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> Don't think about Trump 15 years ago, I watched/read the news a lot. I stopped about 10 years ago. It was one of the best things I ever did. No matter who

> Don't think about Trump 15 years ago, I watched/read the news a lot. I stopped about 10 years ago. It was one of the best things I ever did. No matter who is in office, the news coming out of Washington D.C. will always be depressing. Someone or some group you despise will always be there bashing people you like. The people you like will never get the attention you think they deserve, their good ideas will be squandered, etc. Just turn it off. </unsolicited-advice> :-)

StavrosK 6y ago
I concur. Plus you hear about anything that affects you eventually anyway.
THEDONKEYOFDOOM 6y ago
Funny, I found much more joy in life when I started reading the news more. Not a compulsive amount, but staying up to date. 1hr tops a day Others bashing people you like is always inevitable But, I like to read it from the perspective of not where CURRENT public positions lie, but where they are going. Not a point on the graph, but the vector of how it is changing I found it has made me empathize much more with those who I normally would not. Understanding current events discussing their position, but going deeper to find that "root cause" of why they hold that Regardless of where you lie politically, everyone wants the same things in life. It transcends politics and different world cultures. We disagree HOW we get there, but normally we all agree on what are baseline values. We want to live in a world that is fair, we want the highest quality of life for all capable to everyone's abilities (ignoring initial allocation of resources to get there), safety, a sense of community and security. I may be missing some points, but I bonded getting to that root cause with many
- dmd 6y ago
  That may be true in much of the world, but here in the USA we just had an election where 70 million people voted for the guy who for the last four years has been quite outspoken and clear about NOT wanting quality of life “for all”.
  - THEDONKEYOFDOOM 6y ago
    Hence why I put "ignoring the initial allocation of resources" in brackets to that point It seems people on that side want "america first". Throw all political shenanigans used to try to implement that and party leaders outside of the window; that idea is not absurd I'm sure if we found a macguffin that instantly catapulted us into a true post-scaricty economy, lots of that rhetoric would subside. Over a few generations
    - dmd 6y ago
      I’m really not sure that’s true. Given a choice between “I get $10, they get nothing” and “I get $20, they get $20”, “conservatives” often choose the former.
- jlokier 6y ago
  > We want to live in a world that is fair, we want the highest quality of life for all capable to everyone's abilities (ignoring initial allocation of resources to get there), safety, a sense of community and security. I may be missing some points, but I bonded getting to that root cause with many I like the idea, and I used to believe in it (or maybe "intentionally believe" in it). But over the last few years I have seen so many people write casually about how other people should suffer (from poverty) or even die (from lack of medicine, or starvation) because they don't have citizenship or whatever. As if non-citizens "deserve" what happens to them. They mostly don't say it explicitly, but it is undeniably an obvious consequence of the policies they advocate. And the schadenfreude. When stories come up about those things actually happening to people, I see comments in favour, cheering on the suffering. Sometimes a lot of comments. As a result, I'm pretty sure a lot of people really don't wish for a world that is fair to everyone else.
- tasogare 6y ago
  > Regardless of where you lie politically, everyone wants the same things in life. This is clearly false, and a very dangerous assumption to make. A lot of current turmoil in Europe stems precisely from this assumption. And even if it were true, the modalities would differ enough from different groups for conflicts to emerge.
SarikayaKomzin 6y ago
I worked in the news industry for about 5 years, and, once I left the 24/7 cycle, I sort of instinctively understood the half-life of information and began to stop paying attention to the news. I was later pleasantly surprised to see this concept formalized in a few places, notably from Morgan Housel[1], Nassim Taleb[2] and Samuel Arbesman[3]. These men’s writing really crystallized what I had learned from experience but didn’t have a framework to explain. It is of course a privilege to ignore the news completely. I don’t advocate totally unplugging. But once you better understand the material value of information, you can make better decisions about what to consume. [1]http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/expiring-vs-lt-knowledge/ http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/expiring-vs-lt-knowled... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge
- jamestimmins 6y ago
  Aaron Swartz's blog post 'I hate the news' is a classic of this genre http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
- fakedang 6y ago
  I'm in an autocratic nation right now, and I just realized how much relaxed it is reading the news (not that I support autocracy in any way). It honestly stymies me how much bandwidth political discussions have taken over the years on the news spectrum in most democratic nations, regardless of development status. On the contrary, news in open autocracies seem to be more of the local type, focused on hyper local issues. And then there are the poser democracies such as Russia, Egypt or China, where news is highly nationalized dogshit, focused on how their enemies are bad, we are good and our government is the greatest.
dboreham 6y ago
> It was one of the best things I ever did. Could be problematic if large numbers of people did this. Oh wait...

StavrosK 6y ago

I concur. Plus you hear about anything that affects you eventually anyway.

THEDONKEYOFDOOM 6y ago

Funny, I found much more joy in life when I started reading the news more. Not a compulsive amount, but staying up to date. 1hr tops a day Others bashing people you like is always inevitable But, I like to read it from the perspective of not where CURRENT public positions lie, but where they are going. Not a point on the graph, but the vector of how it is changing I found it has made me empathize much more with those who I normally would not. Understanding current events discussing their position, but going deeper to find that "root cause" of why they hold that Regardless of where you lie politically, everyone wants the same things in life. It transcends politics and different world cultures. We disagree HOW we get there, but normally we all agree on what are baseline values. We want to live in a world that is fair, we want the highest quality of life for all capable to everyone's abilities (ignoring initial allocation of resources to get there), safety, a sense of community and security. I may be missing some points, but I bonded getting to that root cause with many

dmd 6y ago
That may be true in much of the world, but here in the USA we just had an election where 70 million people voted for the guy who for the last four years has been quite outspoken and clear about NOT wanting quality of life “for all”.
- THEDONKEYOFDOOM 6y ago
  Hence why I put "ignoring the initial allocation of resources" in brackets to that point It seems people on that side want "america first". Throw all political shenanigans used to try to implement that and party leaders outside of the window; that idea is not absurd I'm sure if we found a macguffin that instantly catapulted us into a true post-scaricty economy, lots of that rhetoric would subside. Over a few generations
  - dmd 6y ago
    I’m really not sure that’s true. Given a choice between “I get $10, they get nothing” and “I get $20, they get $20”, “conservatives” often choose the former.
jlokier 6y ago
> We want to live in a world that is fair, we want the highest quality of life for all capable to everyone's abilities (ignoring initial allocation of resources to get there), safety, a sense of community and security. I may be missing some points, but I bonded getting to that root cause with many I like the idea, and I used to believe in it (or maybe "intentionally believe" in it). But over the last few years I have seen so many people write casually about how other people should suffer (from poverty) or even die (from lack of medicine, or starvation) because they don't have citizenship or whatever. As if non-citizens "deserve" what happens to them. They mostly don't say it explicitly, but it is undeniably an obvious consequence of the policies they advocate. And the schadenfreude. When stories come up about those things actually happening to people, I see comments in favour, cheering on the suffering. Sometimes a lot of comments. As a result, I'm pretty sure a lot of people really don't wish for a world that is fair to everyone else.
tasogare 6y ago
> Regardless of where you lie politically, everyone wants the same things in life. This is clearly false, and a very dangerous assumption to make. A lot of current turmoil in Europe stems precisely from this assumption. And even if it were true, the modalities would differ enough from different groups for conflicts to emerge.

SarikayaKomzin 6y ago

I worked in the news industry for about 5 years, and, once I left the 24/7 cycle, I sort of instinctively understood the half-life of information and began to stop paying attention to the news. I was later pleasantly surprised to see this concept formalized in a few places, notably from Morgan Housel[1], Nassim Taleb[2] and Samuel Arbesman[3]. These men’s writing really crystallized what I had learned from experience but didn’t have a framework to explain. It is of course a privilege to ignore the news completely. I don’t advocate totally unplugging. But once you better understand the material value of information, you can make better decisions about what to consume. [1]http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/expiring-vs-lt-knowledge/ http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/expiring-vs-lt-knowled... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge

jamestimmins 6y ago
Aaron Swartz's blog post 'I hate the news' is a classic of this genre http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
fakedang 6y ago
I'm in an autocratic nation right now, and I just realized how much relaxed it is reading the news (not that I support autocracy in any way). It honestly stymies me how much bandwidth political discussions have taken over the years on the news spectrum in most democratic nations, regardless of development status. On the contrary, news in open autocracies seem to be more of the local type, focused on hyper local issues. And then there are the poser democracies such as Russia, Egypt or China, where news is highly nationalized dogshit, focused on how their enemies are bad, we are good and our government is the greatest.

dboreham 6y ago

> It was one of the best things I ever did. Could be problematic if large numbers of people did this. Oh wait...