9 ms·

I Hate the News (2006)

115 points by sealeck 3y ago

noduerme 3y ago
I was disagreeing but mentally playing along with the thesis right up until the sign-off: >> You should follow me on twitter Boy. If the NYT is going to scramble my brain with too many topics, I don't think what I should do is get on social media...
- Kye 3y ago
  I don't think you'll need to worry about how he feels about you not following him on Twitter considering he died 10 years ago.
  - nexus7556 3y ago
    It is easy to forget what a different world it was back then.
    - assimpleaspossi 3y ago
      17 years ago is now a different world.
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    I guess for context I'll add this is Aaron Swartz, a cofounder of Reddit, and fierce advocate for free speech. He was federally prosecuted for wire fraud in 2013 for downloading academic journals from MIT, faced up to 30 years in prison, and committed suicide just before his trial. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
    - belval 3y ago
      I had seen his name thrown around but I didn't know the story. Thank you for sharing, from the layman's perspective it really seems like an overreach of federal prosecution.
      - assimpleaspossi 3y ago
        Well, he did create reddit.
        ineedasername 3y ago
        There is some truly awful irony that a cofounder of reddit, with reddit's current actions, was the victim of a reactionary bully justice system for using his legal access to the JSTOR database [1] even though JSTOR came to a non-criminal settlement with him over it. A prosecution that undoubtedly contributed (or caused) mental health difficulties leading to his suicide. And now, a decade later, the reddit platform that he cofounded is betraying the principles of that cofounder. [1] Yes it's slightly more complex than that, I know, but not to anything that should have come anywhere near the attention of criminal prosecutors. He used his legitimate access to download far more than JSTOR ever thought someone would do. He did it in a basement that anyone walking around the building could go into, and entering an unlocked closet where he connected his laptop to a network switch wherein he left the laptop running while downloading. ~ Heck even after MIT noticed this they didn't lock the closet! Instead the just surveilled it with a camera to observe who might be going in & out. If there was any harm at all from these actions is was merely that downloading the way he did made the JSTOR system slow down at times until they blocked the offending IPs, and then the whole block. A decade later and this injustice still fills me with sadness and rage every time it comes up. And as cynical as I get with every passing year, I hope to hell that I still at least hang on to that sadness and rage and never let time and cynicism dull its edge.
    - city41 3y ago
      Aaron is often said to be a reddit founder but I dont think that is true. His Wikipedia page goes into the details. He founded infogami and created web.py as part of that. He later joined up with reddit and helped port reddit from lisp to python. The article states "As a result, Swartz was given the title of co-founder of Reddit." Which sounds retroactive/honorary to me. Not to put down Aaron in any way. Just interested in what really happened.
      - chrisco255 3y ago
        You don't have to be at a company at literally the moment of inception in order to be classified as a founder. Basically, did he invest key talent and resources early in the company's lifespan, before it hit product-market fit? Yes. Infogami (Aaron's company) merged with Reddit 6 months in. Reddit was still largely unknown when infogami merged with it in 2005. Swartz was given equal shares so clearly Ohanian and Huffman valued this merger highly.
LinuxBender 3y ago
Archives [1a][1b] as I am unable to view the site, I get a SSL error [2] RIP [1a] - http://archive.today/KMAEL http://archive.today/KMAEL [1b] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230704222137/http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews https://web.archive.org/web/20230704222137/http://www.aarons... [2] - https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.aaronsw.com https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.aaronsw.c...
tacker2000 3y ago
(2006)
rcarr 3y ago
> This seems to be true, but the curious thing is that I’m never involved. The government commits a crime, the New York Times prints it on the front page, the people on the cable chat shows foam at the mouth about it, the government apologizes and commits the crime more subtly. It’s a valuable system — I certainly support the government being more subtle about committing crimes (well, for the sake of argument, at least) — but you notice how it never involves me? It seems like the whole thing would work just as well even if nobody ever read the Times or watched the cable chat shows. It’s a closed system. This is just blatantly wrong. Actions have consequences and many politicians have lost their job after a story got out. Unfortunately, this type of thinking is what happens when you live in a stable country. You get too comfortable and start thinking you can just ignore what's going on elsewhere. Who knows, maybe he'll get away with it. I'd wager it was the Russians and Ukrainians who read the news that managed to get out in time before they got drafted and I'd wager back in the 1930s that it was mostly the Jews who read the news who managed to escape Nazi Germany and not get shipped off to a camp. I'd say there's a strong similarity between the news and martial arts training. 99.9999% of the time you might not need it but you'll be damn fucking grateful the 0.0001% of the time that you do.
- majkinetor 3y ago
  The observation may not be relevant for extreme situations like those mentioned. However, even then, most people around you will know, so unless you live in a cave you will get the information on time. Comparison with martial arts is inapropriate. Also, there are other things you could do to protect (and inform) yourself that do not demand payment with your most scarce resource.
  - rcarr 3y ago
    > However, even then, most people around you will know, so unless you live in a cave you will get the information on time. Some people are just tuned out regardless. My mother is perpetually outraged/shocked that her mortgage is going up every month despite me telling her for months that yes, that is what happens when the central bank raises interest rates. She is 100% one of the people who would fail to see the writing on the wall or do anything until the bombs were dropping.
dryanau 3y ago
It's alright for one person to think this way, but if everyone did we'd be in a bit of trouble as a society. I think the reality is in the middle anyway, i.e. very few people are desperately gripped to each and every story, and if you think you're supposed to care about every story then you're missing the point of the news. Chances are enough people will care about each story to make it worthwhile running, even when many (or most) people don't care. If you're picking up the paper and literally zero stories affect you, well okay then! But you'd be in the minority. For most people there's something in there worth knowing. Even if it's not every single day. Most people benefit from knowing something about what's happening at least weekly. In hindsight this is a really odd article.
- lmm 3y ago
  Like the joke about airports, if you've never missed hearing about an important event then you're paying too much attention to news. There's a level that's worth following, but most people read far more news than is worthwhile.
  - NovaDudely 3y ago
    There is the nightly news broadcast, it goes for 1 hour - so 1/16th of your waking life. Maybe about 10-15% of that hour is anything of actual interest/importance.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  Exactly. Nobody should be watching 24/7 news, but you also probably shouldn't be avoiding every news publication ever. 10 minutes a day skimming your news sources of choice for topics relevant to you combined with hearing things from your friends/family/coworkers goes a long way.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    10 mins a day is still way too much. It’s 99.99% absofuckinguseless. I say this as someone who read it for decades. It’s all caricatures of the truth designed to push some other narrative. Every single time I thought I was informed and chatted with someone who had even a small notional bit of first hand information, it became immediately apparent how I was both extremely ignorant and how my false sense of knowledge made it worse.
tacker2000 3y ago
>> But if that’s true on a scale of minutes, why longer? Instead of watching hourly updates, why not read a daily paper? Instead of reading the back and forth of a daily, why not read a weekly review? Instead of a weekly review, why not read a monthly magazine? This is probably best point in this article, the others are quite debatable. I would say that there is a value in knowing whats going on at some scale, but the actual problem is really down to the over-accessibility of news that we have today. Do we really need minute to minute updates on whats happening a thousand miles away?
mvc 3y ago
Oh boy would Aaron not like what has become of 'news' since he left.
EPWN3D 3y ago
> Most people’s major life changes don’t come from reading an article in the newspaper; they come from reading longer-form essays or thoughtful books, which are much more convincing and detailed. Gonna need a source on this one, chief.
- wild_egg 3y ago
  Good luck, author died in 2013. This was written in 2006 and it's safe to say people consumed media differently back then
throw0101a 3y ago
If someone feels this way it may be worth getting a (paper) subscription to a weekly paper (assuming those still exist: The New Yorker?): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekly_newspaper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekly_newspaper There's a lot of noise day-to-day, so some smoothing/averaging may be useful in reducing that. Perhaps monthly (e.g., The Atlantic) for longer-form articles on bigger topics as well.
- assimpleaspossi 3y ago
  Some days, when reading the paper, it's not worth getting up off the toilet.
SomeCallMeTim 3y ago
I do wonder whether encouraging people to exist entirely in their bubble is healthy. I agree with the article to a point. I don't really have a "daily news ritual," though I tend to stumble across major stories. But enough people being isolated from the news can result in an uninformed populace. People continuing to vote R or D simply out of habit. I mean, I'm unlikely to vote anything but D for the foreseeable future. But if the R party self-destructs and an actual, viable, left-leaning party is created, I'd want to know that. But that doesn't mean I need updates on every manufactured crisis daily, either.
- e40 3y ago
  For whatever reason liberals always seem to be the ones who withdraw into their bubbles. The problem is this leaves the other side the opportunity to capture various government organizations, like SCOTUS.
  - sealeck 3y ago
    I'm not sure conservatives are exactly the social butterflies you make them out to be.
    - e40 3y ago
      It has nothing to do with being a social butterfly. I don't have the quote handy, but it's decades old. A GOP operative said something like "our goal is to get liberals to disconnect from the political process" while at the same time engaging their own base. This is what the GOP is famous for. The social issues (flag burning, abortion, gay marriage, etc, etc, etc). In the late 90's and leading up to the 2000 POTUS race, with few exceptions all of my liberal friends had disconnected from politics. It's always been the case, in my circle of people I know, that conservatives vote more regularly. This is over more than 40 years.
      - SomeCallMeTim 3y ago
        I think you're mistaking centrists for liberals. Are you in a predominantly conservative area? A "red state"? Or is your circle of friends in their late teens and 20s? Younger folks just don't vote as often as older. In the circle of people I know, who are mostly actual liberals, and who are generally 40+, they've been very engaged and voting consistently. Heck, even the conservative Republicans I know have been engaged and voting consistently for Democrats since Obama came on the scene. I do tend to hang around smart and educated individuals, and every ethical conservative at this point has defected to voting for Democrats for years now--at least since Trump won.
killjoywashere 3y ago
If you think the news has no impact, you just haven't been the one in the news yet.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  This goes to the core of what Mark Twaine said "Don't those that buy paper by the ton and ink by the barrel."
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    (there was a typo) "Never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton." - Mark Twain
redbell 3y ago
OP, if you hear me, please append the year (2006) at the end of the title. It’s not an obligation but it’s a good practice that the community already used to, other tags like [video] and [pdf] are popular too.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
superchroma 3y ago
I agree completely. It's a complete waste of time making us more miserable.
jumelles 3y ago
Well this sure has aged poorly.
jmcgough 3y ago
As a queer person watching a slew of recent anti-LGBT laws pass, I wish I could have the luxury of just ignoring the news and not caring. Aaron was 20 when he wrote this and it shows.
- silisili 3y ago
  Not lgbt, but had the same takeaway. Can't blame him. It's funny that at 20 we know everything. By 40 we barely know anything.
- sealeck 3y ago
  I think his perspective is a bit more nuanced than this; the complaint is with "real-time" news (somewhere on his blog, Aaron wrote about how he preferred to read post-event summaries in the New Yorker rather than being up-to-date every day).
- Danjoe4 3y ago
  I'm not aware of any recent laws that restrict the rights of LGBT individuals, could you please name them?
  - mathewsanders 3y ago
    Both ACLU and HRC have convenient tracking for these bills. Last year over 300 bills were introduced, and 29 were signed into law (still far too many). https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-working-to-defeat-340-anti-lgbtq-bills-at-state-level-already-150-of-which-target-transgender-people-highest-number-on-record https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-wor... https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-the-aclu-tracks-anti-lgbtq-bills https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-the-aclu-tracks-a...
  - kweingar 3y ago
    Just one example: Tennessee has recently passed a law banning “male or female impersonators” from performing in public places. Tennessee also does not alter sex on birth certificates for trans people. Arguably this means that Tennessee banned trans people from performing in public in any capacity.
esafak 3y ago
Read it if it affects your circle or you are going to act on it. Otherwise consider if you could be doing something better with your time. I used to read the news assiduously until I realized I could not act on it in a satisfactory way. Would that I could do more.
thenerdhead 3y ago
I also hate the news (and advertisements). The news will never teach you how to think. It will tell you what to think. I love books though. Books don't tell lies to you because you have to think for yourself.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  > Books don't tell lies to you That is entirely inaccurate though. There are a LOT of books designed for a goal.
  - NovaDudely 3y ago
    If anything all books are merely published bias. No issue reading them but don't take books as gospel. They are just as fallible as every other medium.
  - thenerdhead 3y ago
    The whole point of my comment is that reading books helps you develop skills where it is a hell of a lot easier to decipher bullshit.
    - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
      I would still very incorrect though. You are discussing how lies are told in a medium insisting that it’s harder in a book, I argue that it’s easier as some people (you for one) have a bias that printer books carry an additional authority over say a TV shoe or podcast.
- mistermann 3y ago
  > The news will never teach you how to think. It will tell you what to think. Oh I disagree with this...presumably you notice lots of people have the same "facts" based on what's in the news, but have you not noticed that the "logical reasoning" that accompanies these "facts" is also quite similar, and typically not very logical?
  - 3y ago
SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
It is straight unreal to me that this guy partially creates Reddit, what his intentions were vs what it has become. If someone came to me saying “I want to get things wrong, I want to have a surface understanding of topics, I’d really like to be distrusting and skeptical and believe everything I’m told by behind the scenes powers ensuring I think a specific thing”… I would introduce them to Reddit.
i8comments 3y ago
Something very similar can be said about the majority of social media comments.
phforms 3y ago
The post is from 2006. I wonder how he would have written it differently or not at all during the pandemic or if he was a refugee, for example. Of course, these are extreme cases, but they demonstrate that you have to be in a special position to be able to perceive the news as a “waste of time”. I also have the habit of avoiding most news, but I believe it did not serve me well, since I have been ignorant about many current issues and often feel ashamed when I don’t know things that are very relevant to the lifes of people around me that I may talk to. Especially when there was a recent disaster or political event that made a huge impact and I just missed it and thereby fail to sympathize with someone who is directly affected by it. But I also see how reading the news can really drag me down and feed into my depression, so a healthy balance always worked best for me, like catching up once or twice a week. I have yet to find a good aggregate source of quality, independent news though.
- mixmastamyk 3y ago
  Read a book by an expert if you'd like to know an order of magnitude more about a subject than the average TV-watching person. Once catch is that it needs to be an actual unbiased quality source. Not all of them are of course. For example, a couple of years after 9/11 I read Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies (later Tenet's and others) and was gobsmacked about all the misguided sound-bites being repeated by regular folks.
dang 3y ago
Related: I Hate the News (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684881 - March 2018 (61 comments) I Hate the News (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224858 - March 2015 (187 comments) I Hate the News (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5812409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5812409 - June 2013 (1 comment) I hate the news - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051902 - Jan 2013 (74 comments)
deleted 3y ago
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totallywrong 3y ago
I stopped reading or watching news about a year ago. Other than HN and conversations with people I don't have any exposure. I always find out about important stuff some way or another, and have overall a more positive outlook in life. Highly recommended.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
scelerat 3y ago
For perspective, this was written by an extremely precocious 16 year old. And I think for most people, the front page of the New York Times may indeed contain nothing of practical use. You're effectively paying for general up-to-date worldly knowledge and social currency. Nevertheless, at some point in your life, knowing current events, even remote ones, and knowing how events have unfolded in the past, has great practical value in making decisions about personal actions or decisions which affect many people, or financial decisions.
- mtlynch 3y ago
  >For perspective, this was written by an extremely precocious 16 year old. Small correction: Swartz was born November 8, 1986, and this was published October 20, 2006. He was three weeks shy of 20 years old.
scelerat 3y ago
> But finally, I’d like to argue that following the news isn’t just a waste of time, it’s actively unhealthy. Edward Tufte notes that when he used to read the New York Times in the morning, it scrambled his brain with so many different topics that he couldn’t get any real intellectual work done the rest of the day. We've come a long way since 2006.
awb 3y ago
> Let us look at the front page of today’s New York Times, the gold standard in news. In the top spot there is a story about Republicans feuding among themselves. There is a photo of soldiers in Iraq. A stock exchange chief must return $100M. There is a concern about some doctors over-selling a nerve testing system. There is a threat from China against North Korea. There is a report that violence in Iraq is rising. And there is concern about virtual science classes replacing real ones. > None of these stories have relevance to my life. The Tea Party, Iraq war and excessive for-profit medical care ended up having a massive impact in the US. Not every day is going to cover decade-defining events but this day in retrospect seems pretty relevant in understanding the following 10 years of US politics (2006-2016).
- Meekro 3y ago
  Maybe we should distinguish the impact of the story itself from the impact of people reacting to the story after they read the news? The Tea Party talked a lot about taxes and got a bunch of people elected to Congress, but if you simply ignored the news you'd be none the wiser (and totally unaffected). Same is true for the Iraq War -- it surely had major impact for Iraqis, but for most people in the U.S. it may as well have been a non-event. President Bush either lied about WMDs or didn't (depending on who you ask) and we invaded and killed a bunch of people and changed the government. If you ignored the news, you'd be blindsided by people who want to talk about the war or change their vote because of it, but the Iraq War itself probably wouldn't affect you. It didn't affect me, anyway. Most things in the news are like that. But then again, a lot of things they teach you in school are like that, too. Knowing that humans came from monkeys or that WW2 began in 1939 doesn't really affect my life, but there's a certain kind of shared knowledge that makes it easier to have a community. So maybe following the news is a bit like following Game of Thrones? If all your buddies are going to talk about it on Monday morning, you wouldn't want to be the only one who doesn't know what's going on.
  - awb 3y ago
    If you add up all the people that had live in a district where the Tea Party was active, or served in the military, or in government where budgets, decisions, negotiations, etc. were affected by the Iraq war or the Tea Party, it’s probably a decent minority. Now add in anyone who works in health care or received a large medical bill. Then add in their families and friends. That’s got to be a large minority either directly affected or one step removed. Obama got elected 2 years after this article with these 3 issues core to the debates. I’m guessing that some people who weren’t directly affected based their votes off of the news. I see what you’re saying that a lot of knowledge isn’t useful day to day, but I actually do use my knowledge of WWII and evolution as foundations of some of my ethical and political views, which I’m sure emanate out into the world via my votes, purchases and conversations. I agree though the line between news and entertainment is blurry and some people might follow just for the sake of not being out of the loop socially.
mo_42 3y ago
I think we need to take into account profits and careers of people producing news. Mostly, news is a business. It will inevitably distort reports to make more profit. Even the most well-intentioned editors and journalists will be outcompeted those who make better stories. I guess this mechanism works on the level of people and organizations. Also, people who argue against Aaron's idea tend to forget that there are other sources. Books, in-depth articles, discussions of experts may provide a better understanding. However, it's much more effort. If you really want to be informed, then, it's work.
johnea 3y ago
Yea, reality sucks, huh? You could always try rolling around on the ground and kicking your feet. It's really amazing how often that works. It may be hard to grasp, but reading the news isn't for enjoyment, it's for information (although I have to conceed that modern news is largly information free, but this is exactly because they're trying to make it entertainment). It's important to understand what's going on in that place called reality. I know its so unpopular! Who even talks about reality on twerk tick anyway?! Let's all just stick to the stuff that involves me, like those choo funny videos of the "set your balls on fire challenge"!
Georgelemental 3y ago
The news is, of course, full of lies. Too much exposure to lies is no good for one's mental health. But it's important to have some degree of regular exposure, as a means of inoculation. And to, hopefully, parse out the truth between the lines; truth is valuable for its own sake.

115 points by sealeck 3y ago

I was disagreeing but mentally playing along with the thesis right up until the sign-off: >> You should follow me on twitter Boy. If the NYT is going to scramble my brain with too many topics, I don't think what I should do is get on social media...

Kye 3y ago
I don't think you'll need to worry about how he feels about you not following him on Twitter considering he died 10 years ago.
- nexus7556 3y ago
  It is easy to forget what a different world it was back then.
  - assimpleaspossi 3y ago
    17 years ago is now a different world.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  I guess for context I'll add this is Aaron Swartz, a cofounder of Reddit, and fierce advocate for free speech. He was federally prosecuted for wire fraud in 2013 for downloading academic journals from MIT, faced up to 30 years in prison, and committed suicide just before his trial. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz
  - belval 3y ago
    I had seen his name thrown around but I didn't know the story. Thank you for sharing, from the layman's perspective it really seems like an overreach of federal prosecution.
    - assimpleaspossi 3y ago
      Well, he did create reddit.
      - ineedasername 3y ago
        There is some truly awful irony that a cofounder of reddit, with reddit's current actions, was the victim of a reactionary bully justice system for using his legal access to the JSTOR database [1] even though JSTOR came to a non-criminal settlement with him over it. A prosecution that undoubtedly contributed (or caused) mental health difficulties leading to his suicide. And now, a decade later, the reddit platform that he cofounded is betraying the principles of that cofounder. [1] Yes it's slightly more complex than that, I know, but not to anything that should have come anywhere near the attention of criminal prosecutors. He used his legitimate access to download far more than JSTOR ever thought someone would do. He did it in a basement that anyone walking around the building could go into, and entering an unlocked closet where he connected his laptop to a network switch wherein he left the laptop running while downloading. ~ Heck even after MIT noticed this they didn't lock the closet! Instead the just surveilled it with a camera to observe who might be going in & out. If there was any harm at all from these actions is was merely that downloading the way he did made the JSTOR system slow down at times until they blocked the offending IPs, and then the whole block. A decade later and this injustice still fills me with sadness and rage every time it comes up. And as cynical as I get with every passing year, I hope to hell that I still at least hang on to that sadness and rage and never let time and cynicism dull its edge.
  - city41 3y ago
    Aaron is often said to be a reddit founder but I dont think that is true. His Wikipedia page goes into the details. He founded infogami and created web.py as part of that. He later joined up with reddit and helped port reddit from lisp to python. The article states "As a result, Swartz was given the title of co-founder of Reddit." Which sounds retroactive/honorary to me. Not to put down Aaron in any way. Just interested in what really happened.
    - chrisco255 3y ago
      You don't have to be at a company at literally the moment of inception in order to be classified as a founder. Basically, did he invest key talent and resources early in the company's lifespan, before it hit product-market fit? Yes. Infogami (Aaron's company) merged with Reddit 6 months in. Reddit was still largely unknown when infogami merged with it in 2005. Swartz was given equal shares so clearly Ohanian and Huffman valued this merger highly.

LinuxBender 3y ago

Archives [1a][1b] as I am unable to view the site, I get a SSL error [2] RIP [1a] - http://archive.today/KMAEL http://archive.today/KMAEL [1b] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230704222137/http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews https://web.archive.org/web/20230704222137/http://www.aarons... [2] - https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.aaronsw.com https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=www.aaronsw.c...

tacker2000 3y ago

(2006)

rcarr 3y ago

> This seems to be true, but the curious thing is that I’m never involved. The government commits a crime, the New York Times prints it on the front page, the people on the cable chat shows foam at the mouth about it, the government apologizes and commits the crime more subtly. It’s a valuable system — I certainly support the government being more subtle about committing crimes (well, for the sake of argument, at least) — but you notice how it never involves me? It seems like the whole thing would work just as well even if nobody ever read the Times or watched the cable chat shows. It’s a closed system. This is just blatantly wrong. Actions have consequences and many politicians have lost their job after a story got out. Unfortunately, this type of thinking is what happens when you live in a stable country. You get too comfortable and start thinking you can just ignore what's going on elsewhere. Who knows, maybe he'll get away with it. I'd wager it was the Russians and Ukrainians who read the news that managed to get out in time before they got drafted and I'd wager back in the 1930s that it was mostly the Jews who read the news who managed to escape Nazi Germany and not get shipped off to a camp. I'd say there's a strong similarity between the news and martial arts training. 99.9999% of the time you might not need it but you'll be damn fucking grateful the 0.0001% of the time that you do.

majkinetor 3y ago
The observation may not be relevant for extreme situations like those mentioned. However, even then, most people around you will know, so unless you live in a cave you will get the information on time. Comparison with martial arts is inapropriate. Also, there are other things you could do to protect (and inform) yourself that do not demand payment with your most scarce resource.
- rcarr 3y ago
  > However, even then, most people around you will know, so unless you live in a cave you will get the information on time. Some people are just tuned out regardless. My mother is perpetually outraged/shocked that her mortgage is going up every month despite me telling her for months that yes, that is what happens when the central bank raises interest rates. She is 100% one of the people who would fail to see the writing on the wall or do anything until the bombs were dropping.

dryanau 3y ago

It's alright for one person to think this way, but if everyone did we'd be in a bit of trouble as a society. I think the reality is in the middle anyway, i.e. very few people are desperately gripped to each and every story, and if you think you're supposed to care about every story then you're missing the point of the news. Chances are enough people will care about each story to make it worthwhile running, even when many (or most) people don't care. If you're picking up the paper and literally zero stories affect you, well okay then! But you'd be in the minority. For most people there's something in there worth knowing. Even if it's not every single day. Most people benefit from knowing something about what's happening at least weekly. In hindsight this is a really odd article.

lmm 3y ago
Like the joke about airports, if you've never missed hearing about an important event then you're paying too much attention to news. There's a level that's worth following, but most people read far more news than is worthwhile.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  There is the nightly news broadcast, it goes for 1 hour - so 1/16th of your waking life. Maybe about 10-15% of that hour is anything of actual interest/importance.
xboxnolifes 3y ago
Exactly. Nobody should be watching 24/7 news, but you also probably shouldn't be avoiding every news publication ever. 10 minutes a day skimming your news sources of choice for topics relevant to you combined with hearing things from your friends/family/coworkers goes a long way.
- kortilla 3y ago
  10 mins a day is still way too much. It’s 99.99% absofuckinguseless. I say this as someone who read it for decades. It’s all caricatures of the truth designed to push some other narrative. Every single time I thought I was informed and chatted with someone who had even a small notional bit of first hand information, it became immediately apparent how I was both extremely ignorant and how my false sense of knowledge made it worse.

tacker2000 3y ago

>> But if that’s true on a scale of minutes, why longer? Instead of watching hourly updates, why not read a daily paper? Instead of reading the back and forth of a daily, why not read a weekly review? Instead of a weekly review, why not read a monthly magazine? This is probably best point in this article, the others are quite debatable. I would say that there is a value in knowing whats going on at some scale, but the actual problem is really down to the over-accessibility of news that we have today. Do we really need minute to minute updates on whats happening a thousand miles away?

mvc 3y ago

Oh boy would Aaron not like what has become of 'news' since he left.

EPWN3D 3y ago

> Most people’s major life changes don’t come from reading an article in the newspaper; they come from reading longer-form essays or thoughtful books, which are much more convincing and detailed. Gonna need a source on this one, chief.

wild_egg 3y ago
Good luck, author died in 2013. This was written in 2006 and it's safe to say people consumed media differently back then

throw0101a 3y ago

If someone feels this way it may be worth getting a (paper) subscription to a weekly paper (assuming those still exist: The New Yorker?): * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekly_newspaper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekly_newspaper There's a lot of noise day-to-day, so some smoothing/averaging may be useful in reducing that. Perhaps monthly (e.g., The Atlantic) for longer-form articles on bigger topics as well.

assimpleaspossi 3y ago
Some days, when reading the paper, it's not worth getting up off the toilet.

SomeCallMeTim 3y ago

I do wonder whether encouraging people to exist entirely in their bubble is healthy. I agree with the article to a point. I don't really have a "daily news ritual," though I tend to stumble across major stories. But enough people being isolated from the news can result in an uninformed populace. People continuing to vote R or D simply out of habit. I mean, I'm unlikely to vote anything but D for the foreseeable future. But if the R party self-destructs and an actual, viable, left-leaning party is created, I'd want to know that. But that doesn't mean I need updates on every manufactured crisis daily, either.

e40 3y ago
For whatever reason liberals always seem to be the ones who withdraw into their bubbles. The problem is this leaves the other side the opportunity to capture various government organizations, like SCOTUS.
- sealeck 3y ago
  I'm not sure conservatives are exactly the social butterflies you make them out to be.
  - e40 3y ago
    It has nothing to do with being a social butterfly. I don't have the quote handy, but it's decades old. A GOP operative said something like "our goal is to get liberals to disconnect from the political process" while at the same time engaging their own base. This is what the GOP is famous for. The social issues (flag burning, abortion, gay marriage, etc, etc, etc). In the late 90's and leading up to the 2000 POTUS race, with few exceptions all of my liberal friends had disconnected from politics. It's always been the case, in my circle of people I know, that conservatives vote more regularly. This is over more than 40 years.
    - SomeCallMeTim 3y ago
      I think you're mistaking centrists for liberals. Are you in a predominantly conservative area? A "red state"? Or is your circle of friends in their late teens and 20s? Younger folks just don't vote as often as older. In the circle of people I know, who are mostly actual liberals, and who are generally 40+, they've been very engaged and voting consistently. Heck, even the conservative Republicans I know have been engaged and voting consistently for Democrats since Obama came on the scene. I do tend to hang around smart and educated individuals, and every ethical conservative at this point has defected to voting for Democrats for years now--at least since Trump won.

killjoywashere 3y ago

If you think the news has no impact, you just haven't been the one in the news yet.

NovaDudely 3y ago
This goes to the core of what Mark Twaine said "Don't those that buy paper by the ton and ink by the barrel."
- fsckboy 3y ago
  (there was a typo) "Never pick a fight with anyone who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the ton." - Mark Twain

redbell 3y ago

OP, if you hear me, please append the year (2006) at the end of the title. It’s not an obligation but it’s a good practice that the community already used to, other tags like [video] and [pdf] are popular too.

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superchroma 3y ago

I agree completely. It's a complete waste of time making us more miserable.

jumelles 3y ago

Well this sure has aged poorly.

jmcgough 3y ago

As a queer person watching a slew of recent anti-LGBT laws pass, I wish I could have the luxury of just ignoring the news and not caring. Aaron was 20 when he wrote this and it shows.

silisili 3y ago
Not lgbt, but had the same takeaway. Can't blame him. It's funny that at 20 we know everything. By 40 we barely know anything.
sealeck 3y ago
I think his perspective is a bit more nuanced than this; the complaint is with "real-time" news (somewhere on his blog, Aaron wrote about how he preferred to read post-event summaries in the New Yorker rather than being up-to-date every day).
Danjoe4 3y ago
I'm not aware of any recent laws that restrict the rights of LGBT individuals, could you please name them?
- mathewsanders 3y ago
  Both ACLU and HRC have convenient tracking for these bills. Last year over 300 bills were introduced, and 29 were signed into law (still far too many). https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-working-to-defeat-340-anti-lgbtq-bills-at-state-level-already-150-of-which-target-transgender-people-highest-number-on-record https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-wor... https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-the-aclu-tracks-anti-lgbtq-bills https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/how-the-aclu-tracks-a...
- kweingar 3y ago
  Just one example: Tennessee has recently passed a law banning “male or female impersonators” from performing in public places. Tennessee also does not alter sex on birth certificates for trans people. Arguably this means that Tennessee banned trans people from performing in public in any capacity.

esafak 3y ago

Read it if it affects your circle or you are going to act on it. Otherwise consider if you could be doing something better with your time. I used to read the news assiduously until I realized I could not act on it in a satisfactory way. Would that I could do more.

thenerdhead 3y ago

I also hate the news (and advertisements). The news will never teach you how to think. It will tell you what to think. I love books though. Books don't tell lies to you because you have to think for yourself.

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
> Books don't tell lies to you That is entirely inaccurate though. There are a LOT of books designed for a goal.
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  If anything all books are merely published bias. No issue reading them but don't take books as gospel. They are just as fallible as every other medium.
- thenerdhead 3y ago
  The whole point of my comment is that reading books helps you develop skills where it is a hell of a lot easier to decipher bullshit.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    I would still very incorrect though. You are discussing how lies are told in a medium insisting that it’s harder in a book, I argue that it’s easier as some people (you for one) have a bias that printer books carry an additional authority over say a TV shoe or podcast.
mistermann 3y ago
> The news will never teach you how to think. It will tell you what to think. Oh I disagree with this...presumably you notice lots of people have the same "facts" based on what's in the news, but have you not noticed that the "logical reasoning" that accompanies these "facts" is also quite similar, and typically not very logical?
- 3y ago

SV_BubbleTime 3y ago

It is straight unreal to me that this guy partially creates Reddit, what his intentions were vs what it has become. If someone came to me saying “I want to get things wrong, I want to have a surface understanding of topics, I’d really like to be distrusting and skeptical and believe everything I’m told by behind the scenes powers ensuring I think a specific thing”… I would introduce them to Reddit.

i8comments 3y ago

Something very similar can be said about the majority of social media comments.

phforms 3y ago

The post is from 2006. I wonder how he would have written it differently or not at all during the pandemic or if he was a refugee, for example. Of course, these are extreme cases, but they demonstrate that you have to be in a special position to be able to perceive the news as a “waste of time”. I also have the habit of avoiding most news, but I believe it did not serve me well, since I have been ignorant about many current issues and often feel ashamed when I don’t know things that are very relevant to the lifes of people around me that I may talk to. Especially when there was a recent disaster or political event that made a huge impact and I just missed it and thereby fail to sympathize with someone who is directly affected by it. But I also see how reading the news can really drag me down and feed into my depression, so a healthy balance always worked best for me, like catching up once or twice a week. I have yet to find a good aggregate source of quality, independent news though.

mixmastamyk 3y ago
Read a book by an expert if you'd like to know an order of magnitude more about a subject than the average TV-watching person. Once catch is that it needs to be an actual unbiased quality source. Not all of them are of course. For example, a couple of years after 9/11 I read Richard Clarke's book Against All Enemies (later Tenet's and others) and was gobsmacked about all the misguided sound-bites being repeated by regular folks.

dang 3y ago

Related: I Hate the News (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16684881 - March 2018 (61 comments) I Hate the News (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224858 - March 2015 (187 comments) I Hate the News (2006) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5812409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5812409 - June 2013 (1 comment) I hate the news - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5051902 - Jan 2013 (74 comments)

deleted 3y ago

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totallywrong 3y ago

I stopped reading or watching news about a year ago. Other than HN and conversations with people I don't have any exposure. I always find out about important stuff some way or another, and have overall a more positive outlook in life. Highly recommended.

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scelerat 3y ago

For perspective, this was written by an extremely precocious 16 year old. And I think for most people, the front page of the New York Times may indeed contain nothing of practical use. You're effectively paying for general up-to-date worldly knowledge and social currency. Nevertheless, at some point in your life, knowing current events, even remote ones, and knowing how events have unfolded in the past, has great practical value in making decisions about personal actions or decisions which affect many people, or financial decisions.

mtlynch 3y ago
>For perspective, this was written by an extremely precocious 16 year old. Small correction: Swartz was born November 8, 1986, and this was published October 20, 2006. He was three weeks shy of 20 years old.

scelerat 3y ago

> But finally, I’d like to argue that following the news isn’t just a waste of time, it’s actively unhealthy. Edward Tufte notes that when he used to read the New York Times in the morning, it scrambled his brain with so many different topics that he couldn’t get any real intellectual work done the rest of the day. We've come a long way since 2006.

awb 3y ago

> Let us look at the front page of today’s New York Times, the gold standard in news. In the top spot there is a story about Republicans feuding among themselves. There is a photo of soldiers in Iraq. A stock exchange chief must return $100M. There is a concern about some doctors over-selling a nerve testing system. There is a threat from China against North Korea. There is a report that violence in Iraq is rising. And there is concern about virtual science classes replacing real ones. > None of these stories have relevance to my life. The Tea Party, Iraq war and excessive for-profit medical care ended up having a massive impact in the US. Not every day is going to cover decade-defining events but this day in retrospect seems pretty relevant in understanding the following 10 years of US politics (2006-2016).

Meekro 3y ago
Maybe we should distinguish the impact of the story itself from the impact of people reacting to the story after they read the news? The Tea Party talked a lot about taxes and got a bunch of people elected to Congress, but if you simply ignored the news you'd be none the wiser (and totally unaffected). Same is true for the Iraq War -- it surely had major impact for Iraqis, but for most people in the U.S. it may as well have been a non-event. President Bush either lied about WMDs or didn't (depending on who you ask) and we invaded and killed a bunch of people and changed the government. If you ignored the news, you'd be blindsided by people who want to talk about the war or change their vote because of it, but the Iraq War itself probably wouldn't affect you. It didn't affect me, anyway. Most things in the news are like that. But then again, a lot of things they teach you in school are like that, too. Knowing that humans came from monkeys or that WW2 began in 1939 doesn't really affect my life, but there's a certain kind of shared knowledge that makes it easier to have a community. So maybe following the news is a bit like following Game of Thrones? If all your buddies are going to talk about it on Monday morning, you wouldn't want to be the only one who doesn't know what's going on.
- awb 3y ago
  If you add up all the people that had live in a district where the Tea Party was active, or served in the military, or in government where budgets, decisions, negotiations, etc. were affected by the Iraq war or the Tea Party, it’s probably a decent minority. Now add in anyone who works in health care or received a large medical bill. Then add in their families and friends. That’s got to be a large minority either directly affected or one step removed. Obama got elected 2 years after this article with these 3 issues core to the debates. I’m guessing that some people who weren’t directly affected based their votes off of the news. I see what you’re saying that a lot of knowledge isn’t useful day to day, but I actually do use my knowledge of WWII and evolution as foundations of some of my ethical and political views, which I’m sure emanate out into the world via my votes, purchases and conversations. I agree though the line between news and entertainment is blurry and some people might follow just for the sake of not being out of the loop socially.

mo_42 3y ago

I think we need to take into account profits and careers of people producing news. Mostly, news is a business. It will inevitably distort reports to make more profit. Even the most well-intentioned editors and journalists will be outcompeted those who make better stories. I guess this mechanism works on the level of people and organizations. Also, people who argue against Aaron's idea tend to forget that there are other sources. Books, in-depth articles, discussions of experts may provide a better understanding. However, it's much more effort. If you really want to be informed, then, it's work.

johnea 3y ago

Yea, reality sucks, huh? You could always try rolling around on the ground and kicking your feet. It's really amazing how often that works. It may be hard to grasp, but reading the news isn't for enjoyment, it's for information (although I have to conceed that modern news is largly information free, but this is exactly because they're trying to make it entertainment). It's important to understand what's going on in that place called reality. I know its so unpopular! Who even talks about reality on twerk tick anyway?! Let's all just stick to the stuff that involves me, like those choo funny videos of the "set your balls on fire challenge"!

Georgelemental 3y ago

The news is, of course, full of lies. Too much exposure to lies is no good for one's mental health. But it's important to have some degree of regular exposure, as a means of inoculation. And to, hopefully, parse out the truth between the lines; truth is valuable for its own sake.