50 Fun Facts To Feed Your Hungry And Tired Brain (New Pics)

Talking about learning something new everyday, Dr. James C. Kaufman noted that, assuming what you’re learning is actually true and not misinformation, it can have a positive effect on your creativity.

“One way that we think of creative ideas is associating different concepts or ideas together in our minds. The more distant or random the connections, the better the chance that it can be creative – assuming we can think of something that is not only new but also useful or task-appropriate in some way,” the expert told Bored Panda. “Simply being able to make a connection between red pandas and Diet Mountain Dew together in your head would only be creative if you did something with it, such as draw a funny cartoon.”

According to Prof. Kaufman, having a wide array of trivia, fun facts, and interesting details about many different topics can be a way of having creative ideas, and being able to use strong and distinct examples to illustrate your point.

“And often, I would guess, the decision isn’t ‘I’m going to learn a very small amount about something or I’m going to deep dive and learn a lot.’ It’s ‘I’m going to learn a very small amount about something or I’m not going to learn anything about it’,” the expert added.

Prof. Kaufman continued to point out that the learning process itself is often inherently creative. “When we learn an interesting factoid or fun piece of trivia, we often think about it. Maybe we are visualizing something in our minds, or we are making an association to a different fact we know, or we are thinking about how it might relate to our lives. These personally meaningful insights—which may not mean anything to anyone else—still ‘count’ as being creative.”

Nowadays, many people gain knowledge and learn all sorts of things using the internet, which can be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it’s brimming with information about anything and everything, but on the other—much of that information might not be true.

“I think there’s good and bad when it comes to AI, social media, and other technological advances. We have amazing access to information, but it often is shallow and, worse, it can be wrong,” Prof. Kaufman shared.

“It might simply be a misunderstanding of a concept or an urban legend, but wrong information is also out there for more nefarious purposes, like changing people’s minds, [encouraging them] to follow a political agenda, or scamming people.

“Similarly, I think things like AI can not only give wrong or hallucinated info, but can also give relatively shallow coverage of a topic. I don’t think it’s bad to just know a little bit about something, but it can be hard to find more in-depth knowledge or more analytical takes on topics in a sea of identical or very similar search results.”

According to Dr. Kaufman, not everything we learn is equally valuable. And not everything has to be learned from books, courses, or the almighty internet. “We can learn knowledge, facts, or information, but we can also learn how to do something ‘hands on’ or even learn something about ourselves if we simply think and reflect.”

So when you’re done browsing these interesting facts, feel free to continue to our previous edition of ‘Today I learned’ or take time to reflect, and maybe today, you’ll learn something new about yourself!