3 ms·

Nassim Taleb, in his incerto, makes the argument that: - Most news is actually entertainment disguised as information. - You can't act on the vast majority of

Nassim Taleb, in his incerto, makes the argument that: - Most news is actually entertainment disguised as information. - You can't act on the vast majority of news. - Most medias, including specialized ones, can give a very good appearance of competence while actually knowing nothing of the actual situation. - Medias, of course, have agendas and allegiances. - You don't have neither the skill nor the resources to verify what they tell you. And dig a little once, you usually find out how alarmingly distorted the story is, suggesting you should do it thoroughly every single time. - The volume of news, and noise vs signal ratio, is increasingly playing against you. - It's fine to not have an opinion on most things. You opinion is worth zilch on most topics anyway and your decisions suck. - It's exhausting and bad for your health and happiness. He still reads some news, but consider it a way to entertain himself rather than being informed. Tim Ferris has a similar view, and get most of its news from conversation with others, assuming that if they are in the mind of people, the filter of consequences on his life has already been applied. n = 1, but I've seen my father has been watching an analyzing the news every single day for all my life. Thousands of hours of consumption, reactions, debates, bad moods and judgement. I never saw him ONCE make a daily decision based on the news that made his life better. Personally, I've found most medias content to be very low quality, and the propaganda everywhere. The time and energy it takes to untangle all that is not worth it. I find way more interesting the reports of individuals with skin in the game. That's one of the reason I'm on HN. And still, I know that even HN is most of the time, entertainment for me.

kelnos 3y ago
I think the biggest point here is that the news will very rarely help you make better decisions in your own life. And that's true. Following the wars in Ukraine or Israel/Gaza isn't going to change anything about my life for the better, even if I feel bad saying out loud that maybe I just shouldn't read about it -- that makes it sound like I don't care. Reading about the antics of Trump or Biden or Schumer or Johnson or Jeffries or McConnell isn't going to change what I do day by day, at least not for the better. Getting angry at Ken Paxton or the Texas Supreme Court for their utter disregard for human life brings me down, not up, and there's nothing I can do about that situation anyway. An argument I can think of for keeping informed about that sort of thing is that it's one of the factors I might put into the next time election day comes up. If a particular candidate had a good response or bad response to these things, it might help me decide who to vote for. But the thing is, I don't need to follow these events in real time to get that help. I can wait until a month or two before the election, and start reading things, nicely summarized, about the candidates' positions, reactions, voting record, etc. on these topics. And I'll spend a lot less time doing it, too. (Let's ignore for a minute whether or not voting is a productive activity; I'm going to vote because I feel like I have a responsibility to do so, regardless of its efficacy.) And here I'm just talking about political news. There's so much other news, and I can't see how much of that could be any more useful to my day-to-day.
dr-smooth 3y ago
Tim Ferris' idea about filter of consequences is interesting. Except for the fact that that information has likely passed through filters of propaganda and almost certainly passed through filters of ignorance, stupidity, and bias. No matter how well-informed, intelligent, and unbiased you think the deliverer of said information might be unless he's telling you something he witnessed first hand.

kelnos 3y ago

I think the biggest point here is that the news will very rarely help you make better decisions in your own life. And that's true. Following the wars in Ukraine or Israel/Gaza isn't going to change anything about my life for the better, even if I feel bad saying out loud that maybe I just shouldn't read about it -- that makes it sound like I don't care. Reading about the antics of Trump or Biden or Schumer or Johnson or Jeffries or McConnell isn't going to change what I do day by day, at least not for the better. Getting angry at Ken Paxton or the Texas Supreme Court for their utter disregard for human life brings me down, not up, and there's nothing I can do about that situation anyway. An argument I can think of for keeping informed about that sort of thing is that it's one of the factors I might put into the next time election day comes up. If a particular candidate had a good response or bad response to these things, it might help me decide who to vote for. But the thing is, I don't need to follow these events in real time to get that help. I can wait until a month or two before the election, and start reading things, nicely summarized, about the candidates' positions, reactions, voting record, etc. on these topics. And I'll spend a lot less time doing it, too. (Let's ignore for a minute whether or not voting is a productive activity; I'm going to vote because I feel like I have a responsibility to do so, regardless of its efficacy.) And here I'm just talking about political news. There's so much other news, and I can't see how much of that could be any more useful to my day-to-day.

dr-smooth 3y ago

Tim Ferris' idea about filter of consequences is interesting. Except for the fact that that information has likely passed through filters of propaganda and almost certainly passed through filters of ignorance, stupidity, and bias. No matter how well-informed, intelligent, and unbiased you think the deliverer of said information might be unless he's telling you something he witnessed first hand.