry.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

This book sets out on the premise that information is great and whatever we receive should be pegged on it being good for us or improving our lives.
True, there are some things I do not care much for like labels on soda or pop corn and then there are those that I want to know like medication, and yes- even in the world of books, I want to know just a bit from the blurb what the book is all about before I buy it.
The author draws from a vast range of examples and I loved that about this book. I also found it more interesting on how it touches on personal information and with social media- it begs the question, how personal is personal?
This is a good read- it's got all the information alright.
Thanks for the eARC Netgalley.

This was quite an informative book as well as being humorous at times about information in our lives; from labels on food to sharing photos on Insta and other social media; and how much is too much? I laughed, cringed and raced through this book because it of the wit, opinions and well-researched statistics in the pages. I barely use Twitter or Snapchat but I am still active on Facebook and learning how to use Instagram; maybe it's time to limit how much you post daily or just be more careful about the level of personal information we share... easier said than done.

I think most readers will have some of the same reactions as I did reading this and thank goodness it wasn't super preachy and it was funny, a nice change to some of the doom and gloom nonfiction I have been reading lately. A must read about daily information in our lives and around us.

Thanks to netgalley, the publisher and author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Available: 9/1/20

Well, this book was almost too much information!
It was a bit dry at times but interesting. It could have been much shorter and concise.
While I feel there is too much information, there are also people "experts" taking advantage of our natural tendency to be curious, to want to understand, and so they offer information in order to make some cash.
I have a lifelong education in marketing, public relations, propaganda, which is probably why I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would.