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Why is tuning out the wrong solution? Almost everyone can "get away with being uninformed," because current events have no bearing on most people's lives most

Why is tuning out the wrong solution? Almost everyone can "get away with being uninformed," because current events have no bearing on most people's lives most of the time. I can name one hundred things that I could learn in twenty minutes which would be more useful to me than reading the morning paper. If something is actually interesting, then news sources which I have meticulously populated with interesting things -- my RSS feed and my friends -- will help find it. A politician giving another speech is not interesting. Another instance of a crime is not interesting. An editorial by a non-expert on something complicated is not interesting. We pay a price for ignorance and the bill is about due...for the vast majority of us living modern lives trying to get by in this world, it's a shortcut to happiness that has a price. What is the price? I see no price.

bpatrianakos 14y ago
The price is something you described. You prefer to learn from your friends and blogs rather than news outlets. The consensus is that media is useless and biased but it's not so bad that you're better off ignoring it all. Your friends and those bloggers are the same kind of non-experts explaining complicated things as the guy who writes the editorials you just got done criticizing. I'm not knocking your friends or your rss feed. Those are truly useful information sources that I use too but there's no substitute for real journalism. There's a lot of bullshit journalism out there but the good stuff isn't extinct yet. If everyone keeps being so jaded about the news then journalism as a profession is going to die and that's sad because we need those kinds of people in this world.
- mquander 14y ago
  Allow me to retreat slightly, because the quality of journalism as opposed to other information sources isn't my true objection, and I'd rather not argue about it. My true objection is the "new" in "news." I have absolutely no interest in current events that aren't directly affecting me. Paul Krugman and Nate Silver are smart people, but if I want to spend my time learning about economics or politics -- which I really am a little bit interested in -- I think it's absurd to read a Paul Krugman column telling me what last month's economic indicators seem to be saying, or to read Nate Silver's analysis of some DNC speeches. So instead I listen to interviews with economists about work and analysis they've done over the past N years. I find history books that have been retrospectively written by important actors, and those which have stood the test of time. I'd rather hear what Paul Krugman has to say about 2012 in twenty years. That seems like an obviously better use of time than trying to keep up with reporting on current events, which by its nature is inaccurate, incomplete, and filled with ultimately unimportant details. The only disadvantage is that I don't really have a lot of insight into what's going on in the world right this minute. But I don't understand why that insight is important. I care about learning true, interesting things, not just learning things.
  - bpatrianakos 14y ago
    And now we're all starting to agree with each other... I don't know why there was such a rush to disagree with me when we've been in the area of the same page all along. What you said plays exactly into my original point about being a good consumer of news. Having the ability to filter relevant information from noise is what important and not taking in news for the sake of news. I've been saying this the entire time. I can get on board with not caring about what's going on right this minute too and I never argued that anyone should. That's just as bad as Joel's prescription for ignoring news completely. That said, you never know when something you read may become relevant to you at a later time. I would suggest making it a point to consume news that isn't relevant to you in the same way I wouldn't suggest ignoring all news but I also would say that if you have a minute, reading some random piece of news every now and then may prove useful. And if it doesn't, well then you've got something you might be able to talk intelligently about at some party. It doesn't hurt and hey, maybe it'll even get you laid. At the end of the day Joel's post came off to me as totally anti-intellectual, naive, and self-helpish (in a bad way). Like I said before, I'm a big fan of his posts but this one did not sit right with me.

bpatrianakos 14y ago

The price is something you described. You prefer to learn from your friends and blogs rather than news outlets. The consensus is that media is useless and biased but it's not so bad that you're better off ignoring it all. Your friends and those bloggers are the same kind of non-experts explaining complicated things as the guy who writes the editorials you just got done criticizing. I'm not knocking your friends or your rss feed. Those are truly useful information sources that I use too but there's no substitute for real journalism. There's a lot of bullshit journalism out there but the good stuff isn't extinct yet. If everyone keeps being so jaded about the news then journalism as a profession is going to die and that's sad because we need those kinds of people in this world.

mquander 14y ago
Allow me to retreat slightly, because the quality of journalism as opposed to other information sources isn't my true objection, and I'd rather not argue about it. My true objection is the "new" in "news." I have absolutely no interest in current events that aren't directly affecting me. Paul Krugman and Nate Silver are smart people, but if I want to spend my time learning about economics or politics -- which I really am a little bit interested in -- I think it's absurd to read a Paul Krugman column telling me what last month's economic indicators seem to be saying, or to read Nate Silver's analysis of some DNC speeches. So instead I listen to interviews with economists about work and analysis they've done over the past N years. I find history books that have been retrospectively written by important actors, and those which have stood the test of time. I'd rather hear what Paul Krugman has to say about 2012 in twenty years. That seems like an obviously better use of time than trying to keep up with reporting on current events, which by its nature is inaccurate, incomplete, and filled with ultimately unimportant details. The only disadvantage is that I don't really have a lot of insight into what's going on in the world right this minute. But I don't understand why that insight is important. I care about learning true, interesting things, not just learning things.
- bpatrianakos 14y ago
  And now we're all starting to agree with each other... I don't know why there was such a rush to disagree with me when we've been in the area of the same page all along. What you said plays exactly into my original point about being a good consumer of news. Having the ability to filter relevant information from noise is what important and not taking in news for the sake of news. I've been saying this the entire time. I can get on board with not caring about what's going on right this minute too and I never argued that anyone should. That's just as bad as Joel's prescription for ignoring news completely. That said, you never know when something you read may become relevant to you at a later time. I would suggest making it a point to consume news that isn't relevant to you in the same way I wouldn't suggest ignoring all news but I also would say that if you have a minute, reading some random piece of news every now and then may prove useful. And if it doesn't, well then you've got something you might be able to talk intelligently about at some party. It doesn't hurt and hey, maybe it'll even get you laid. At the end of the day Joel's post came off to me as totally anti-intellectual, naive, and self-helpish (in a bad way). Like I said before, I'm a big fan of his posts but this one did not sit right with me.