19 ms·

Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

333 points by somishere 6y ago

I've been offline since last Wednesday, driving and camping throughout northern outback australia (escaping the vid!). I have a second rate carrier and tonight I hear my phone ping for the first time since I left. I've had reception before, but usually only while driving, usually passing through a larger town. This time I'm sitting next to the fire, near a town called Nhulunbuy in East Arnhem, aboriginal land, one of the more remote regions on the planet. I'm on a small red cliff overlooking the ocean, I've spotted a largish croc on the sand below only an hour before, and I can see the entire milky way above me (it's a new moon). As i'm writing this I just looked up and saw a satellite. The sky's been pretty similar the last week, but still it's spectacular. Anyway my phone pings and I pick it up and I end up reading the news and checking HN (for the first time in two weeks .. same old stories). What gives?

paulcarroty 6y ago
News is like heroin, also earns billions. Also addictive as porn, coffee, cigarettes etc. One of the easiest way to leave that way - force yourself to create something, not consume everything.
crispyporkbites 6y ago
Our species has survived through millions of years of evolution by being social, and depending on others for resources. It's baked into our DNA by now. News is the ultimate form of social information, ergo, it's hard to resist.
- somishere 6y ago
  Yeah the social thing is real. But the relentless need for currency? It feels more like a disease than an evolution.
chinathrow 6y ago
I am in the same boat, floating the same ocean full of news. New stuff, head lines, news flashes, breaking news, current events, notifications etc. all trigger some dopamine release and make me feel satisfied.
mhandley 6y ago
Part of it is surely fear of missing out, in this case fear that everyone else will know something you don't. Exactly what we fear of missing out on probably varies a lot from person to person. I don't care all all about the football results, but many people do, as it's a staple of their conversation in their social sphere. For the HN crowd, we survive and thrive on what we know. We're in an industry that moves rapidly, and we perceive that successful people thrive on knowing more, or knowing first. Of course that's only partly true. Successful people know just enough, and then actually get the job done. Knowing where to draw the line between reading about what others have done and doing stuff ourselves is really hard. It's always easier to read about what others have done, and it feels productive, but past a certain point it really isn't.
frereubu 6y ago
Seems an appropriate time to post my favourite piece on news addiction by Charles Simic in the NYRB. "I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expected that after everything I had lived through and learned in my life, I would attain a state of Olympian calm and would regard the news of the day with amusement, like a clip from a bad old movie I had seen far too many times. It hasn’t happened to me yet. My late father, in the final year of his life, claimed that he finally found that long-sought serenity by no longer reading the papers and watching television. Even then, and I was thirty years younger than he, I knew what he meant. What devotees of sadomasochism do to their bodies is nothing compared to the torments that those addicted to the news and political commentary inflict on their minds almost every hour of the day." https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/12/05/goodbye-serenity/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/12/05/goodbye-serenity/ Edit: Charles Simic is a Serbian-American poet who lived through WWII and saw some really grisly things, some described briefly in the article, hence "after everything I had lived through and learned in my life..."
- somishere 6y ago
  Thanks, this hits close to the bone. There's definitely a connectedness in the tragedy of it all.
  - frereubu 6y ago
    The only thing that works for me is what worked for his dad - don't read it. Make sure you read around at times when it's relevant - before you vote for example - but don't torture yourself with news that (a) isn't actionable and (b) isn't relevant to you. I've steadily weaned myself off social networks, and am now doing the same for news sites. I've started reading more books (I prefer physical books because I find even having an electronic device in my hand like an old Kindle triggers a desire to check email etc.), I'm calmer, and more focused on what's around me like nature and my family. It's not been easy, particularly given that I sit in front of a computer all day for work, but it's worth finding ways to resist the triggers, which can be as simple as taking a deep breath, closing a tab, then repeat until you have no tabs left...
PaulHoule 6y ago
It is designed to be. If it wasn't addictive they'd change it to make it so. Otherwise you'd be thinking about the other 10^12 things in the world.
0dana 6y ago
My understanding is it’s the little thrill your brain gets from the possibility of finding something super interesting. That’s the addicting piece. The gambling piece of it. I read (or more likely heard on a podcast) about an experiment with mice and a food dispensing button. In one case, the button reliably dispensed food every time it was pressed. In the other case, sometimes the button wouldn’t work. The mice with the reliable button didn’t do anything odd. Whenever they were hungry, they would hit the button for some food. The mice with the unreliable button however would repeatedly hit the button, and they ended up being overweight. My feeling is that if EVERYTHING on something like HN was super interesting, we’d only be here when we were up for some interesting reads. But the fact is, not everything is. But the possibility that something EXTRA interesting might pop up keeps us coming back in an addictive type of way.
- somishere 6y ago
  Yes. I like this. Now, how to resolve it?
  - saalweachter 6y ago
    Hard, unwavering discipline. Resolve to stop reading it, either entirely or outside of rigid conditions (eg, no more than N minutes at X in the morning and Y at night). Then do so. Some people have good luck modifying their network configs to enforce this when their willpower or habits are weak. Fortunately there isn't a physical component to the addiction so it is safe to go cold turkey. Usually after a few days or weeks it gets easier but if you slip up it is very easy to fall back into old habits.
    - majewsky 6y ago
      > eg, no more than N minutes at X in the morning and Y at night Since this community is all about using IT tools to achieve goals: - There are some browser extensions that can do this, e.g. lock you out of Facebook, Reddit or $newswebsite after X minutes of usage. - HN itself has the "noprocrast" setting in the user profile which I hear works similarly.
  - 6y ago
eljefe900 6y ago
It has always been. That’s why it’s called “News” not “Olds”. Getting access to the most up to date information about the world has always been compelling. Whether it’s where the best hunting or foraging grounds were, who is in a relationship to who, or which person/people are attacking our tribe. It’s all the same now. Aggregators like people who are gossips, newspapers and now social media are all attention based. Even the structure of writing of news stories to give you the main story in the headline, then start with the conclusion and fill in the details has been making this type of information bite sized from the dawn of time. And now of course our “news” is global, often the stories about people are not people actually in our lives (Royals? Celebrities, who cares?), and politics have cranked us vs them to 11. No wonder it’s addictive. Add in complicated feelings that we want to avoid (how bout that pandemic?) and looking at new information also serves as a distraction from the things we can or cannot change in our lives. Be well weary news consumer. Get off your phone and enjoy nature.
- somishere 6y ago
  A distraction for sure. Luckily my battery is on 4% so I'll be forced off very soon.
thisistheend123 6y ago
I think the whole package has been made in a such a way that it's addictive .. It's just another product being sold in the market ..
iworkfromhome 6y ago
HN is so loved by many people in the field of technology. HN has its own "feel" to enjoy. The best time and place to enjoy HN news is like the place where you are writing this. Congratulations for those of you who have enjoyed your presence there. Great! Richard Daris https://www.RichardDaris.com https://www.RichardDaris.com
nodefourtytwo 6y ago
I think it's because you like to learn new things.
- somishere 6y ago
  I'd like to think it's as simple as that. And similarly to explain why I enjoy a drink most evenings.
lukehack 6y ago
Almost all news and social media site structure is derived from research using the Skinner box[1, scroll down to A Man, a Plan, and a Rat in a Box]. Researching operant conditioning, they found that introducing randomness to some sort of dopamine release would cause habitual behavior of the action that caused dopamine release. This reaction to novelty was then successfully transferred to humans. This is most obvious on Reddit IMO, with "gems" interspersed between vapid, uninteresting posts. I'm actually making an alternative to Facebook that shows posts chronologically in the feed instead of using machine learning algorithms to make them addictive. I also plan to not include a share button on posts. I think these two changes would make it far less addictive and better for users. [1] https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/conditioned-social-media-engagement-breaking-users-out-of-the-infinite-scroll/ https://www.skyword.com/contentstandard/conditioned-social-m...
- warranty 6y ago
  Good luck nitro.
ganafagol 6y ago
As somebody who likes nature, please don't make fire on a cliff. It leads to the rock cracking and degrading faster. The next one coming along wants to enjoy the place as much as you do.
- somishere 6y ago
  Thanks for the tip, honestly didn't know that. It's actually a sandstone cliff, my fire is about 15m from the edge (nearer my tent than the drop) and I'm using my own firepit. It's generally pretty hard to light fires (legally) in this part of the world without some serious precautions!
DEADBEEFC0FFEE 6y ago
New. We are triggered by new information. Probably a really useful trait if you wandering around a savanna. Bit of a burden now to be honest.
mouzogu 6y ago
I think it might be the "new" in "news". I think our brain has an impulsivity towards novelty. Perhaps it's hitting the reward centers of our brain that is designed to validate productive behaviour. Although as we know there's a fine line when it comes to consumption of so-called news as to wheter it is actually productive. I guess like any addictive "substance" it can be difficult to regulate and control.
cblconfederate 6y ago
Novelty is rewarding in itself, all kinds of novelty (Why did you ride out to the outback? because you wanted novelty of visual and other sensory stimulus as well as novelty in perception of place). Same way why simply driving somewhere new is rewarding. "News" is constant information novelty , it's not like the "olds". Rewarding things have the potential to be addictive. If they are easily obtainable they tend to become so. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24911320/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24911320/
cJ0th 6y ago
While reading the news you do not have to deal with yourself. Quite a relieve for most people I reckon. On top of that, bad "news" sources are designed in such a way that you do get addicted (e.g. endless scrolling, getting notifications on new article while still reading one, clickbait and so on).
tomduncalf 6y ago
Reposting a comment from another thread as it seems relevant, I was talking about Twitter but the same applies to news sites I think... I definitely found myself wasting more time recently scrolling through Twitter e.g. in the evening or when compiling code. I actually quite like the site but I find there's more and more irrelevant stuff on my feed so I don't really like feel like I get as much value from it, yet the addictive nature of the feed still makes you refresh it. I was aware I was doing this but didn't do anything about it until I was prompted by this article, which I think was posted on here recently: https://craigmod.com/essays/how_i_got_my_attention_back/ https://craigmod.com/essays/how_i_got_my_attention_back/. For me it really hit the nail on the head about wanting to reclaim your attention a bit, but that these companies have thousands of people working on systems to try and claim your attention for themselves, so it's no wonder it's hard. I made a few small changes as a result of this: - I used Screen Time on my iPhone to block all apps except essential ones (clock, calendar, notes, Philips Hue) for the first hour of my day - I logged out of Twitter on my Firefox and instead logged into it in a container tab, which takes a few extra clicks to open - I logged out of Twitter on my iPhone, so I have to log in to access it - I didn't install Twitter on my new iPad I've found these changes have made a big difference - I think particularly blocking apps in the morning. It feels like if you can "control" your attention a bit more in the first part of your day, that continues somewhat throughout the day, then adding in the slight hurdles to access the site throughout the day causes you to stop and think "do I really want to do this?" when your reflex to just open a new tab and type "tw<enter>" or to scroll while you're stood in a queue or whatever kicks in. I still do browse Twitter and other time wasting sites a little bit, which I'm fine with, but I feel like I'm doing it more conciously - sometimes after a long day I'll think "I just fancy sitting on the sofa and reading the news and looking on Twitter" and I'm fine with that, as it's something I've chosen to do. It's only been a few weeks so I don't want to speak too soon, but I'm feeling really happy with this approach so far, without having to go atomic and delete Twitter entirely as I do get some value from it.
gremlinsinc 6y ago
If you're on the autism spectrum.. your brain is hardwired to be 'obsessed' w/ certain topics it seems (just learning I'm on spectrum at 40). you hate to talk, but get you going on a subject you read about yesterday and nobody can shut you up... For those of us lower on the spectrum we're not super focused on one area but multiples, for me that's tech/programming/politics/science and lately viruses for obvious reasons.
paul7986 6y ago
Personally I've tuned out all news minus local news. All other is sensationalized garbage filled with fueling hate (stereotypes), outrage, and fear.
phoe-krk 6y ago
They're designed to be. The more emotional outrage they provoke in you, the more you spend engaging with them by reading more news, writing online comments, or even if the outrage happens once you've already closed the given webpage, giving you a need to read even more of them. That's how they get views, ad revenue, and user-generated comments - out of an army of addicted people.
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
Perhaps we need to view 'news' through the lens of 'is this information' before reading and therefore allowing it to impact how we feel about our lives. News being an event that may or may not impact your life, vs. information that can be assimilated to improve your life. Or perhaps, did you seek out the information because you need to learn something, or, are you reading what is being presented to you unprompted by a service that profits from you viewing it? There is some news that matters, in terms of how you or those that matter to you can be impacted. For example, the state of the economy as pertains to your employment can help you forecast interruptions in work. Or in other economic cases, enable you to forecast where good investments will be. Or someone you admire passing away. In political terms, changes in direction of leadership can forecast changes in lifestyle. Many nations could be given as an example, Iran, Syria, Turkey. What does not matter, ever, as far as I can tell, is the type of 'rare incident' such as a shark attack killing a surfer, or a wildfire in another country that killed some unfortunate people, or locust swarms in Asia when you've never left South America. It matters to people directly affected, of course, but if you're half a world away, every day some bad event is going to transpire somewhere that could literally never affect your life. Does it benefit you to be aware of this?
- koheripbal 6y ago
  I think an important point is that news outlets have learned how to sell news as tabloid entertainment. ...and when you engineer the narrative into a story that people find compelling, then if become emotionally addictive. ...and entirely destructive to political discourse.
shlant 6y ago
not sure if this resonates with anyone else, but from my own experience (especially back when I had really bad anxiety) I think a major draw of news is the perceived feeling of safety from being "in the know". I believed that the more I knew about what was going on in the world, the safer I would be without necessarily taking action based on the information. I think it was as if not reading the news was like being in a dark room where my mind was free to conjure up a multitude of awful things/situation lurking in the dark, but by reading what was gong on and grounding those fears in something "real", it gave me the sense that the world was not so scary or I could at least better react/protect myself by "knowing"/"illuminating" the darkness. Of course all this mostly just fed into my fears and just exacerbated my anxiety-induced hyper vigilance and paranoia, but I really think that there was a part of me that saw benefit in being aware of the state of the world through news (both mainstream and alternative).
somishere 6y ago
So thank you for your many thoughtful responses to the post. My battery is about to die which means I am over and out (until I drive somewhere tomorrow and re-juice the phone). But to be honest, you've all done a pretty good job of answering why HN sits high in the list of nervous tics. I genuinely look forward to returning to read everything posted in the interim. In the meantime here's a picture of the sky from where I'm sat ~ https://ibb.co/cwDD7GG https://ibb.co/cwDD7GG
justaguyhere 6y ago
How does one decide what information to consume? If I shun news altogether, then how will I come to know of some events that might have a direct effect on my life? Even with what we consider useful knowledge, how much of it is really useful? Yes, it is fun learning new stuff, making connections between seemingly disjointed topics etc, but how much of it has direct influence on our daily lives? I've learned a lot from HN, but I often wonder if I should have spent all that time elsewhere, carefully picking up only those knowledge and skills that benefit me in my life and that I can use to help others. This isn't an answer to your question, because I don't know the answer. I've the same question as you. My one guess is that everything that is made today is made with the explicit intention of getting users hooked - from fast food to social media, including news.
jackcosgrove 6y ago
I am an online media junkie but recently I've found so much of the news boring. Not because of what's going on, but because how it is reported is all the same. Hyperbole, listicles (never more than 10 items), predictions about the future that are simply opinions, etc. Maybe there is hope that too much news just exhausts everyone.
throwaway_USD 6y ago
Coincidentally neuroscientist Andrew D. Huberman was on the JRE podcast yesterday and among the many topics/studies he discussed was one where electrodes were hooked up to brains and the subjects were given complete control over the areas they stimulated. Contrary to what one might think (or at least the scientists) that the subjects would stimulate areas of sexual response or pleasure, it turns out they elected to stimulate areas of anger and frustration. Without knowing exactly what "news" you found yourself reading, I think its a fair guess the majority of news now-a-days (or maybe always) triggers this area of the brain and so you are probably just elected to trigger anger and frustration over stimulating your brain with the natural beauty of the world around you (so don't feel bad apparently this is the norm).
Waterluvian 6y ago
A lot of things going on. My amateur take on _just one_ of the factors is that we are evolutionarily inclined to be aware of events, especially negative events. Bad news is so addictive because knowing about the bad things in our tribe’s region helps us survive.
barbs 6y ago
From a fellow Aussie: I'm in Melbourne atm in the midst of the latest C19 outbreak and I wish I was there
- somishere 6y ago
  Sorry to hear! Hard to enjoy a Melbourne winter without the culture (and a pandemic). Tho not sure how much you'd be able to relax up here ... Have been getting some major earbashings about Victorians on the lam.
lmuench 6y ago
> Study finds information acquisition shares the same dopamine producing reward system pathway as food, financial rewards and drugs. https://neurosciencenews.com/information-addiction-brain-14274/ https://neurosciencenews.com/information-addiction-brain-142...
kalium-xyz 6y ago
News is habit forming.
omarhaneef 6y ago
It may be the case that we just crave variety. If I am scrolling hacker news, and someone opened a portal to the Australian outback, I’d probably put down HN (sorry, folks) and crawl through the portal to hang out for a bit. I lived on a beach for years and in a big city for several, and in each place I craved the other.
- germinalphrase 6y ago
  > If I am scrolling hacker news, and someone opened a portal to the Australian outback, I’d probably put down HN (sorry, folks) and crawl through the portal to hang out for a bit. Which will, of course, be a fun VR diversion when the fully immersive video capture is accessible enough.
- mcswell 6y ago
  I lived among a group of Mayan Indians for six months once. It was the most boring experience of my life. The next time I was in a similar situation, I packed several very dense non-fiction books to satisfy my intellectual hunger. (This was long before the Internet, even before the Arpanet.) I should add that it wasn't the Indians' fault, they were very nice neighbors. But there's only so much I can say or hear about corn farming.
beefield 6y ago
I recommend book "Stop reading the news" by Rolf Dobelli. To put it short, daily news are bad for you. Especially and including your understanding of the world. (Yes, I am still addicted, but trying to work myself out.)
- perch56 6y ago
  +1 for Rolf Dobelli’s book. Read it last year and while I can’t say it changed my life, it definitely improved it.
Dumblydorr 6y ago
Your brain gives you dopamine reward hits when you find a new article or topic, then you form a habit of looking for those dopamine hits. This habit is physically manifest in neural circuitry which your brain uses like a function to simplify its decision making, it uses that process to fill time and release dopamine. So, you have to retrain your brain not to even start the process, you must be mindful and interrupt the process as it starts. Also, make the barrier to entry into the process very high, make it annoying and inconvenient to do the bad habit.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
iamcurious 6y ago
You reminded me of this quote “Most neuroses and some psychoses can be traced to the unnecessary and unhealthy habit of daily wallowing in the troubles and sins of five billion strangers.” -- Stranger in Strange Land.
drewcoo 6y ago
Marketing. And it's not just news or why fizzy water and clothing and everything else that's sold to make you feel special. It's why we like pickup trucks now. And why we think everyone should have a gun. And why drugs seem so dangerous. And even why our notions of "left wing" in American seem awfully far to the right if we step back out of our typical context. All the result of marketing.
hoorayimhelping 6y ago
A therapist or coach recommended this book called the Power of Habit. https://www.amazon.com/Power-Habit-What-Life-Business/dp/081298160X https://www.amazon.com/Power-Habit-What-Life-Business/dp/081.... The central theme of that book is that people attribute dumb behaviors to things like chemical dependence, when in fact it's a behavioral habit. The classic example from the book is people trying to quit smoking. You kick the physical dependency in a few days - the headaches and irritability go away, but smokers still relapse months or years afterwards. Why? It's because the smoking formed a habit to their brain, and their brain associated good feelings with smoking. Read the book. But if you don't: Your brain has trained you to feel good when you read the news. You break this habit by replacing the good feeling of reading the news with a good feeling from some other, positive, healthy activity. Example: every time you get a desire to pull out your phone, do 10 pushups instead. You get a little physical exercise, and your brain starts associating positive feelings with positive activities. Also, why the hell do you have notifications turned on if you're worried about the phone or the news being addictive? It's like asking to have cravings amplified. Turn off badges, notifications, etc. Check it on your own time and terms.
fsloth 6y ago
I would guess it's the same mechanism as used in gambling , gaming and social media to addict the user: variable reward. For some reason if you are given a reward with unpredictable interval in some specific context, this will create a dopamin kick in your brain. So I would say you are not addicted to the news as such, you are addicted to the dopamine kick that picking up an occasional interesting news-article from the endless queue creates. Slot machines, games with surprise reward loot-boxes, doom-scrolling social media - they all utilize this simple neurological hack.
lnanek2 6y ago
Reading news is procrastination. It's easier to rationalize than other forms, however. Not as obviously useless as watching TV. It's addictive because you don't have to go do work or something novel, but don't feel like you are wasting time.
coffeefirst 6y ago
The premise is wrong. It’s less about news than your phone. Before, news was timeboxed. You might have a daily paper habit, or listened to the radio in the car on a commute, or a nightly broadcast, and a handful of longer term magazines, but that was it. It may capture your attention for a bit but there wasn’t any more of it to obsess compulsively. 24/7 cable broke this contract, but let’s be honest, that’s really not something normal people stare at all day. What’s really new is the constantly updating infinite feed, be it HN or Facebook. (Refreshing the front page of NYT or the BBC doesn’t have enough churn to creative this effect.) Oh, and we took that and we put it in your pocket. So that’s not great, and it definitely doesn’t need to be in your pocket. I’m still experimenting with this, but the best change has been to unfollow every news site on social media (the algorithm is a terrible editor) and sign up for a few email newsletters instead. They’re finite, and the good ones are curated by real people.
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  What newsletters do you get? I'm definitely interested in this.
  - coffeefirst 6y ago
    These days I'm really liking NPR's daily newsletter, which is a straightforward, no nonsense "here's what we think is important" report. And I'm a huge fan of NextDraft. But at this point any writer or publication you like to read probably has one.
  - leonroy 6y ago
    not the OP, but I find BIG by Matt Stoller and Notes on the Crises by Nathan Tankus a nice break from the mainstream press. Insightful, well considered and non-dramatized writing on important subjects: https://nathantankus.substack.com/ https://nathantankus.substack.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/ https://mattstoller.substack.com/
webscout 6y ago
Mentioned this a while ago but I try to skip all the CNNs and just subscribe to a couple of newsletters for Zeitgeistish stuff. the hustle, briefingday.com, etc.
narrator 6y ago
I stopped reading news for a while as an experiment. It made me start to dwell on my personal life. Money issues, my love life, loneliness, my future in general, etc. This can either be a happy thing or not. I imagine the more bleak one's personal life is, the more we are drawn to news.
Funes- 6y ago
The media tries to induce fear and rage so they get the maximum number of eyeballs to see their ads. Couple that with high access to information and low transformative power on the part of the individual and you're set: almost everyone seems to be expecting some kind of "happening" to turn the tide towards their own ideology, since they cannot participate themselves. The media abides, but only gives them some breadcrumbs here and there to keep them glued to the screens.
cambaceres 6y ago
This article enabled me to see and take care of my news addiction: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...
pvaldes 6y ago
Saltwater crocodile: eating humans and their phones since prehistorical times...
jkingsbery 6y ago
That sounds awesome! If you're going to spend time on the Internet, you could make it a better place by telling us more about what sounds like an awesome trip so we have something to read that's not the stupid news.
- somishere 6y ago
  When I have the time!
cainxinth 6y ago
I think it’s related to a human bias towards novel stimuli. Evolutionarily, it’s unsafe to disregard new and unfamiliar signals. That sound could be nothing, or it could be predator outside the cave.
tsjq 6y ago
Reminds me of this thread from last year. "Information is like snacks, money, and drugs to the brain" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20241456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20241456
gavinray 6y ago
It's a pure dice-rolling addiction. Let me share a personal story: For the last 3.5 years, every night before bed, I would browse https://www.gitlogs.com https://www.gitlogs.com, a site that had it's own algorithm for ranking top-trending Github repos for the day (it is much better than Github Trends, don't ask how). It was my nightly ritual, and my favorite part of the day. Sometimes I would find 3-5 REALLY fucking awesome projects, or one that was so useful it changed my life as a developer, in one night. I never missed a night. For the last month or two it's been flaky (the API has been hosted as a free Glitch project this whole time LOL) and finally, the backend died. So it's gone forever. RIP friend, I have a void in my soul now. But while it was alive, it was a daily dice roll that was incredibly exhilarating. And that's the addiction, and why I sink so much time into HN too.
- the_pwner224 6y ago
  This is the exact same excuse I make for myself whenever I get a thought that I might be spending too much time on HN: all the interesting and actually useful stuff I've found here makes the time spend worth it. Right?
- travmatt 6y ago
  Off-topic, but I wish GitHub had more functionality with starring repos. That and search seem such neglected parts of their platform.
  - rom16384 6y ago
    I often use http://www.yasiv.com/github/ http://www.yasiv.com/github/ a tool to find related repos using information about shared number of stars to calculate similarity index between two projects. Github: https://github.com/anvaka/gazer https://github.com/anvaka/gazer
airkumar 6y ago
Seems like a good time to revisit this blog post by the late-Aaron Schwartz about removing news from your information diet: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
- chansiky 6y ago
  > But everybody seems to agree: it’s a citizen’s responsibility to keep up with the news. Everybody except me. This rings true. I've been ridiculed for not knowing about the latest news a few times before, and its why I started reading it more.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  Removing news is a solution that screams privilege though, isn't it? If I'm a DREAMer, or a woman who works for a private company, or a person recently laid off due to COVID, I kind of need to follow along to help me understand how I'm going to make it the next 30 days.
  - buzzert 6y ago
    You really think those people wouldn’t hear about it any other way?
  - airkumar 6y ago
    Yeah I've definitely thought about this and share the concern. I think there is a distinction between news that addresses immediate issues, like the ones you mentioned, vs unfocused news consumption, which amounts to a distracting form of entertainment that masquerades as productivity or civic responsibility. The former is largely necessary, but probably far less frequent than we think on average. The latter is what we ought to reconsider; it's the addictive version of news that we should probably swap for slower/deeper versions of information. I know Schwartz argues for a hardline "no news" position. I think that any amount of reflection and discipline to minimize mindless news consumption under the guise of "staying informed" and replacing that with deeper thought is a net benefit, and one that people from any walk of life are capable of. I guess the question of how to filter out the noise and only pay attention to salient issues is the real challenge. When I've experimented with this, I've often still heard about issues important to my various identity/interest groups through group chats with friends, in-person conversations, even just passing by newstands and seeing headlines. This doesn't seem like a satisfyingly reliable solution, but like Schwartz mentions, it's kinda surprising how much current info we absorb even when not explicitly reading the news.
silicon2401 6y ago
One of the best things I've done in my life is to start actively avoiding news. That doesn't mean I try to stay ignorant of what happens outside my home's walls. News is not information. Information you can find on your own, news is somebody deciding for you what you should know and how you should feel about it. I've had nothing but an improvement in quality of life since starting this, and think people should try it at least once in their life, just to see how unhealthy news can be
nayuki 6y ago
Raptitude has a good article about why you should read less news: https://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-when-you-quit-the-news/ https://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-whe...
jwally 6y ago
Matt Taibbi has a pretty good take on it I think. (https://www.amazon.com/Hate-Inc-Todays-Despise-Another/dp/1949017257 https://www.amazon.com/Hate-Inc-Todays-Despise-Another/dp/19...) I just built an app to control my own addiction (addictionlocker.com) and have thought a lot about this recently. My two cents: the media has gotten good at giving us what we want, and what we want is conflict. If bad news and fighting weren't what we wanted they wouldn't publish it. By engaging with it, we tell it what we want, and they just deliver more of it. Extrapolated ad absurdum; YouTube and Facebook's algorithms serve you what you're interested in, otherwise you'd get bored and go somewhere else. The rest of the media just got good at doing this too...
originalvichy 6y ago
I think it is an easy, highly rewarding version of learning. Learning new things from a physics book and a news paper is probably not that enormously different on a chemical level. News papers give you dozens of new things to learn every time you refresh the page.
otr 6y ago
I think when it comes to news it just ends up being another skinner box for me. Reload the page/pull the lever whatever you want to call it. You almost always will find another story that's interesting. But, almost always it will just be another fluff-filled piece about some topic.
chansiky 6y ago
I'm in the same boat. News is addicting. I've done a lot to rid myself of various addictions but news has been the last and hardest one to crack. It seems like it would be beneficial to know what's going on, and sometimes it is. Socially you look like a weirdo if you don't know the latest scare. But that's not why I check it. I am addicted, and people a hundred years back recognized this as well. Why I don't spend the time reading Tolstoy or Neitzsche or something more substantial I don't know. What I do know is that I burn more time than is healthy consuming it and it doesn't give back nearly as much as I give in. I have no suggestions, but maybe this will be what I try to expunge for the rest of this quarantine phase. I think at the end of it, the only thing in control of any addiction is one's self, site blockers and timers help, but what I really need are bulletproof arguments against consuming it, and from there I believe the motivation will follow.
smcg 6y ago
I think news gives the illusion that you are doing something important when you really aren't, and that has appeal. Sometimes I feel like I am endlessly scrolling for a "solution" or bit of news that I "like". Then I have to take a step back and do something else, because nothing good really comes of that.
BurningFrog 6y ago
News is mostly gossip. It tells you about unusual and sensational things. Not about how to understand the world. To understand the world, spend that daily time reading books instead.
gukov 6y ago
Here's one theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPYiif7znZw&feature=youtu.be&t=720 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPYiif7znZw&feature=youtu.be... (Scott Adams @ Commonwealth Club of California).
at_a_remove 6y ago
The twenty-four hour news cycle has had time to refine itself to be addicting. They must always produce news to be on continually, and news that keeps eyes on the screen, and therefore advertisers happy.
vz8 6y ago
My solution whenever focusing on goals / deadlines: edit hosts file (as root/admin, when necessary) 127.0.0.1 reddit.com www.reddit.com 127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com 127.0.0.1 twitter.com 127.0.0.1 other social / news domains... The little bit of friction required to undo this is enough to remind me to get back to being productive. Also, Pomodoros for pacing.
Asuchug4 6y ago
You ask that on site that is as minimalistic as possible and still has buildin 'noprocrast' option. Clearly people can't stop checking the news.
twosdai 6y ago
I've gone so far as to forceably reduce the temptation of other websites by reducing my feed to a static set of links which is updated once a day. Live website: www.danielwasserlaufquicklinks.com github if you want to manage your own: https://github.com/twosdai/contentGrabber https://github.com/twosdai/contentGrabber I don't come to hackernews that often so just open an issue on git if you have a question.
mam2 6y ago
cause you are drawn away from the hard reality of yourr shity life
exabrial 6y ago
"News" is about manipulating your emotions to keep you watching, which sells advertising revenue. As long as you are upset about something, the profiteering ensures.
gdubs 6y ago
Evolution. Information == survival. There’s a good scientific overview of how our hunter-gatherer brains evolved to put a huge value on novel bits of information in the book, “The Distracted Mind”.
m3kw9 6y ago
One of the reason is because we like “new” things. Human tend to be attracted towards new vs old. I notice myself often less wanting to click on a news in HN that is not new.
johnvega 6y ago
Attention hijacking, turns into subtle micro-habits, then turns into routines, backed by the most powerful computers in the world and most likely AI. Internet + Smartphones + Apps
oqtvs 6y ago
One of the best things that I did for myself related to this addiction process is to use android focus/well-being to limit my interaction with social networks/news with a time budget. It allowed me to focus my efforts in doing other things.
ksec 6y ago
I remember many years ago I read an article on studies about addiction, and turns out Pornography and Drugs totally lost out to News, being the number one worldwide addiction without being widely known. Unfortunately my Google Fu hasn't turn up anything. I will Edit the post if I find the link. My personal opinion is that 1. All Human has an urge to want to know more, Curiosity. It doesn't necessarily means knowledge, as information without "thinking" is pretty much meaningless. One reason why the world we are in right now are a complete mess, because thanks to the Internet we all thought we "know". 2. All Human has an urge to want something better, Innovation. Why hasn't something been done? Why hasn't this problem be solved? Is this not a problem for enough people to recognise changes? Has Science improved? Medical improved? Technology Improved? Food Safety or Nutrition Improved? etc.
pknerd 6y ago
I prefer Not to follow COVID related news.
longtom 6y ago
It's all about gaining social status, about knowing more than that other bloke and potentially gaining some economic advantage so as to attract an attractive female etc.
tapatio 6y ago
I stopped reading Apple News and Google News. Life is much better now.
david927 6y ago
I was a huge news junkie in college. And at one point, I don't know where maybe at a doctor's office, I saw the cover of Newsweek magazine with a shocking statement of impending doom. I grabbed it and read the article and was worried. Then I saw the cover date was about a year old. That moment was hugely influential to me. I still follow the news but at an arm's length. I learned that in news, as in everything, there are a few overarching stories and a lot of minutiae. A little signal, lots of noise. The signal takes a long time to build, it's not daily news. But when it comes, all the daily news changes to reflect it.
csdreamer7 6y ago
My biggest issue with 'not reading the news/social media', as so many have suggested, is that: 1) It feels irresponsible as a US Citizen. Especially with Trump as president. The corruption committed by the FCC chairman alone, that he nominated, feels like I should keep ahead of as a citizen. I got into politics after Microsoft tried to lobby the California government to ban copyleft software licenses like the GNU GPL. 2) There is good information valuable to me as a person or to my profession. It is easy to ignore CNN-a lot of it is click bait. Phoronix and Slashdot is another story. This post on 'Hacker News' is another good example. Yet it triggers the same dopamine release that gambling does-a random chance of getting something that may benefit you. But you are spending your time, instead of money, and instead of getting a lot of money, you get information you need to spend more time to act on in the future.
afarrell 6y ago
1. Because organizations which don't make their news rewarding to read will not be able to make a profit. 2. Because we humans evolved as storytelling creatures. We live and die by our ability to maintain a connection to our kinship group by telling stories.
MattyRad 6y ago
It's difficult that in this covid pandemic you'll come off as esoteric or uninformed because you don't stay immediately up to date with the hyperbolized and polarizing news. For example, just tonight, I wasn't sure exactly the status of bars: whether they are allowed to be open (legally), which ones might choose to be open (socially), which ones have favorable conditions (physically; outdoor seating, mask regulation, that sort of thing). When I asked my friends about the general status, they were somewhat incredulous. Regardless, I had a nice time socializing, until my girlfriend and I went back to the car, and she immediately started a very uncomfortable diatribe on which of our friends she suspected were Republican based on innocuous comments of recent events. I guess my point is that even if you try to abstain from the toxicity of current events and of the news, your friends and families can drag you back down, and I don't know how to improve the situation.
AdrianB1 6y ago
It may be a feedback loop that makes people read news. When I was a kid or teenager I used to live in some mountains where even newspapers were rare. Being disconnected for months or years had no negative impact. Working in IT, being disconnected for a couple of years can catastrophic for you because changes are often, not of substance but there are legion of minor things that add up and catching up is possible, but difficult. Therefore I read IT news to keep up and ignore regular news, I don't watch TV and just read the titles of online news for something that I really need to know (like a virus lockdown in my city or country). In a way I am concerned about the many "show HN: I did <some minor or irrelevant stuff> that I am proud of <and it's so similar with another billion existing solutions for the same problem>"; it gives the impression important things happen, when they don't. This feeds the loop to continue reading for some stuff for the fear of missing something important or useful.
stakkur 6y ago
News is stimulus. All you're describing is a habit you've formed, and a stimulus you respond to. When we're 'addicted' to anything, it's just us abusing our individual coping mechanisms. The answer, like in all other aspects of life, is to take steps to form the habits you want, and steps to discard the habits you don't want.
m463 6y ago
This is just evolution in action. The quiet progressive evolution of A/B testing culminating in our current symbiotic relationship between our dopamine receptors and the news headline generators. :)
deephdave 6y ago
https://readup.com/comments/the-guardian/-news-is-bad-for-you--and-giving-up-reading-it-will-make-you-happier- https://readup.com/comments/the-guardian/-news-is-bad-for-yo...

Dangeranger 6y ago

I appreciate this. Watching the news cycle feels like being in an abusive relationship. You watch and wait for the next eruption, anticipating if it will be violent or joyful. It leaves you feeling depleted and helpless.

GreeniFi 6y ago
On a non-subjective basis, there are many bad things going on in the world, with implications for both ourselves and our families. A genuine question: is it access to news or content of the news that messes with our sense of wellbeing? Does “the media” upset me, or knowledge, for example that climate models appear to be more conservative than reality, upset me? In not reading the news, are we simply happy in the way ostriches are happy when they place their heads in the sand?
- monoideism 6y ago
  > climate models appear to be more conservative than reality I've read this sentence multiple times and still not sure what it means. Would you please expound?
  - mmierz 6y ago
    “Conservative” here is being used to mean “marked by moderation or caution”, rather than the set of political positions called conservatism. The poster is saying that global climate change is probably even worse than people think. Often, the reporting around climate change focuses on the best case, the average case, or what could be achieved with an immediate strong response. But the actual paths we are on seems to track some of the worse, more pessimistic cases.
    - netsharc 6y ago
      I wouldn't blame the reporting... the scientists are also very conservative, because they're afraid of being labeled doom-sayers by deniers.
      - abnry 6y ago
        If they are worried about being labeled doom-sayers by deniers then they aren't very good scientists.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Or they’re worried about losing their source of income with which they feed and house themselves and their families. Because the leaders of the US have explicitly threatened them.
    - dencodev 6y ago
      It's not clear to me how anyone can make a judgement about whether models are more conservative than reality. We have no ability to independently measure climate change within our tiny data point of existence. Even a decade of observing it being hotter than it was in your younger years is not any sort of indicator of climate change. Unless you're reading the entirety of academic research yourself and able to critically judge the validity of that research (by being a climate scientist yourself) it seems like you're always depending on someone else's biased interpretation. To clarify: not disputing climate change. Only the ability for someone to make judgement calls on whether the reporting is accurate.
  - gbrown 6y ago
    There are a range of projections among climate models, and as we learn more it seems that on average the consensus models have been too optimistic. I.e., things are even worse than we thought.
  - GreeniFi 6y ago
    Of course, and I apologize that it was not more clearly stated. (1) climate models project changes in climate, (2) a body of evidence is emerging that climate volatility is greater in reality than predicted by those models, eg we are on track to hit 1.5 degrees of warming in 5 years time instead of 50, (3) therefore the models were too cautious or conservative in their projection of the rate of change.
    - monoideism 6y ago
      Thank you. After reading a few explanations, I think the phrase was fine. I was just parsing it in a political context, as opposed to the original meaning of the word "conservative". Where can you find up-to-date temperature readings (as up-to-date as possible)? Are there public datasets available?
- frereubu 6y ago
  For me personally, it's the volume. If you concentrate on your local area, particularly if you live somewhere smaller than a city, there are crimes and tragedies, but even if some of them are horrible they're relatively few and far between, and can be processed mentally. If you take the entire world of 7+ billion people you could spend your entire waking hours reading about brutality, tragedy and horror from around the world and not run out. Many of us - particuiarly new addicts - have psychologies that are tuned to stories which provoke emotion, so we're drawn to those them. Until relatively recently, you wouldn't be able to get many of those stories outside of occsaional TV programmes and "World's Grisliest Murders" books. But now there's a firehose of horror that you can tap into and it's both fascinating and debilitating. I've found the only way is to do what Charles Simic's dad did, and not read it. I hope that there's some kind of a resurgence in online local journalism that's not driven by advertising, because that feels like the only thing I should read on a day-to-day basis, unless there's something of national importance going on (which, unfortunately, in these days does actually seem to be every day).
  - yetanta 6y ago
    I live thousands of miles away from New York city. A few months ago I was reading about someone getting into an argument in central park. Why am I being show that? It was to provoke an emotional response out of me. They are using our emotions to manipulate us.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Or maybe the advent of easy to use and accessible recording devices is shining a light on the prejudice and abuse that people with certain characteristics have been suffering from for decades. Those with political power in the US could conveniently turn a blind eye to the problem with plausible deniability with a he said she said excuse, but now they have to face the problem. I think that’s an important development in the progress of my country. You should be having an emotional response to the huge undercurrent of racism and classism pervading society.
      - 6y ago
snarf21 6y ago
The problem is that it isn't really the "news". It is infotainment. I'm not talking about the fact that truth is subjective and every story has a lens. The truth of the matter is that the story (and "updates") are all crafted specifically to be addictive, to be click bait. It isn't about sharing information or exposing the truth. All that matters is ad revenue. I do get it that we need to pay journalists. It has become clear we need a new system. I guess NPR kinda has a solution via patronage. If only we could now get more different viewpoints this way. God knows we have enough multi-billionares to fund it.
- jand 6y ago
  You are clearly right on the topic of intentionally addictive click bait. > that long-sought serenity But i don't think changing your input is related to gaining that long-sought serenity - in a sense of being immune to those inputs if required. I my opinion it boils down to being human and being to some degree a puppet of your brain chemistry, meaning we can search for said serenity but are propably doomed to never find it.
- yetanta 6y ago
  News is not news. It is entertainment. Pick your flavor and let them tell you how to feel. It is designed to be addictive. Either by accident or deliberate is up for debate. I have my opinion on it but it is just that. They use your own feelings to manipulate you into watching/clicking for more. Facts matter little, feelings do in this segment of our world. Mr. Bernays should be proud of the monster he set loose upon us. Even the vaunted NPR does this. I noticed it years ago after a drive across the country and realizing they try to make it look like they were investigating things and not just reading something of one of the 4 or 5 news wires.
  - war1025 6y ago
    > Even the vaunted NPR does this. I recently upped my monthly donation to my local NPR station, and I feel like if anything it's made me more critical of them. Probably most of it is that I lean politically Right, and they lean Left. But it feels like sometimes they just go out of their way to try to check all the boxes of "woke" culture, whatever the hell that is. The example that sticks out in my mind is they did a piece on immigration detention centers a few weeks back (no qualms there). The person they chose to interview was a transgender Guatamalen. It's basically the most on-brand thing the reporter could have done. Talking about immigration? Better throw in some LGBT issues as well. It's too much I guess to expect a news organization to just report on the news. When I get feeling really irritated about it, I calm myself down by rationalizing that I like the music they play in the evenings.
joflicu 6y ago
I agree with your description. The devil on my other shoulder tries to argue with me about being knowledgeable about the world so that I can do something about it. Support my causes by protesting, donating etc Instead I get into snark warfare on twitter :-(

kampsduac 6y ago

> no longer reading the papers and watching television This is what I do, in addition to no social media except for certain personal alerts. I ask my partner to relay any significant news/events to me. I do support my local media group The Colorado Sun with a membership and sometimes read through their articles, which don't have advertisements so they are not incentivised to produce click-bait headlines and sponsored/addictive/entertainment content.

oarsinsync 6y ago
> This is what I do, in addition to no social media except for certain personal alerts. I ask my partner to relay any significant news/events to me. It sounds like you've partly outsourced the problem to your partner then. What does your partner do?
tgb 6y ago
You don't consider HN to be social media?
- Fiveplus 6y ago
  I consider internet boards like HN a pre-cursor to all dark-pattern-laden "social" "media" today. So yes in a sense, we're all communicating and this is social media. Now, we wait while someone comes to dispute my personal interpretation of the words, but yeah my $0.02 have been deposited.
  - tgb 6y ago
    Don't you believe it has largely the same negatives as other social media like Twitter or Facebook? (At least in terms of the present topic that "news is addictive".) Why drop one but not the other?
    - Fiveplus 6y ago
      Fair point, why not drop all and become an internet hermit relying solely on RSS feeds? But then again, aren't these feeds addictive? Don't they leave you asking for more? At what point in the discussion of internet content can we truly(as a userbase) call it non-addictive then? I'm the furthest thing from an expert on the matter so for me, a website that opens once a week at 17:00 EST for a duration of 2 hours might even do the job. Can't say it hasn't crossed my mind. This is a very tricky and subjective issue. What do you think?
      - tgb 6y ago
        I think HN is awfully addictive, though slightly less so than certain other sites due to a slightly bounded amount of content. Though I think it has helped my life in some ways, it's probably a net negative. My real problem is what should I replace it with? Trying to limit HN (and similar) time tends to make me increase my time on even-less-worthwhile activities like other sites. It's not that HN is good, it's just among the least-bad of the activities that tap this certain urge.
  - peruvian 6y ago
    HN may not have teams dedicated to getting you addicted like Twitter or IG does, but it's still addictive. Many people refresh HN multiple times per day and spend hours arguing about the same things over and over (seriously, I've seen the same arguments for 5+ years). I'm sure all of us have caught ourselves closing HN and then opening it again a few mins later. This goes for all forums ever, so it's more of a personal change than anything 'wrong' with HN or others.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pbourke 6y ago
  The big difference I see between HN, Reddit, and traditional message boards on one hand and Facebook/Twitter/Instagram style social media on the other is the relative prominence of personalities vs topics. HN/Reddit/boards are topic focused, whereas the other social media sites are personality focused, with the specific accounts that you follow determining your overall experience of the site and the topics that you are shown. In order to have an experience on those latter sites you must connect yourself into the graph.

tossthere 6y ago

I figured this out a few years ago and completely stopped all news watching/reading entirely. I have nothing but positive things to say about that decision, and surprisingly I seem to be better-informed and feel like I have a worldview that more accurately reflects reality than most of the people who follow news daily. Daily news watchers now seem like such ineffective people to me, and I’m reminded of the know-nothings from my teenage years rambling about conspiracy theories. The entire time they’re talking about whatever is happening in the news, I’m just thinking: “Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?” I have family members that can’t pay their rent on time or remember to feed their kids breakfast, but they’ve got the geopolitical dynamics of the US and Russia all figured out. They solved it. Others talk endlessly about their opinions about all subjects deemed important by the news. They speak with passion as if the opinions and convictions are their own, yet every single stance they take conveniently mirrors whatever was favored in whatever media they consumed. None of them ever express an original thought. Every single one of them just chooses a selection of things they heard and repeats it. I’ve been doing this long enough that I think I can see how this is going to turn out for me long-term. Name anything that happened 5 years ago. If it’s significant, I remember it. If it isn’t, I never heard about it at all, and nobody else remembers it either. I’m by farrrrrrrr the happiest person I know, to the point that I literally feel guilty about it sometimes. I just have so much time for my career that I’ve zipped past everybody, so much time for family. It might be the single best decision I’ve ever made in my life. I’m really thankful that I figured it out this young.

silicon2401 6y ago
I feel the exact same way. If there's something really important, it'll make its way to me. If there's something I want to know, I'll make my way to it. Otherwise it probably wasn't worth my time. Like you, I read about and hear acquaintances talk about anxiety, etc from the news so often, and just feel like I'm talking to someone complaining about sunburn and continuing to go out without sun protection
SamBam 6y ago
> I completely stopped all news watching/reading entirely. ... I seem to be better-informed. How do these square? How is it that you become informed?
- pb7 6y ago
  One way that I could imagine is having long-form discussions about it with friends rather than getting a journalist’s opinion and settling on it as fact.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    But then you just had a discussion about your friends understanding of the issue, which is going to be another step removed from the journalist. And you're either relying on the friend to have done all the work for you, or you're just two people who haven't taken the time to look at the issue discussing it. To me, it seems that was lies strong opinions and without context.
    - pb7 6y ago
      There’s the rub. Your friend is more likely to have a similar point of view as you on a given topic so they can relay the necessary details for you, if the topic is important enough. No matter the topic, there will always be multiple spins on it so getting your friend’s spin is no better or worse than a journalist’s — or worse, the mob’s.
      - rickbad68 6y ago
        I would argue the friends spin is probably more reliable, depending on the friend of course, as at least they would not be motivated by ratings or money and probably are not intentionally trying to cultivate any certain biased viewpoint in you.
- peterkelly 6y ago
  Books
  - SamBam 6y ago
    Well, I'm guessing this whole conversation them hinges on what we mean by "informed." I'm doubting that a person could be well-informed by what's going on recently with the Trump adminstration, or BLM protests, or recent Covid news, from reading books alone. I'm guessing that people who don't read the news might respond that the latest scandal from the government isn't important, and why they stopped reading the news. At which point, "informed" might simply mean "the things I know about, because I think they're important."
dencodev 6y ago
Does being on HN not count? Feel like I see lots of news on HN. It's in the name after all.
- pb7 6y ago
  Definitely cheating and I’m not the GP, but I would argue HN is curated enough to filter out most guilty pleasure outrage news cycles. Still in the same realm though. For example, the Twitter hack has made its rounds here but, say, Kanye having a political meltdown hasn’t necessarily (or at least I haven’t seen it) despite it being a prominent trend on Twitter.
  - drenvuk 6y ago
    I'm going to be blunt here and say that you're wrong. There is no difference. The news may be curated and may be for a specific audience but the odds that it's just as useless to you as mainstream news is still very high. I don't say this to criticize, mind you. I'm here as well.
    - pb7 6y ago
      Perfectly fine — I’m only arguing for the sake of discussion. When I have gone on no-information binges, I included HN in them. Over time, I realized HN upsets (upsets may not be the right word — maybe mentally clouds or distracts?) me a considerable amount less. The links I look at are informative and inspire creativity; the discussions push me towards explaining my thoughts carefully rather than resorting to status games, false sense of superiority, and mob rule. HN is news, and as such, it is addicting and sometimes does upset me depending on the subject matter and how many people take on views that oppose mine, but I still think it’s an order of magnitude less so than things like Twitter.
    - tlarkworthy 6y ago
      Some of is technical content and useful for staying relevant in a fast paced industry. Some of it is garbage.
    - sjg007 6y ago
rootsudo 6y ago
This is a bit unrelated to HN, but in the terms of "memeculture." What you've discovered and described is called "NPC" by meme culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)
- RealityVoid 6y ago
  I find meme culture just as, if not worse than news in some ways. It convinces people that something that has enough truthiness and is funny enough is true.
- war1025 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on this? I am unsure if you are saying not watching the news makes him an NPC, or if the people who just parrot the news are the NPCs. I am leaning toward the latter, but based on your wording and the wording of the parent post, that's not what I initially expected.
  - rootsudo 6y ago
    The later, the parroting of facts and the inability to go into deep detail besides being told information tidbits and repeating them is what makes the NPC so chilling in todays world. Especially when a few people get that high level of norieity and trust.
- mumbisChungo 6y ago
  It's kind of weird that this is attributed to 'memeculture', given that I can recall people referring to others (in a denigrating fashion) as NPCs back in the 90s, before 'meme' was part of our lexicon.
  - Kye 6y ago
    The article is Start-Class. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Internet/Assessment#Quality_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Internet... >> "A very basic description of the topic. Can be well-written, but may also have significant content issues." That means someone wrote it up on a whim and no one's come to address prior art in a way that suits the standards of Wikipedia.
13415 6y ago
The post reminds me of this: https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-televisi-1819565469 https://www.theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-d... I don't agree in your main argument, which seems to be based on the idea that whatever makes you feel better is good. I, for one, prefer to read the news and watch the occasional clip online. It makes you better informed, which is essential for many things, including business and informed voting. Trying to be happy all the time is overrated.
- bergstromm466 6y ago
  > Trying to be happy all the time is overrated. Completely agree. “[B]y restoring grief to soul work, we are freed from our one-dimensional obsession with emotional progress. This “psychological moralism” places enormous pressure on us to always be improving, feeling good, and rising above our problems.2 Happiness has become the new mecca, and anything short of that often leaves us feeling that we have done something wrong or failed to live up to the acknowledged standard. This forces sorrow, pain, fear, weakness, and vulnerability into the underworld, where they fester and mutate into contorted expressions of themselves, often coated in a mantle of shame. People in my practice routinely apologize for their tears or for feeling sad. I am an advocate for a soul psychology that senses vitality in every emotion, whatever life offers to us in the moment. We will have times of being happy, which is cause for celebration. We will, however, also have times of sorrow and loneliness. Moods will come upon us and events will occur that evoke anger and outrage in us. In fact, archetypal psychologist James Hillman once noted that being outraged is a sure sign that our soul is awake. Each of these emotions and experiences has vitality in it, and that is our work: to be alive and to be a good host to whoever arrives at the door of our house. Happiness, then, becomes a reflection of our ability to hold complexity and contradiction, to stay fluid and accept whatever arises, even sorrow.” —Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow I loved that the Onion article, thanks for sharing it!
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
> “Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?” Thank you for that comment... I'm now going to turn on my news blackhole hosts file, which I disabled long ago. I remember being far more content back then so I'm not sure why I reverted back.
- user00012-ab 6y ago
  I use the leechblock plugin and have it redirect any site like twitter/reddit/hn to my todo list instead. I also have it setup so I can only view hackernews on Fridays so I'm not constantly loading it. I also subscribe to https://hackernewsletter.com/ https://hackernewsletter.com/ which is a list of all the interesting articles from hacker news from that week. (it comes out on Friday, thus I unblock on the site on my computer on Fridays)
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    > to my todo list instead Ha! That's awesome. That's an in-your-face "hey you, focus!"
darkerside 6y ago
I'm a little confused. I agree with some of your sentiment, but are developments w/r/t COVID not important?
- ericsoderstrom 6y ago
  > Name anything that happened 5 years ago. If it’s significant, I remember it. If it isn’t, I never heard about it at all, and nobody else remembers it either. OP has heard of COVID. It would be impossible not to. I follow a similar approach (avoiding news as much as possible) and I still am exposed to much more information about COVID than is useful.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    So relying on informal networks to pass on the key information? That's actually a really sensible strategy. I retract my argument.
    - sjg007 6y ago
      You outsource it. Like I’m not on FB but my wife is.
shireboy 6y ago
Can I ask _how_ you did this? I've done some things like block sites on various devices, etc. But I do find myself still - when I'm waiting for a build to complete or whatever - sliding over to whateveroutragesite.com almost compulsively.
- TheMblabla 6y ago
  Try finding something else interesting to do instead, I found it made breaking the habit much easier
jariel 6y ago
“Who decided that this was important to you, and why did you let them decide that?” I love this, thanks. However, it is possible to have a view contrarian to whatever is being published. For the life of me, I cannot seem to find any news source that I feel comfortable with or even trust. Also - it's actually important that some people pay attention. The 'real news' is in the details, and it takes attention. Right now, there's a minor scandal in the Canadian government, but really it cuts very deep, to the point where the PM and the Minister of Finance are compromised, the later possibly in point blank illegal graft. These are the kinds of things that rot democratic institutions, and the manner in which they are conceived is usually quite subtle. The government sponsored news in Canada, is somewhat compromised by the fact that their source of funding comes from the source - and very unfortunately, some of the most detailed reporting is coming from the otherwise, low-grade daily tabloids. The only way to parse through the scandal is to read it all - and the only way for the electorate to solve the problem is to put enough political pressure, or, to vote them out. This is an unfortunate paradox, it does take quite a lot of attention on the part of the plebes to make sure things work well. It's really surprising how vague sometimes corruption can be: if the oversight board doesn't raise a huge fuss, and neither do the mainstream press - then it's simply 'not corruption'. It's weirdly a matter of interpretation and spin, sadly. 'Friends doing business with friends' is normal, the line that gets crossed is sometimes very grey. That said, it's 95% rubbish.
treebornfrog 6y ago
I wholeheartedly 100% agree with this. As soon as I entered the workforce @ 21 I cut out 2 things from my diet, sugar and news. This habit has compounded so much, not saying its been 100% perfect because I still read reddit, twitter (very selective following and blocking all outlets that end up on my TL) and HN (this place is a total bubble of smart, high IQ people, I enjoy the comments here, I don't get to interact with such smart people on a day to day). Any interesting developments will filter through my social circle, someone will bring it up. I stopped watching TV altogether, I stream the occasional show though.
mcswell 6y ago
Don't worry, we've always been at war with Eurasia, and nothing's changed. Oh--wait--MiniTruth is saying something about Eastasia... (All seriousness aside, you do have a point.)
_theory_ 6y ago
This is somehow correlated with the idea of knowing 'about' a thing vs knowing a thing. News, in a large majority of cases, is something that you learn about. Its not something you experience directly. In most cases, the most useful knowledge pertains to those things that you do or likely would soon experience directly, so news is therefore a mostly useless pastime. And if there's an upcoming election, you can always just read the candidate's stated policies and record of voting.

smoe 6y ago

I stopped reading news, including tech news, in 2012, while working at a large news site. Seeing how the sausage is made, helped a lot realizing of just how little value reading news to a normal person is. (Note that that this is very different from saying journalism has no value or nobody should be reporting on current events) I resolved, my news addiction, by redirecting the time I would have scanned ~12 different news sites multiple times a day, into reading more substantial content. Be that more long form (investigative) journalism, books written on a topic, studies, etc. Content, that let you actually understand the why of things, not just the what that is happening. How to filter on which things to focus on, or tame the fear of missing out came naturally with the realization, that if something is important enough for me to care about (be that politcal or a new javascript framework), it will reach me eventually one way or another. Also for big sudden events, like for example a terrorist attack, no matter how reputable and connected the news paper, in the beginning nobody has any solid information, which doesn't stop anyone from reporting and wildly speculating. It might be tough to just ignore that, especially since people will think you don't care, but beyond some basic facts, you won't be able to get any useful information for at least a couple of weeks.

intended 6y ago
What part of seeing the sausage Being made turned You off from eating it?
- smoe 6y ago
  Maybe sausage is the wrong analogy, since I love them and I find nothing wrong with the ingredients. I'd say it is closer to a fast food meal. Yes they can be very tasty and satiating for a moment but the nutritional value is extremely low. If consumed too much it is pretty bad for you Working in a office complex where about a dozen different news papers and sites were made, just made me realize that the "news" section is pretty much purely about relatively cheap traffic generation, nothing else. They license a bunch of wire agencies like Reuters, AP, etc. pick out and often blow up the stories that the target audience will likely click on. The site that is regularly the fastest in publishing something, will gain visitors. So its not that there is per se something nefarious happening within any particular story, but the news feed is there to make you consume more and boost the numbers advertisement pricing is based on, not to inform you. Related Article from The Guardian "News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier" https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-ro...
  - smileypete 6y ago
    >Related Article from The Guardian "News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier" The author, Rolf Dobelli may be worth checking out, though I don't 100% agree with the article. A good approach may be to do some independent analysis with the widest variety of sources, then use that going forward. Eg anti Russian and China bias is coming more and more to the fore these days (not saying their leaders are good, far from it) but once its characteristics are recognised it's easier to ignore and not be influenced by it.

frereubu 6y ago

Although I think I get the underlying feeling you're trying to define, I'm not sure about the analogy of the experiment on mice. That feels more like it's about being in the presence of an unreliable food source, where it makes sense to stock up while food is available to get you through the lean times. There's obviously an overcompensation there, but evolutionarily-derived mechanisms aren't particularly precise. The food source in this experiment is "reliably unreliable", which probably doesn't mimic real-life food sources very well.

MaximumYComb 6y ago
It's also the method they use to train military working dogs. Find dogs with a huge ball chasing instinct but only reward occasionally and randomly. The dog will work so damn hard to get that ball toss. Poker machines are built the same, as are the recently banned loot boxes in video games.
magusdei 6y ago
You are of course free to model the underlying causality as you see fit, but the fact remains that this is one of the most robust and well-understood findings in all of psychology (see e.g. the Rescorla-Wagner model). The effect does not depend on the type of reward and exists in practically all intelligent animals, including humans. As noted, video game compulsion loops and gambling machines are carefully tuned to take maximal advantage of this "variable reward ratio". I like to model this in terms of multi-armed bandits. Given a set of levers giving out unknown rewards, what is the optimal policy to maximize your rewards over time? A bad way would be to try all the levers until one gives you a reward, and then just keep pulling that one lever in hopes of more. This doesn't work because the other levers might have given you even better rewards. Instead, you should try to learn to predict how much reward each lever is going to give you. A fast way to do this is to focus on pulling levers that "surprise" you, i.e. where your predictions of reward deviate from the actual reward you got. This works as long as the reward from the environment is at least in principle predictable, as it mostly is in nature. But with truly random rewards, you tend to end up with addictive behaviour. In nature this isn't a big problem, because truly random rewards are generally one-off events. So we're basically exploiting a bug in our own reward mechanisms, and evolution hasn't had time to adapt. Incidentally, all of this can be viewed as a mathematically and psychologically precise way of saying that the reason you get addicted to news is because you are curious.
- frereubu 6y ago
  I'm not arguing with the research, I'm just saying it doesn't feel like a satisfactory match to the psychological phenomenon that OP describes. (I spent six years studying psychology, including a masters in neuroscience, so it's not coming from a place of ignorance).