3 ms·

It's not just the mentally ill, the ignorant or misguided, it's the general public that has to deal with so many negative emotions and information at an acceler

by cel1ne 10y ago

It's not just the mentally ill, the ignorant or misguided, it's the general public that has to deal with so many negative emotions and information at an accelerating pace. The world didn't got worse, but everybody started to feel that way. Because people now know what they didn't know before. Two hundred years ago, when your beloved aunt died, you realised that after a week when the letter informing you arrived. During that week you could be happy, because you didn't know. Now the death, misery, violence and unfairness that happens so regularly in our world is just a fingertip away. Resulting in fear and anger. Those emotions are good for evading and hunting animals, but not for dealing with complex rules in a globalised society.

trhway 10y ago
>Now the death, misery, violence and unfairness that happens so regularly in our world is just a fingertip away. >Resulting in fear and anger. or it could result in increased awareness about the issues and empathy toward the victims of "the death, misery, violence and unfairness". Such awareness and empathy can be very constructive and a force for progress and thus "good for dealing with complex rules in a globalised society." History of progress is a history of wider and faster spread of fuller information. Police was brutalizing and murdering black people long before cell phone cameras. With cell phone recordings of such events now available, the society can't anymore just dismiss it and has finally to deal with it.
- cel1ne 10y ago
  I agree and I'm not advocating to take back information. That is not possible anyway. I just think that most people, for whatever reasons, do not have the capacity for "relaxed empathy" in stressful situations.
  - trhway 10y ago
    >I just think that most people, for whatever reasons, do not have the capacity for "relaxed empathy" in stressful situations. It is not about "relaxed". It is about instinct in stressful situation to help the wounded member of your tribe. The modern technology just made the whole human race the same one tribe.
    - cel1ne 10y ago
      Humans cannot comprehend that many people being part of their tribe. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups
TeMPOraL 10y ago
> Now the death, misery, violence and unfairness that happens so regularly in our world is just a fingertip away. And since they're always a kind of "emergency", an overriding situation for our brains to which we instinctively pay attention, that's the ultimate topic for news. Now with unlimited supply - if there's nothing bad happening in your city, local media will borrow something from elsewhere in the country. And if the whole nation had just a peaceful and happy week, they'll borrow something from abroad. I do believe that as a society we need to reconsider the "freedom of press" in mainstream media. To be clear - the idea is based on the most honorable of principles. But with few decades of instant electronic communication behind us, we know few relevant things to be experimentally confirmed as facts: - publishers have every reason to pick up most extreme examples for anything, and with lightspeed access to global information, they'll happily do this every day - media plays havoc with our brains; in particular, with availability heuristic[0] - that makes us instinctively feel that everyone around us is rich hand happy (since our real neighbors, in terms of what we know about them, are media celebrities) and the world is a dangerous and brutal place (since we keep hearing about some crime or attack every single day - and the distance doesn't matter for availability heuristic) - most people seem to be unaware that brains are not well adapted to our current technological environment, and in particular that if you don't constantly downplay or ignore most of the news, you're being lead to believe extremely wrong things - by the very virtue of availability heuristic - those people vote Something needs to be done about at least some of those points there. Trying to just educate people is too slow and too unreliable. I'm not saying "censor press" or something - but we need to somehow take into the account the standard failure mode media triggers in majority of population. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
- cel1ne 10y ago
  I fully agree.

by cel1ne 10y ago

trhway 10y ago

>Now the death, misery, violence and unfairness that happens so regularly in our world is just a fingertip away. >Resulting in fear and anger. or it could result in increased awareness about the issues and empathy toward the victims of "the death, misery, violence and unfairness". Such awareness and empathy can be very constructive and a force for progress and thus "good for dealing with complex rules in a globalised society." History of progress is a history of wider and faster spread of fuller information. Police was brutalizing and murdering black people long before cell phone cameras. With cell phone recordings of such events now available, the society can't anymore just dismiss it and has finally to deal with it.

cel1ne 10y ago
I agree and I'm not advocating to take back information. That is not possible anyway. I just think that most people, for whatever reasons, do not have the capacity for "relaxed empathy" in stressful situations.
- trhway 10y ago
  >I just think that most people, for whatever reasons, do not have the capacity for "relaxed empathy" in stressful situations. It is not about "relaxed". It is about instinct in stressful situation to help the wounded member of your tribe. The modern technology just made the whole human race the same one tribe.
  - cel1ne 10y ago
    Humans cannot comprehend that many people being part of their tribe. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingroups_and_outgroups

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> Now the death, misery, violence and unfairness that happens so regularly in our world is just a fingertip away. And since they're always a kind of "emergency", an overriding situation for our brains to which we instinctively pay attention, that's the ultimate topic for news. Now with unlimited supply - if there's nothing bad happening in your city, local media will borrow something from elsewhere in the country. And if the whole nation had just a peaceful and happy week, they'll borrow something from abroad. I do believe that as a society we need to reconsider the "freedom of press" in mainstream media. To be clear - the idea is based on the most honorable of principles. But with few decades of instant electronic communication behind us, we know few relevant things to be experimentally confirmed as facts: - publishers have every reason to pick up most extreme examples for anything, and with lightspeed access to global information, they'll happily do this every day - media plays havoc with our brains; in particular, with availability heuristic[0] - that makes us instinctively feel that everyone around us is rich hand happy (since our real neighbors, in terms of what we know about them, are media celebrities) and the world is a dangerous and brutal place (since we keep hearing about some crime or attack every single day - and the distance doesn't matter for availability heuristic) - most people seem to be unaware that brains are not well adapted to our current technological environment, and in particular that if you don't constantly downplay or ignore most of the news, you're being lead to believe extremely wrong things - by the very virtue of availability heuristic - those people vote Something needs to be done about at least some of those points there. Trying to just educate people is too slow and too unreliable. I'm not saying "censor press" or something - but we need to somehow take into the account the standard failure mode media triggers in majority of population. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

cel1ne 10y ago
I fully agree.