6 ms·

News is bad for you (2013)

142 points by tomaskazemekas 11y ago

eloy 11y ago
Relevant blog from Aaron Swartz (2010): http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morebooks http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morebooks
berlinbrown 11y ago
Science is bad for you.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
ericzawo 11y ago
Worked in news media for 9 months and can unequivocally say it made me pessimistic and completely depressed. Staring at 6 newschannels for 8 hours a day can be tough.
- sparkzilla 11y ago
  It gets better in the tenth month
nmiller 11y ago
on the time issue: https://medium.com/@thusmedia/netflix-for-news-84b462a2dd50 https://medium.com/@thusmedia/netflix-for-news-84b462a2dd50
danielam 11y ago
“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.” --Mark Twain
guelo 11y ago
It's our duty as citizens of democracies to stay informed. If we don't stay informed then it is only the special interests that stand to make money that influence policies. Also it is important to stay on top of your industry trends to make sure you don't miss some opportunity. I agree that most crime and tragedy stories are useless information.
- radioheads 11y ago
  I disagree. I tend to think that brain has limit to the amount of information that can be perceived thoroughly. After going past this limit you are basically overloading your brain with information, which leads to decreased performance and such. I'm not sure if there are any studies in this area (although I won't be surprised if there are) so I can only tell that from my personal experience (so this might be very subjective obviously).
Yhippa 11y ago
Instead of using going to Facebook first when I'm bored these days I'll check out the top stories from r/all on reddit, check out Google News, or Hacker News top stories. I used to take a lot of pride in being current with world news or my industry news. This all started about 5-6 years ago when news aggregators started getting better. The first one for me was http://newsmap.jp/ http://newsmap.jp/. In reality I think it made me feel worse and sadly I'm just within the past few months realizing this. I feel like there's so much content masquerading as "news" and it's hard for me to tell what is legitimately good content until I'm a little bit through it. I am leaning to really cutting back but I need to rely on a few news sources from now on.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- alsetmusic 11y ago
  Over saturation of news can be depressing for me. I've had to take a couple of deliberate breaks and shield myself from it (mostly due to politics). I consider it a very real threat to my mental health and I now limit the sources of information I let in early on when I see warning signs that it's happening again. One thing that works for me is to focus primarily on issues were I believe I can make a difference by staying informed and not those where I genuinely feel powerless to affect change. It's imperfect, but I'm a lot more capable of dealing with it this way.
- snerbles 11y ago
  So much on r/all these days is fluff, breaking stories don't appear as quickly as they used to - in spite of admins repeatedly stating that they're "looking into it".
- vlehto 11y ago
  I tried to found a subreddit with the idea that if some article is still interesting 6 moths after it's written, then it's actually interesting stuff. Most things in the world don't happen in a day. And even those that happen, are often understood only with time. But I can't keep a reddit account. The amount of misinformation in reddit and my tendency to correct people just gets too consuming.
lkozma 11y ago
Before reading the article, one should see this (quite convincing) claim that the author has plagiarized many of the ideas in it: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  NB, "this claim" is from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Black Swans. Pretty credible, generally. (Authorship matters. Particularly in discussions of authorship mattering.)
snake117 11y ago
A follow-up article by Madeleine Bunting that I posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10526108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10526108
1_player 11y ago
The last few years I was in Italy I stopped reading the news: the bullshit around Berlusconi and his entourage, the sad state of the politics there, the obsession with kidnapping or raping or murder or disasters. I was happy being ignorant, I stopped caring about things one should but can't really do anything about it. I felt a little out of the loop when somebody asked me "hey did you hear about the disaster in XXX?" and I had to play catch up. Unfortunately now my morning routine consists in reading HN and The Guardian, I spend a lot of time reading about stuff that just feels like wasted time. In one hour of news reading there's probably a minute or two of stuff that interests me. I really want to stop that. Aside: sometimes I catch up on news from Italian newspapers and it's incredible how depressing the tone of the articles are compared to e.g. The Guardian. The topic may be the same, but the British site has a much rosier approach to events. I'm positive that the modern news has the same effect of living with a slightly depressed housemate: he seems OK at first glance but slowly brings you down with his unhappiness and gray view of the world.
- Symbiote 11y ago
  An aside prompted by your aside: A girl from China joined my class in England, when we were 16¹. She mentioned that she didn't like British newspapers, since they were always so negative (we had to read and analyse them in class sometimes). Chinese news was much more positive. It took a while for her to realise why this might be the case. I think it helped that the physics teacher regularly said things like "That bloody Tony Blair…". ¹ It was a private school, so her parents were paying the full cost.
vonnik 11y ago
Former reporter here: One of the things many people don't understand is that news organizations exist for themselves as much as they do for their readers. They are drama queens crying out for attention. Now imagine putting 10 drama queens in a room together with 100 innocent bystanders. That is the media industry. They will tire you out. Media organizations have several proven strategies to push our buttons: voyeurism, outrage, greed, fear, prurience and envious aspiration are at the top. This is compounded by the fact that the world is full of people acting crazy and doing awful things to each other. News organizations are actually pretty careful to not bombard us with constant photos of dead children, even though Syria alone could fill the pages of the NYT everyday with images of their mangled bodies. (I have sat on the photo desk, and seen the photos stream by on the AP feed -- they rarely make the paper. ) So news organizations are aware of the fatigue that certain sensations cause, and they seek to mitigate them. They need their readers to feel just enough emotion, but not too much. A perpetual state of excitement and irritation. This is one reason why climate change doesn't get the coverage it deserves. It's just too depressing, and people stop reading.
- options040 11y ago
  "One of the things people don't understand is that news organization exist as much for themselves as much as they do for their readers." What makes you think people do not understand? Can you relate to us an experience that made you think that? "One of the things..." What are the other things that people do not understand?
  - roseburg 11y ago
    The answer is probably close to why people view banks as some sort of public service organization rather than a business. I used to work at a bank, and it was amazing to hear comments from people.
    - options040 11y ago
      Can you share some of the comments?
- 11y ago
acd 11y ago
Reading news is addictive so you keep coming back for more. Reading Hacker News and using Facebook is also addictive. It's like mental sugar for you brain you keep coming back for more. I keep saying reading HN its to gather industry news but how much of it is relevant?
nmiller 11y ago
on the topic of news organizations... new news startup: http://betalist.com/startups/thus http://betalist.com/startups/thus
grecy 11y ago
I travel to places many people think of as traditionally dangerous - I drove Alaska->Argentina[1] and I'm setting out to drive around Africa for 2 years. People often feel the need to contact me and tell me about the latest bombing or kidnapping in a country on my route. I always ask how many people got married in that country yesterday, or how many people had the happiest day of their life with a child born, or other celebration. Of course, nobody has any idea, because the media doesn't tell us things like that. [1] My blog is http://theroadchoseme.com http://theroadchoseme.com
- tallerholler 11y ago
  very nice! I like your perspective.. so true also.. if you live your life in fear of what could happen, you'll miss out on some great experiences.. nice
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 11y ago
I suppose the article could be succinctly summed up as "ignorance is bliss." Also, it's somewhat ironic that this is in The Guardian.
brightsize 11y ago
I am reminded of H.D. Thoreau's essay "Life Without Principle"[1] where he has plenty to say about the ill effects, to the mind and soul, of filling one's head with ordinary news and other trivia. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it were- its foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know what will make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long. The entire essay is a wonderful read about, among other things, life and living it well. [1] http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER2/thoreau/life.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER2/thoreau/life.html edit:formatting
hkmurakami 11y ago
Aaron Swartz - I Hate the News (2006) http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
yason 11y ago
I don't read news but I trust I'll hear about it if something truly remarkable does happen. You might call that social filtering. The reason I stopped reading news is that it's mostly noise: nothing in my life changed whether I knew this or that or not. After reading the paper, I had absolutely no idea of what I had just read. I can read a book at once and digest 90% of it on the first time: the news never stuck. I first dropped reading foreign affairs, then country-wide news, and finally local news, too. It's not that I'm not interested at all but I prefer a) choose what is worth being interested in and 2) to digest the information in the form of an in-depth analysis later in time when I accidentally bump into (or search for) an article that summarizes something that has been flooding the news for years. Often even the summary doesn't really affect my life in any practical terms, so I skim it quickly to the extent of any academic curiosity I might have for the subject.
dayaz36 11y ago
Aaron Swartz's take on the news: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001226 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001226
tinalumfoil 11y ago
This article is unsubstantiated claim after unsubstantiated claim leading to an overconfident fear that encapsulates everything I hate about modern news including things inside the article. I'd hope the author was self aware enough to see the irony in writing this article but I feel to stick after reading half of it to find out.

142 points by tomaskazemekas 11y ago

eloy 11y ago

Relevant blog from Aaron Swartz (2010): http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morebooks http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/morebooks

berlinbrown 11y ago

Science is bad for you.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

ericzawo 11y ago

Worked in news media for 9 months and can unequivocally say it made me pessimistic and completely depressed. Staring at 6 newschannels for 8 hours a day can be tough.

sparkzilla 11y ago
It gets better in the tenth month

nmiller 11y ago

on the time issue: https://medium.com/@thusmedia/netflix-for-news-84b462a2dd50 https://medium.com/@thusmedia/netflix-for-news-84b462a2dd50

danielam 11y ago

“If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed.” --Mark Twain

guelo 11y ago

It's our duty as citizens of democracies to stay informed. If we don't stay informed then it is only the special interests that stand to make money that influence policies. Also it is important to stay on top of your industry trends to make sure you don't miss some opportunity. I agree that most crime and tragedy stories are useless information.

radioheads 11y ago
I disagree. I tend to think that brain has limit to the amount of information that can be perceived thoroughly. After going past this limit you are basically overloading your brain with information, which leads to decreased performance and such. I'm not sure if there are any studies in this area (although I won't be surprised if there are) so I can only tell that from my personal experience (so this might be very subjective obviously).

Yhippa 11y ago

Instead of using going to Facebook first when I'm bored these days I'll check out the top stories from r/all on reddit, check out Google News, or Hacker News top stories. I used to take a lot of pride in being current with world news or my industry news. This all started about 5-6 years ago when news aggregators started getting better. The first one for me was http://newsmap.jp/ http://newsmap.jp/. In reality I think it made me feel worse and sadly I'm just within the past few months realizing this. I feel like there's so much content masquerading as "news" and it's hard for me to tell what is legitimately good content until I'm a little bit through it. I am leaning to really cutting back but I need to rely on a few news sources from now on.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
alsetmusic 11y ago
Over saturation of news can be depressing for me. I've had to take a couple of deliberate breaks and shield myself from it (mostly due to politics). I consider it a very real threat to my mental health and I now limit the sources of information I let in early on when I see warning signs that it's happening again. One thing that works for me is to focus primarily on issues were I believe I can make a difference by staying informed and not those where I genuinely feel powerless to affect change. It's imperfect, but I'm a lot more capable of dealing with it this way.
snerbles 11y ago
So much on r/all these days is fluff, breaking stories don't appear as quickly as they used to - in spite of admins repeatedly stating that they're "looking into it".
vlehto 11y ago
I tried to found a subreddit with the idea that if some article is still interesting 6 moths after it's written, then it's actually interesting stuff. Most things in the world don't happen in a day. And even those that happen, are often understood only with time. But I can't keep a reddit account. The amount of misinformation in reddit and my tendency to correct people just gets too consuming.

lkozma 11y ago

Before reading the article, one should see this (quite convincing) claim that the author has plagiarized many of the ideas in it: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm

dredmorbius 11y ago
NB, "this claim" is from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of Black Swans. Pretty credible, generally. (Authorship matters. Particularly in discussions of authorship mattering.)

snake117 11y ago

A follow-up article by Madeleine Bunting that I posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10526108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10526108

1_player 11y ago

The last few years I was in Italy I stopped reading the news: the bullshit around Berlusconi and his entourage, the sad state of the politics there, the obsession with kidnapping or raping or murder or disasters. I was happy being ignorant, I stopped caring about things one should but can't really do anything about it. I felt a little out of the loop when somebody asked me "hey did you hear about the disaster in XXX?" and I had to play catch up. Unfortunately now my morning routine consists in reading HN and The Guardian, I spend a lot of time reading about stuff that just feels like wasted time. In one hour of news reading there's probably a minute or two of stuff that interests me. I really want to stop that. Aside: sometimes I catch up on news from Italian newspapers and it's incredible how depressing the tone of the articles are compared to e.g. The Guardian. The topic may be the same, but the British site has a much rosier approach to events. I'm positive that the modern news has the same effect of living with a slightly depressed housemate: he seems OK at first glance but slowly brings you down with his unhappiness and gray view of the world.

Symbiote 11y ago
An aside prompted by your aside: A girl from China joined my class in England, when we were 16¹. She mentioned that she didn't like British newspapers, since they were always so negative (we had to read and analyse them in class sometimes). Chinese news was much more positive. It took a while for her to realise why this might be the case. I think it helped that the physics teacher regularly said things like "That bloody Tony Blair…". ¹ It was a private school, so her parents were paying the full cost.

vonnik 11y ago

Former reporter here: One of the things many people don't understand is that news organizations exist for themselves as much as they do for their readers. They are drama queens crying out for attention. Now imagine putting 10 drama queens in a room together with 100 innocent bystanders. That is the media industry. They will tire you out. Media organizations have several proven strategies to push our buttons: voyeurism, outrage, greed, fear, prurience and envious aspiration are at the top. This is compounded by the fact that the world is full of people acting crazy and doing awful things to each other. News organizations are actually pretty careful to not bombard us with constant photos of dead children, even though Syria alone could fill the pages of the NYT everyday with images of their mangled bodies. (I have sat on the photo desk, and seen the photos stream by on the AP feed -- they rarely make the paper. ) So news organizations are aware of the fatigue that certain sensations cause, and they seek to mitigate them. They need their readers to feel just enough emotion, but not too much. A perpetual state of excitement and irritation. This is one reason why climate change doesn't get the coverage it deserves. It's just too depressing, and people stop reading.

options040 11y ago
"One of the things people don't understand is that news organization exist as much for themselves as much as they do for their readers." What makes you think people do not understand? Can you relate to us an experience that made you think that? "One of the things..." What are the other things that people do not understand?
- roseburg 11y ago
  The answer is probably close to why people view banks as some sort of public service organization rather than a business. I used to work at a bank, and it was amazing to hear comments from people.
  - options040 11y ago
    Can you share some of the comments?
11y ago

acd 11y ago

Reading news is addictive so you keep coming back for more. Reading Hacker News and using Facebook is also addictive. It's like mental sugar for you brain you keep coming back for more. I keep saying reading HN its to gather industry news but how much of it is relevant?

nmiller 11y ago

on the topic of news organizations... new news startup: http://betalist.com/startups/thus http://betalist.com/startups/thus

grecy 11y ago

I travel to places many people think of as traditionally dangerous - I drove Alaska->Argentina[1] and I'm setting out to drive around Africa for 2 years. People often feel the need to contact me and tell me about the latest bombing or kidnapping in a country on my route. I always ask how many people got married in that country yesterday, or how many people had the happiest day of their life with a child born, or other celebration. Of course, nobody has any idea, because the media doesn't tell us things like that. [1] My blog is http://theroadchoseme.com http://theroadchoseme.com

tallerholler 11y ago
very nice! I like your perspective.. so true also.. if you live your life in fear of what could happen, you'll miss out on some great experiences.. nice

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

userbinator 11y ago

I suppose the article could be succinctly summed up as "ignorance is bliss." Also, it's somewhat ironic that this is in The Guardian.

brightsize 11y ago

I am reminded of H.D. Thoreau's essay "Life Without Principle"[1] where he has plenty to say about the ill effects, to the mind and soul, of filling one's head with ordinary news and other trivia. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality. Our very intellect shall be macadamized, as it were- its foundation broken into fragments for the wheels of travel to roll over; and if you would know what will make the most durable pavement, surpassing rolled stones, spruce blocks, and asphaltum, you have only to look into some of our minds which have been subjected to this treatment so long. The entire essay is a wonderful read about, among other things, life and living it well. [1] http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER2/thoreau/life.html http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER2/thoreau/life.html edit:formatting

hkmurakami 11y ago

Aaron Swartz - I Hate the News (2006) http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

yason 11y ago

I don't read news but I trust I'll hear about it if something truly remarkable does happen. You might call that social filtering. The reason I stopped reading news is that it's mostly noise: nothing in my life changed whether I knew this or that or not. After reading the paper, I had absolutely no idea of what I had just read. I can read a book at once and digest 90% of it on the first time: the news never stuck. I first dropped reading foreign affairs, then country-wide news, and finally local news, too. It's not that I'm not interested at all but I prefer a) choose what is worth being interested in and 2) to digest the information in the form of an in-depth analysis later in time when I accidentally bump into (or search for) an article that summarizes something that has been flooding the news for years. Often even the summary doesn't really affect my life in any practical terms, so I skim it quickly to the extent of any academic curiosity I might have for the subject.

dayaz36 11y ago

Aaron Swartz's take on the news: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001226 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001226

tinalumfoil 11y ago

This article is unsubstantiated claim after unsubstantiated claim leading to an overconfident fear that encapsulates everything I hate about modern news including things inside the article. I'd hope the author was self aware enough to see the irony in writing this article but I feel to stick after reading half of it to find out.