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One of the contributors of FiveThirtyEight made an observation that, along with this article, has convinced me to start filtering out the news. They were discus
by ideonexus 10y ago
One of the contributors of FiveThirtyEight made an observation that, along with this article, has convinced me to start filtering out the news. They were discussing what public policy initiatives we could expect from the incoming administration, and she said that she could not speculate on the subject because Donald Trump's signal-to-noise ratio in his public statements was so low as to render forecasting initiatives impossible.
That's the problem here. The signal-to-noise ratio is too low in the news in general. I've spent the whole last year reading speculation about Clinton's emails, Trump's cabinet picks, and shocking news from "anonymous sources" that turned out to be 99% noise when the final draft of the news came out. Why did I waste so many hours reading baseless speculation masquerading as authoritative information?
I'm not wasting my time on noise anymore.
- rudolf0 10y agoI check the news roughly once a day just to get a feel for the headlines. I check the left-leaning sources and right-leaning sources and don't read any of the articles. I don't get sucked in, and also just get an idea of what people think is important that day/week. Usually it is just noise but it can be at least helpful to know when things have happened. The headlines are enough for me.
- lintiness 10y agoamazing what kind of bias exists in headlines alone. when you filter down, it becomes so much more obvious.