30 Interesting And Fun Facts For Your Daily Dose Of New Knowledge

In a recent interview with Bored Panda, assistant professor in the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University, Dr. Tanya Kaefer, seconded the idea that it’s up to each person to decide how much they want to learn each day.

“It is possible to learn something new every day, but learning is a choice, so whether or not you learn something every day is entirely up to you,” she said, adding that learning is how we do everything. “Everything we've done or know is something we've learned. There's no functioning without learning.”

Discussing the benefits of browsing random facts, for instance, Dr. Kaefer pointed out that while doing so, it’s important to be aware that skimming the surface doesn’t make one an expert in the fields the facts relate to.

“Random, interesting, and fun facts can be fun and a good exercise for learning – just like our bodies, we have to exercise our brains too,” she pointed out. “For some serious, complex topics that greatly impact people's lives, having a shallow, un-nuanced understanding can be detrimental.

No one can know everything about everything, and it’s fine to choose to know a little bit about a lot of different things. You just have to be careful that you don't forget that you don't know everything about that topic.”

As many people turn to the internet for information, they should also bear in mind that it can become a double-edged sword. “The internet plays a role both good and bad in learning. We have access to a virtually unlimited source of information, but also a lot of misinformation,” Dr. Kaefer noted.

“Our learning mechanisms don't distinguish between true facts and made-up stories, so we have to take a whole separate route to check those things. And a lot of times, if a fact is fun, we forget to check whether it's true. So that's an important step in learning from the internet.”