Mental Firewall

CORE DEFINITION

A mental firewall is a deliberately designed set of rules governing what information a person admits. It includes filtering rules for content requiring scrutiny, automatic interception of particular categories, and lists of trusted and suspect sources. The core proposition is that attention is contested by many parties with an interest in shaping it, so intake must be governed by explicit rules rather than by whatever arrives, since default openness leaves judgment exposed to manipulation. The key qualification is that an over-tight firewall produces an information cocoon, so the rules need periodic revision rather than permanent entrenchment.