There's probably strong evolutionary advantage to this method of mental organization. We ignore most of the raw data we receive. It never gets converted to information or assimilated into knowledge. It's doubtful we could function well (or at all) if this filtering mechanism were not in place. And I vaguely recall reading about certain mental illnesses where it wasn't and the afflicted was bombarded with too many signals. (I imagine the mental state of a person with such an illness or condition might be like three mile island where they had hundreds of alarms going off at once and no way to prioritize them.)
Even after the data gets perceived and assimilated, some of it is vastly more important than others. Emotional tagging is not a perfect mechanism, but it wouldn't have to be to give early animals competitive advantage.
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