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And that's just the thing. Many, many people don't have time to shop around gathering a variety of high-quality news sources. Many will just run Fox, or CNN, or

And that's just the thing. Many, many people don't have time to shop around gathering a variety of high-quality news sources. Many will just run Fox, or CNN, or whatever as their primary news source. And that implicitly shapes their view of the world. A large non-trivial amount of people use Fox News (and maybe some added sources that are effectively in the same sphere) as their primary and only source of information. And they definitely take it seriously. It has enough veneer of legitimacy and polish and portrays a particular, comforting world view to them. And of course, if you just have a diet of fringe media, no matter your leanings, that will also impact your view of the world.

cyrksoft 7y ago
>And that's just the thing. Many, many people don't have time to shop around gathering a variety of high-quality news sources. Many will just run Fox, or CNN, or whatever as their primary news source. And that implicitly shapes their view of the world. Everybody has time, if they are interested, to get informed. Time is only an excuse.
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Not true. Getting informed is a full time job.
  - acollins1331 7y ago
    99% of the stuff you're informing yourself about full time is useless and probably making you stupider. The only news that ever is even tangentially useful for me is stuff on HN. "Current events" knowledge rarely extends it's usefulness beyond random trivia and wasting your time. Take the time you spend reading about politics (which you will never be able to effect or change yourself) and put it towards something like developing a skill and your life will be much better. Reading stupid news stories on your phone is just mental masturbation. Little 5 minute pills of information that makes you feel like you learned or accomplished something when you didn't.
  - Nasrudith 7y ago
    Depends on both degrees of informed and capabilities of the investigator. It can literally be a full time job however. If you can truly keep up with world news and details with the best essentially any intelligence agency (or large financial institution) would gladly take you on board for a good rate doing perfectly honest and legal work just from being able to piece it all together and make the proper inferences and connections. Informed or not isn't a binary but a dizzying collection of them that can wind up ironically mixed with things like DNA pioneers pushing megadosing crankery.

cyrksoft 7y ago

>And that's just the thing. Many, many people don't have time to shop around gathering a variety of high-quality news sources. Many will just run Fox, or CNN, or whatever as their primary news source. And that implicitly shapes their view of the world. Everybody has time, if they are interested, to get informed. Time is only an excuse.

Kaiyou 7y ago
Not true. Getting informed is a full time job.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  99% of the stuff you're informing yourself about full time is useless and probably making you stupider. The only news that ever is even tangentially useful for me is stuff on HN. "Current events" knowledge rarely extends it's usefulness beyond random trivia and wasting your time. Take the time you spend reading about politics (which you will never be able to effect or change yourself) and put it towards something like developing a skill and your life will be much better. Reading stupid news stories on your phone is just mental masturbation. Little 5 minute pills of information that makes you feel like you learned or accomplished something when you didn't.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  Depends on both degrees of informed and capabilities of the investigator. It can literally be a full time job however. If you can truly keep up with world news and details with the best essentially any intelligence agency (or large financial institution) would gladly take you on board for a good rate doing perfectly honest and legal work just from being able to piece it all together and make the proper inferences and connections. Informed or not isn't a binary but a dizzying collection of them that can wind up ironically mixed with things like DNA pioneers pushing megadosing crankery.