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Avoid News, Part 2: What the Stock Market Taught Me about News
- jaimex2 5y agoGreat read, I'd love to see a 2020 version of that World in Data infographic.
- ASpaceCowboi 5y agosame
- paulpauper 5y agolol no one cares about heart diease even though it kills a lot of people
- melling 5y agoI think it has more to do with the average age people tend to get the disease. Heart disease won’t affect most people until their 60’s My Google results: “ Average age of first heart attack is 65.0 years for men and 71.8 years for women. About 80% of people who die of CHD are age 65 or older” “ Almost half – 46% in 2017 – of all people who die from cancer are 70 or older. Another 41 percent are between 50 and 69 years old – so that 87% of all cancer victims are older than 50 years."
- Clewza313 5y agoFWIW, 93% of people who died from COVID in the US were age 55 or older. https://www.heritage.org/data-visualizations/public-health/covid-19-deaths-by-age/ https://www.heritage.org/data-visualizations/public-health/c...
- dimitrios1 5y agoIt's pretty apparent at this point that COVID was heavily politicized, which would explain its dominating prevalence in media and culture. An American has a heart attack every 40 seconds, and it's been this way for almost two decades.
- javagram 5y agoFeels like your own comment explained why “heavily politicized” had nothing to do with it. (There’s a reason almost every country in the world took action against covid-19, despite vastly differing politics and influences) People have about the same number of heart attacks every year. In the USA, Covid-19 added about a half million deaths additional to what normally would be expected. People get used to what normally happens but when a new additional source of death comes up, they’ll be more concerned. Especially because covid is contagious and heart attacks aren’t.
- jb775 5y ago> Covid-19 added about a half million deaths additional to what normally would be expected. Not true. Death rates aren't a linear scale. The total number of deaths last year was already set up to be significantly higher than in previous years (not accounting for covid). The actual death rates were lower than expected the past 4-5 years, which tells us there were many additional people on the brink of death. Also, there's a significantly higher number of baby boomers reaching the likelihood-of-death-from-strong-illness age over the past year. These are the types of people who more easily die from the normal flu, so the common sense explanation is that they wouldn't stand a chance with a stronger flu-like illness. That also explains why normal flu deaths were basically non-existent last year. (No, it's not because the normal flu didn't happen last year, or because of masks, it's obviously because covid wiped those susceptible people out) My guess is we'd be in about the same situation had we done nothing at all (no masks, no vaccines, etc). It's all political theater, cash-grabbing corporations, and there's lots of suckers in the world who believe everything they're told.
- culturestate 5y ago
- gorjusborg 5y agoLethality is not the only metric of interest for any disease, including COVID. There have been reported long term health effects, which matter to people who contract the disease. Further, if the best you can find for source data is a conservative interest group, you should ask yourself if you are looking for truth, or pushing an agenda.
- paulpauper 5y agoI think it has to do with the high short-term lethality of cancer combined with the fact that many benign conditions can mimic cancer symptoms.
- _trampeltier 5y agoIn the end, we all die because of something, some reason. A friends brother made a suicide just this night, after he had a stroke 2 months ago. He was just about 50 years old.
- jxramos 5y agono one makes it out of here alive!
- wolverine876 5y ago> I think it has more to do with the average age people tend to get the disease. Heart disease won’t affect most people until their 60’s There's nothing to explain. Human beings naturally care about other human beings. Why would someone work to create a fiction that it's otherwise?
- didibus 5y agoTon of people care about heart disease, and care about it a lot. From a "stock" perspective, all of the health and nutrition and fitness related industries are based on Heart Disease and people caring about it. When people say exercise and healthy eating makes you "healthier", it almost always refers to risk of heart disease and sometimes a little bit of cancer. When some state passed laws to tax sugary drink, that's also related to heart disease. When people say there is an "obesity epidemic", that's talking about heart disease. So ya, quite a lot of people care about it.
- riffraff 5y agoI am not sure the nutrition and fitness industries are based on heart disease. If anything, they're based on sex drive. Sure, eating healthy and going to the gym might save your life but the money makers are people who buy expensive supplements and specialist equipment, not those that eat more salad and less beef and walk ten miles every day.
- didibus 5y agoI guess I'd be a data-point against your claim haha. Purchasing beyond meat over red meat, stevia based sodas, signing up to Orange Theory and Spin classes, getting a Peloton, signing up to a gym membership, buying a Keto diet book or magazine, buying an Apple Watch to track my steps and heart rate and remind me to stand up, buying a weight lifting app and program, buying protein powder and easy low calorie snacks, etc. The casual "exerciser" is a large market and I'd say it boomed in recent years driven mostly by a desire from people to be healthier and live longer, and not so much because they wanted the beach bod. The latter is still part of the equation too I'm sure, but so is the health crave.
- eru 5y agoThe Spanish Flu killed lots more people than Covid, but it did not cause a recession. The relation between economic impact and how serious some condition is ain't trivial.
- paulpauper 5y ago> Doing so helped me to make lots of money in the second half of 2020 betting on pandemic-sensitive stocks (not Hertz), since most investors were too pessimistic about vaccines for much of that period Sounds like a Monday-morning quarterback to me. I am guessing he lost money as the maret crashed due to covid unless he was in cash. if he truly had a sure-fire system of filtering out bad narratives, he would have gotten out before the crash in jan-feb as the virus was getting media attention, and then bought near the bottom. He would have known beforehand that Covid was different from SARS or Bird Flu and sold, anticipating a crash.
- eru 5y agoWhy just go out? If you have a sure-fire system, you short!
- asimjalis 5y agoReading this story makes me draw the opposite conclusions to the author. Instead of ignoring the news let’s pay attention to it, and then do the opposite of what the storytellers are recommending.
- fighterpilot 5y agoThat's not a profitable strategy. The opposite of noise is noise.
- zitterbewegung 5y agoAlso, when you trade you expect the value of a security to go up in the future. When it is in the news you have an observation of an event of t-1 due to the fact that people have already written about it and others have taken actions already.
- dheera 5y agoLegalize insider trading and make large trades go through very slowly while small trades go through in milliseconds. This would allow common people with a few thousand dollars to act on news and make meaningful amounts of money, while hedgehog funds have to wait for their transaction to painfully slowly go through. Let real people make money for once.
- wolverine876 5y agoIf you don't trust news sources, why would you trust this person? At least news sources have editorial processes, reputations, trained, experienced, professional journalists. They aren't perfect, but they're much better than random bloggers.
- YeezyMode 5y agoWhen reputable and trusted journalists are leaving their industry and sounding the alarm while becoming bloggers on Substack, it is not so easy to maintain faith in the process.
- wolverine876 5y ago> When reputable and trusted journalists are leaving their industry and sounding the alarm while becoming bloggers on Substack, it is not so easy to maintain faith in the process. They aren't saying news is unreliable, they are saying they can make more money on Substack.
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoJournalists in the mainstream might have journalism degrees but they don't follow journalistic standards. How many times in the last few years have their "independently confirmed" anonymous sources been proven false?
- wolverine876 5y ago> How many times in the last few years have their "independently confirmed" anonymous sources been proven false? I don't know - not a lot, IMHO, at least not in the publications I read. I'd say 99% are accurate. But why is this blogger likely to be any better?
- fastball 5y agoI don't trust this person. But there is nothing in this post that I need to take on faith, as you kinda need to do with the news. And even then, yeah I kinda trust random bloggers more at this point. Why? Because 90% of the "news" is just blogspam anyway, where one news org will write something "original" (frequently just an editorialized summary of a primary source you as the reader could consume directly) and tweet about it, at which point all the other journos will see it on twitter and write their own "coverage" of the story, which is usually just creatively re-wording the original story without doing much digging themselves as if they're still in high school copying each other's assignments with just enough changes so they don't get flagged by Turnitin.
- crackercrews 5y ago> Doing so helped me to make lots of money in the second half of 2020 betting on pandemic-sensitive stocks (not Hertz), since most investors were too pessimistic about vaccines for much of that period. You can make money by betting against politically-motivated "common wisdom". Trump said the vaccines would be ready before 2021, and everyone else said it was impossible. Some said it could take two years. That became the common wisdom. But in this case they were wrong, and the stock market roared back when the results were released right after the election. Many people realized Trump had a clear motive to shade the truth on vaccine readiness, but they didn't realize that anyone who opposed to Trump had a motive to shade it in the opposite direction.
- arduinomancer 5y agoAnyone else burnt out from the outrage cycle in recent times? I don’t know if it’s selfish but I just don’t have the energy anymore to care about what bad thing person X or company Y did this week. My current philosophy is to treat news/Reddit/social media like email in the old days. That is: log on to a desktop computer once a week and read the highlights. It is not accessible except through the desktop computer. The funny thing is this approach is completely opposite the “stories” trend in social media. It makes you really aware of the FOMO-by-design pattern these days.
- eru 5y agoYou can also subscribe to Matt Levine's Money Stuff. It's not connected to any outrage cycle, and has consistently interesting and thoughtful angles.
- vishnugupta 5y agoSeconded. I subscribed to Bloomberg just (mostly) to read his Money Stuff column. Quite informative.
- eru 5y agoYou can directly subscribe to get Money Stuff for free via email. (Getting it in my inbox also lessens temptation to keep browsing eg Bloomberg or the wider net afterwards.)
- vishnugupta 5y agoThank you! Bloomberg browsing is quite a thing I agree. Now that I think about it, I haven't found Bloomberg to be all that good except for Matt's news letter.
- riffraff 5y agoI love Money Stuff, but even other Bloomberg newsletters are pretty tame from the outrage point of view. I suppose it's just the editorial style driven by a different marketing strategy than daily newspapers.
- pcmaffey 5y agoI take umbrage at the use of the word storytelling to describe news media. Stories have narrative arcs of growth and resolution. Most of what the author is talking about is a repetitive information game with society, a form of social entertainment that hooks people into a feeling of participation. The “narratives” of the day are better described (as they’re coming to be) as memes.
- bloaf 5y agoThe data doesn't seem right, wasn't the opioid epidemic pretty well covered in the media, even in 2016? Or did that not meet some criteria?
- silvester23 5y agoProbably does not fit the narrative of the article.
- JohnWhigham 5y agoIt's been covered, but unsurprisingly I've never seen a news segment go after the Sackler family. Probably because the 24/7 news channels are flush with medication ads.
- kart23 5y agoIgnoring news outright seems like a terrible idea for the stock market. Focus more on objective news, especially from areas that impact stocks. In Jan. 2020, once news came out about Chinese factories shutting down and whole cities being locked down, it was pretty easy to see the effect that would have on the market. Now, I definitely didn't foresee amazon and tech's meteoric rise, but it wasn't hard to predict what would happen in other areas.
- throwaaskjdfh 5y agoIt was not easy to see that the market would move incredibly higher over the course of the pandemic. Not in January 2020, nor any time since then. People can't even explain it after it has happened.
- jsemrau 5y agoI fondly remember people on LinkedIn discussing it this will be v-shaped, l-shaped, or w-shaped. I think the consensus was on the "L".
- NortySpock 5y agoK-shaped recovery; some keep falling down and some recover
- kart23 5y agoYeah, I think that was harder to predict. the initial drop wasn't though.
- jsemrau 5y ago>Ignoring news outright seems like a terrible idea for the stock market. Fully agreed. I think having a more focused channel to consume news is much more effective.
- narrator 5y agoThe best news for the stock market is from outlets that are not focused on you investing in anything. For example, when I kept reading on /r/hardware that Intel wasn't getting anywhere with their process improvements, I invested in AMD before they had their big run up. I knew this was actionable analysis because when I checked the financial press, nobody was talking about this yet and AMD's stock was going sideways, so the analysts hadn't caught on yet. That's where the value in investing is. Once the mainstream financial press has the same idea you do, the big gains from that news are likely over.
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- seaorg 5y agoI can’t help but see some kind of special interest or agenda whenever I hear a news story now. You have to ask why they chose to report this, why they slant things one way or another with their choice of wording and emphasis. What is the aspect of this story that is too politically incorrect or unfashionable to be included? I have never researched a topic deeply and found that the media had been covering that topic accurately, ever. The harsh truth is that generally speaking the news is almost completely useless. You might as well just never watch it. I think the very final nail in the coffin was the leaked recordings of the CNN technical director basically admitting what everyone pretty much already knew. That they spread misinformation deliberately, only give interviews to subject experts who they know will say what CNN prefers them to say and ultimately design everything they put on the screen to get hooks inside your limbic system and keep your eyes glued. The main tool they use to do this is the emotion of fear, and it was for this reason and no other that they created a COVID death counter. And every single one of those points is explicitly, literally and plainly stated on video by a very senior employee of CNN for all to see. so I’m afraid that I can’t be brushed aside as a Russian bot. It’s right there on YouTube. And what about all the other media companies? This CNN leak, which is maybe the very embodiment of a scoop, was not on the front page of any major newspaper or news website. It was not elaborated on. It was basically not reported.
- ManuelKiessling 5y agoI could easily find a lot of reporting on the "CNN leak", even in German online media, and from my understanding, we cannot, at this point in time, be sure that this leak is legit. Right now, it's simply a news story that is very difficult to confirm. In any case, my recommendation would be to apply "I can’t help but see some kind of special interest or agenda whenever I hear a news story now." here, too. Everything else would be a bit inconsistent.
- taeric 5y agoIf you think the news is bad, you should consider the hot takes that online posters come up with. :)
- forgingahead 5y ago
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- adamvalve 5y agoIgnorance is bliss and all that
- SunlightEdge 5y agoI mostly avoid the news. However opinion articles on newspapers bother me a lot. The fact is most people will interpret these articles as the newspapers own view, increasingly so when this view is repeated again and again. However when you point out the typical faults of the opinion article then defenders insist it's 'just an opinion'. On a related note I hated an opinion article that came out of the guardian yesterday debunking the theory that that the Wuhan lab was responsible for covid-19. The main reason being it totally ignored all the evidence and just smugly insisted it wasn't true. It's fine to disagree but let's hear the reasons why. I generally avoid all newspapers. The Economist does seem better.
- bawolff 5y agoI feel like this post has a lot of hindsight bias in it. People are going to get things wrong sometimes. I think there's a lot of things to legit criticize mainstream media for, but not having 100% accurate crystal ball isn't one of them. If the thesis of this piece is that newswriters sometimes get things wrong, or sometimes write sensationalized things, all i can say is, no duh.
- aristophenes 5y agoMy understanding was the thesis is that paying too much attention to the news is unhelpful because newswriters (“storytellers”) don’t particularly care if what they are reporting is factually correct or not, they have different motives.
- kleinsch 5y agoYea, that was my take too. So much hindsight bais. - If I read Enron's financials instead of the news, I'd have gotten rich. - If I ignored Hertz's financials AND ignored the news, I'd have gotten rich. Author focuses on cases where the media hype ended up being wrong, but what about all the cases where the media was right?
- chalst 5y agoWith Enron, it's not even that the financials were obviously bad. It takes skill to see danger signs in audited accounts. Recall the fraud finished off their accounting firm, then one of the Big Five.
- mlang23 5y ago+1 for using the term "storytellers". I call "journalists" Schreiberlinge in German, which has a similar conotation. If I have learnt one thing during the pandemic, that even supposedly serious media is not to be trusted. I always knew (from first hand experience of being interviewed) that newspapers are really not much more worth then other things you use to whipe stuff... After the pandemic, I know you can basically ignore all the media outlets. All they do is generate interactions and spread badly researched lies.
- SturgeonsLaw 5y ago> I also looked at charts of its stock price. I saw signs that sellers were less patient than buyers. That usually indicates an ordinary fluctuation in business, but whatever, it counted as evidence that I could safely postpone buying, so I decided to wait Any traders in the audience care to shed some light on how they would go about this?
- dmichulke 5y agoIn a similar vein, anyone knows how to read the patience of sellers and buyers by looking at the charts? I guess one could see whether some standard price moves seem "interrupted" by intermittent selling? So e.g., the price in a previously established channel doesn't hit the upper resistance as much as the lower resistance? Any other takes?
- inyourtenement 5y agoI guess you could look at which orders were unfilled and how quickly they were filled at lower or higher prices. Also see candlestick charts. https://www.investopedia.com/trading/candlestick-charting-what-is-it/ https://www.investopedia.com/trading/candlestick-charting-wh...
- lkrubner 5y agoThis subject feels like the mirror subject to the question that was discussed on HN 2 days ago: "Do we live in political echo chambers?" My response: Who cares? I know what my values are, I know which side I'm on, I know what I fight for. If you're looking for new philosophies or perspectives, I strongly suggest two things: 1. fiction 2. history I don't think day-to-day news coverage can ever be written at a level where it might affect your fundamental values; among many other problems, it is typically written in a hurry, with a lack of context, and so it lacks long-term perspective. In terms of books that have changed my perspective on some subject, here are some important ones I've read over the last year: Reading Lolita In Tehran, by Azar Nafisi https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Lolita-Tehran-Memoir-Books/dp/0812979303/ https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Lolita-Tehran-Memoir-Books/dp... Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security, by Sarah Chayes https://www.amazon.com/Thieves-State-Corruption-Threatens-Security/dp/0393352285/ https://www.amazon.com/Thieves-State-Corruption-Threatens-Se... The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, by Andrew J. Bacevich https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Power-American-Exceptionalism-Project/dp/0805090169/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=the+limits+of+power&qid=1623686223&s=books&sr=1-3 https://www.amazon.com/Limits-Power-American-Exceptionalism-... The Emergence of China: From Confucius to the Empire, by E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-China-Confucius-Ancient-Context/dp/1936166356/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=the+emergence+of+china&qid=1623686252&s=books&sr=1-1 https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-China-Confucius-Ancient-Con... Azar Nafisi's book is both a true life action story, and it's also an intellectual journey, a consideration of how authoritarianism slowly takes over. Sarah Chayes book is remarkably ambitious, not only did I suddenly see corruption as a global issue, but she connects it to religious extremism and then reviews the corruption of the Catholic Church in the 1400s and how that lead to Martin Luther and that era's own explosion of religious extremism. Andrew J. Bacevich's book is a sober look at all the things the USA probably cannot do, even though it has the worlds most powerful military The Brooks book about China was eye opening for me. I previously knew nothing about the Warring States period, or the intense intellectual debate that occurred over the meaning of the state and the duties of the leader to the people. I wish more Westerners knew this story. Should I expect this kind of writing from the daily newspaper? Absolutely not. It's ridiculous. It's a category error. That's now what the daily newspaper is for. That's certainly not what the 24 hour news cycle is for. Sometimes I want actionable news I can use, which is partly a matter of knowing which candidates might have the best chances of advancing my goals. Especially during primary races, day-to-day political news is useful to me when it gives me the information I need to decide who of many candidates I should donate money to. But when I want new perspectives and philosophies? I turn to books.
- puszczyk 5y agoThe idea to avoid the news and that news are biased is not new nor revolutionary. But I like this “information arbitrage” idea — most people get their news from X, Y, Z so if you can research an event more objectively you maybe able to profit from it.
- colour 5y agoMichael Capuzzo, a best selling author, has written a story making highest seriousness corruption claims against governments and their bashing of Ivermectin. Yet main stream media has been very busy running a smear campaign against Ivermectin and it's proponents like the FLCCC. https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/The-Drug-that-Cracked-Covid-by-Michael-Capuzzo.pdf https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/T...
- jiofih 5y agoInteresting crowd this kind of post brings out. No, ivermectin is not being “smeared”. It is not an anti-viral and makes no sense to use against COVID-19. Nearly every report of its use links back to this Buffalo article, and there is no publication by that doctor on its use. It’s a hoax. There is no miracle cure, and by now doctors have a pretty good protocol on how to treat the disease already.
- colour 5y agoYour claims are unbased. The main head of the FLCCC Paul E. Marik has 43000 citations, yet he is being called out for lacking trustworthiness, and fabricating evidence.
- colour 5y agohttps://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Marik https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Marik Also this peer reviewed paper strongly speaks for Ivermectin used for covid-19 treatment: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/ Will you kindly take this insulting defamation campaign off Hacker News, thank you.
- dgudkov 5y agoReading news is an addictive habit with the downside of strong political indoctrination. I could see it in some of my family members, unfortunately. I really would like to have a tool that can automatically put labels on news headers: clickbait, drama, speculation, she-said-he-said, or rumor. It's pretty easy to detect such headlines when reading, so training an ML model shouldn't be a problem. Removing tagged articles automatically would've made my news feed so much better.
- WhyNotHugo 5y agoSite Not Found ?
- polytely 5y agoIt seems to me like it would be prudent anyway just to keep track of the news everyone else is still consuming, if you don't know what other people base their views and decisions on it becomes pretty hard to predict their behaviour.
- jiofih 5y agoThis guy clearly does not read the news. He thinks the pandemic did not have much impact on the economy. He reads right wing economists. He was upset Trump was painted as dangerous. Is this supposed to be an example of being “free from the storytellers”? It just proved he is blindsided by reducing his news sources to a few very biased channels.
- ianai 5y agoThe comments here reflect a lot of backlash against mainstream media. To some extent, I could see it being a simple reflection of the media being drawn toward bad but eye-catching stories. I've heard from many outlets that the media is drawn to this because it's lucrative - and the rise of technology disrupted their traditional funding sources. Pissing people off through their stories wound up being the only way to make money. It'd only be natural then that after decades of swinging towards "birdbox stories" the media would itself be associated with the negative emotions it's been living off (as in the movie where people use a birds in a box to sense when overpowering forces are nearby). If you live off someone else's largess then you quickly become associated with them intimately. The trouble is, journalism does fill a necessary need within society. Frankly, people are going to "talk" and without someone having a reputation for holding themselves to a standard somewhere the "talk" will back the ruling elite's objectives. I don't have the systemic answer - but tech being the initial problem and this being a good place to discuss technical issues - the people here could probably figure out some potential options and see what springs forth. Personally, I learned how to read the news in public school and through cross sampling from multiple outlets. Every story's got to answer the five "W"s (who, what, when, where and why). If a story has similar photos/names/content across multiple outlets then that's probably close to what happened. Over time, I've watched the rise of the "birdbox" stories and developed a thicker skin towards them. More personally, I grew up with a parent and a large set of relatives who wanted to rebel against anything and everything without any need for justification. Sometimes it's because it makes them look smart and they like how people treat them with authority. Sometimes it's because they were wronged by someone in authority somewhere and rebellion feels like a form of righting a perceived wrong. Definitely, if a conspiracy theory landed in their laps they were receptive especially when there wasn't any evidence - just another way of bucking the trend and rebelling. I've learned these rebellions are fundamentally destructive. Society would quickly get turned over to something more like Mad Max and regional warlords if my rebellious family were in the majority. Though sometimes society definitely is in the wrong - as in the times of slavery or oppression of women (neither of those is a US-only past practice, btw). The news does fill a fundamental need even in its current state. But it definitely needs reformation. Probably, there's a way to fund proper journalism without burning the house down.
- matt_s 5y agoBill Ackman runs a hedge fund and was a guest on CNBC right at the beginning of the US getting hit with the pandemic proclaiming travel industry going to go downhill while having made bets on that happening. [0] For those outside the US, CNBC is a business/financial/stock market news channel. > “America will end as we know it. I’m sorry to say so, unless we take this option,” he told CNBC on March 18, five days before ending his bet against the market. “We need to shut it down now. ... This is the only answer.” He then made $2B a week later. I would assume most guests on that network are there to make statements to try and sway the market in some way to their favor. You just don't know if they are long or short on whatever they are talking about so without those disclosures. If you think more online based news is better like Motley Fool. They are also registered as a Hedge Fund with the SEC [1]. I can't see/find what their specific holdings are on the SEC site but isn't that a conflict of interest to publish "news" or investment information and manage over $100M? [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/25/bill-ackman-exits-market-hedges-uses-2-billion-he-made-to-buy-more-stocks-including-hilton.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/25/bill-ackman-exits-market-hed... [1] https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1512814 https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=1512814
- LatteLazy 5y agoIsn't this just exactly what we would expect though? If I think company X is gonna crash, I will short it and tell people. That's not dishonest, its 2 different but aligned ways of expressing my opinion... Given the size of the industry, its not like he talked it into oblivion. He might have been able to do that with a single company, but we didn't stop flying because he said so, we did it because of covid...
- chalst 5y agoIt can be dishonest to try to persuade someone of something without revealing that you have a nonobvious interest in them being so persuaded. It's not dishonest to talk down a stock you are shorting provided you are open about your interest, but a news outfit concealing such a fact definitely crosses the line for me.
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- OldGoodNewBad 5y agoRemember the CTS Labs thing where some Israelis from across the hall from Intel’s facility there did a giant smear job on a fake AMD vulnerability and then Bloomberg picked it up? The same Bloomberg who sells little information services which people are supposed to rely on as conveying factual information?
- elevenoh 5y agoWSB woke many retail folk up to this hard reality: you're being manipulated & exploited far more than you think. And once that genie is out, there's no going back.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoWSB is a cluster of lemmings if ever there was one.
- david927 5y agoFound the person who works at a hedge fund
- SavantIdiot 5y agoLol. Got me.
- elevenoh 5y agoWSB woke many retail folk up to this hard reality: you're being manipulated & exploited far more than you think. And once that comes into light for an individual, there's no going back.
- elevenoh 5y agor/WSB woke many retail folk up to this hard reality: you're being manipulated & exploited far more than you think. And once that comes into light for an individual, there's no going back.
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- ewmiller 5y agoDoes anyone have an archive link to the original "avoid news" blog post? Looks like it's a 404 now.
- dools 5y agoA more sound piece of life advice: avoid libertarians.
- SavantIdiot 5y agoThere's so much cynicism in this thread and lots of forcing everything into black and white. It's not black and white, life isn't black and white. Are there TV stations that show programs disguised as news to promote an agenda and make money? Of course. Are there news outlets working hard to to cover stories that are legitimate publications? Absolutely. Just because OP points out a few cases where media is wrong doesn't make it all shit that should just be ignored. That's fucking childish. Part of growing up is learning to think, and it is really, really hard, and takes work. But it seems lots of people here want everything pre-digested and handed to them on a platter saying: this is true and this is false.
- whywhywhywhy 5y agoIf you actually speak to journalists they're very honest about how their job isn't reporting facts but it's interpreting the information and reporting it in a way with omissions or embellishments that make sure the general public, whom they look down on, have the correct takeaway from the story. They see themselves as the chosen few who's job it is to do this and who's job it is to make the general public think and believe the things that are best for them and the believe it's a privilege to be in the position that they are to be in charge of doing that and are proud that is what they do.
- wqTJ3jmY8br4RWa 5y agoIf you read the news, you are misinformed. If you don't read the news, you are uninformed.
- antihero 5y agoHas anyone got the link to the original PDF? The link on the previous post is broken: http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par...
- 11thEarlOfMar 5y ago"Whereas today, we have storytellers that specialize in peddling outrage." I'd guess that media has known for ever that outrage is a potent driver of engagement. Technology today enables outrage delivery to be highly sculpted and surgically delivered. In my opinion this is a major driver of the increasing polarization of America. The depth of our natural predilection to focus on threats has been discovered by neural networks and their systems optimized for profit, not truth and relevance.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- galambo 5y agoI previously made a post about this topic: https://galambo.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/avoid-news/ https://galambo.wordpress.com/2019/04/07/avoid-news/