8 ms·

I hate the news

213 points by paupino_masano 14y ago

jrockway 14y ago
I think it's funny that the article about the news being irrelevant ends with the cliched tagline: "You should follow me on Twitter." Because that would be relevant.
- halviti 14y ago
  Comparing aarons twitter feed to cnn in this context; to me it actually would be more relevant.
- bensw 14y ago
  He added that line to all his blog posts when he redesigned his blog years after this was originally posted
- rationalbeats 14y ago
  This post is from October 20, 2006 Twitter did not exist then, so I think it is obvious to the people who read this website how a tag like that would be there now.
- trentlott 14y ago
  ...and then his Twitter is littered with Huffington, NPR, etc links.
askimto 14y ago
Felt the same way this morning when I caught a few minutes of This Week, covering the next "fiscal cliff", the lack of women in Obama's cabinet, and so on. What a waste of time.
miles 14y ago
Similar sentiments from a brother several thousand years ago: "...I start up out of dreams and am disturbed, trembling at every message, with my own peace of mind depending upon letters not my own. Someone has arrived from Rome. 'If only there is no bad news!' But how can anything bad for you happen in a place, if you are not there? Someone arrives from Greece. 'If only there is no bad news!' In this way for you every place can cause misfortune. Isn't it enough for you to be miserable where you are? Must you needs be miserable even beyond the seas, and by letter?"
- 205guy 14y ago
  I like this quote, only slightly newer, by Paul the hermit: "Tell me, I pray, how fares the human race: if new roofs be risen in the ancient cities, whose empire it is that now holds sway in the world, if any still survive, snared in the error of demons."[1] It epitomizes the futility of "news:" even if you live in a cave for many years (decades), as long as you know a bit about human nature and history, you know the news--just not the names. Like the OP, I find news pointless and go long periods without it. [1] http://www.hermitary.com/articles/paul.html http://www.hermitary.com/articles/paul.html
JacksonGariety 14y ago
Wow, great find. Thank you for sharing. This is why I love Hacker News, one of the best things on the front page right now! Something that takes me outside my comfort zone and makes me think. These past two days have been some of Hacker News' best.
- lmm 14y ago
  I have to disagree with that. We've got largely the same story and the same discussion happening ten times over, but I would feel bad about flagging them under the circumstances. I wish HN would get back to normal - and social conventions make me feel bad about thinking that, even though I never knew the guy, he was one of thousands of strangers to die that day.
- Centigonal 14y ago
  Are you being satirical?
  - reinhardt 14y ago
    Most likely, and I share the sentiment. I wouldn't mind having, say, the first thread on this story pinned for a week as the top post to let everyone grieve, protest, vent, ramble and whatnot. Filling up the HN front page for two days in a row though is just too much though and may lead to desensitization.
  - eyko 14y ago
    ^ this is actually an important question.
ericclemmons 14y ago
I've found myself feeling the same way since 2008 about the news. After 9/11, I was consumed by talk radio, talking heads, blogs of varying opinions, but ultimately found that I wasn't being more useful and informed...I was becoming angry, quick to judge, and worst of all, less intelligent and analytical with my decisions. Being in the tech field, we're trained daily to evaluate competing, languages, and technologies not only on their own merits, but how closely they relate to our way of thinking. Most importantly, we tend to be willing to accept this change. Since no longer being immersed in news, I spend time reading thins of value that either make me feel good, or something that I can apply for the betterment of myself or others. When elections come about, I do my research, cast a vote, and perhaps contact the office of the elected when news trickles down to me about a bill I want input on.
pscsbs 14y ago
I completely disagree with Aaron, but I respect his opinion. Reading the news is incredibly important, and it shapes your understanding of culture and circumstances outside your social bubble, which in turn affects your future social interactions.
- seanalltogether 14y ago
  I agree with you. It feels this defense is akin to saying, "Why bother reading history, it has nothing to do with me"
  - diego 14y ago
    Did you read the whole article? "With the time people waste reading a newspaper every day, they could have read an entire book about most subjects covered and thereby learned about it with far more detail and far more impact than the daily doses they get dribbled out by the paper. But people, of course, wouldn’t read a book about most subjects covered in the paper, because most of them are simply irrelevant."
    - enraged_camel 14y ago
      Events typically don't become book material until several years after they occur. You might say that by the time you read about an event in a book, it is already history. News coverage is more immediate. And while 95% of all news is useless bullshit, there is still stuff in there that is useful and relevant for shaping one's understanding of the current times.
- rshlo 14y ago
  You're right. Reading the New York Times isn't about news to me, as it a tool to generate ideas. Their magazine articles or in-depth coverage of topics made me re-evaluate many times my standings on various topics.
- ewolf 14y ago
  I think this highly depends on the what you consider "news". Aaron mentioned things you find on the front page — those usually are short pieces of the latest information without much context or in-depth analysis. I don't think he wanted to condemn background articles, no matter if they are published in a newspaper or elsewhere (he mentions "longer-form essays or thoughtful books"). With this in mind, I agree with him — I benefit more from comprehensive articles describing long-term developments than from the latest events in some affair that affects me way too little for these details to matter to me. This is not to say that the happenings in faraway countries are something I ought not to know about, however, a short summary after the events have passed would usually suffice.
tinym 14y ago
Thoreau: "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."
- frozenport 14y ago
  It is a relevant quote, but it should be said that infrastructure facilitates commerce and that the New and Old World - despite Thoreau's humbuggary - had much to talk about. He would probably disapprove of the Internet in specific and modernity in general.
- zecho 14y ago
  Another Thoreau quote, also from Walden: "And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea."
frozenport 14y ago
Besides always having something to talk about when meeting with people, reading the news is an exercise in critical thinking and analysis. Distilling a narrative from various sources about remote subjects is a skill that is applicable to yourself. If you can understand the narratives you hear on you may gain the skills to understand your immediate circumstances. tl;dr Critical thinking is good for you!
- thorum 14y ago
  Reading the news is an exercise in critical thinking, but is it a better one than reading books? If you want to practice distilling a narrative from various sources, why not read several different books about history or science or philosophy instead?
  - frozenport 14y ago
    This is a hard question and in my initial post I wanted to write a paragraph rant about it. I think there is a case for the similarity between the slow stream of aleatory snippets that characterize the websites like the New York Times and the way we receive information concerning our everyday lives. The way we get information in our lives is certainly granular, contains much noise, and is primarily observation. Novels are not granular with little noise. Philosophy is explanation and we may miss out on the initial gather steps. Although it would be fun to phrase this a testable hypothesis. I think its a different kind of critical thinking.
- mieubrisse 14y ago
  I think this is the point I agree with the most on the topic. Though some - not "all"! - news may not be relevant to the reader (it's sheer impossibility to claim that absolutely nothing is relevant), I find it's important to apply analytical skills to situations which have widely local impact.
lmm 14y ago
I've avoided newspapers for a couple of years, for much the same reasons described here. I still read a monthly news magazine, sometimes a weekly one. I find reading an international edition helps a lot (whether of a foreign or domestic news source) - less of the ins and outs of day-to-day politics and crime, which really don't enhance my life. What's left are two kinds of stories - actual "news", by which I mean events that are more unusual and important; the kind of content that will be history in the future. This... feels like it affects me; I would prefer to read the history books about it, but they're not written yet, and I want to know now while there's still time to do something about it. If I'm going to change the world, even at the very limited level of making a product that makes some people's lives easier, that will probably be made possible because of some new piece of information; waiting until it's accepted wisdom is too late. The other kind is features that are "still true", that aren't particularly time-sensitive. Things I could just as well read a book about, indeed. But my experience is that short essays are much better than books, to the extent that many of my favourite "books" are nothing more than collections of essays or newspaper columns. Likewise in fiction (and one thing that drives my choice of magazine is that it includes fiction), short stories are often more compelling and impactful than long ones.
Vivtek 14y ago
"Not about me." Richly ironic, that. But he was right. I feel much better about life when I don't read the news - and I'm typically far more productive during those periods when I manage to abstain.
ilanco 14y ago
I live in Israel, where if you start your day by reading the news, you will fall into a depression that, if lucky, will last until you fall asleep.
- alan_cx 14y ago
  I live in the UK and feel the same way, except now I feel a bit guilty about it...
FrojoS 14y ago
"I think following the news is a waste of time." I'm sure this plaid a role in him being so productive. But I do think its my obligation to read the news. Even if it makes me less productive. Without the news I would have never learned about Aarons hack and his trial. Of course, just knowing the news is not enough. One has to act. In the case of Aaron, we didn't act.
- halviti 14y ago
  You missed the point of the article entirely. Let's say you knew of Aaron's plight. Would this news have changed your life for the better by you getting this knowledge the day it happened?
  - 205guy 14y ago
    And you missed the point as well: if you didn't know who Aaron was, and you didn't click any of the links on HN about him, would your life be any different? I didn't know about Aaron until all the articles started popping up here. Only curiosity drove me to find out the story, no real need or purpose.
- pdonis 14y ago
  Without the news I would have never learned about Aarons hack and his trial. Maybe it depends on how you define "news". Everything I know about Aaron Swartz, I know from following links I encountered here. True, this is a "news" site, but it's filtered news; I think that's an important point. The problem with "mainstream" news media is not just that they're bad at reporting; they're also bad at filtering, because their filter criterion is what will sell papers/get more viewers, rather than what information is genuinely of value to the most readers.
  - eru 14y ago
    > The problem with "mainstream" news media is not just that they're bad at reporting; they're also bad at filtering, because their filter criterion is what will sell papers/get more viewers, Here we filter for karma..
chill1 14y ago
"[The news'] obsession with the criminal and the deviant makes us less trusting people. Its obsession with the hurry of the day-to-day makes us less reflective thinkers. Its obsession with surfaces makes us shallow."
patdennis 14y ago
A large part of my day to day job involves summarizing political careers from thousands of pages of news articles. As a general rule, I find that for every thousand pages of news copy, one can usually distill about thirty pages of useful facts (the rest being redundant, speculative, filler, or otherwise unimportant).
louwrentius 14y ago
I haven't watched television for like 10 years now and I only spend time on news sites. But recently I realised how much time I just waste on the news instead and how little I gain. I could have learned more about python or read a good book about an important subject. News is like junkfood for the mind. Very short topics that are not relevant to my life. Sometimes I read articles about rape or other injustice and those topics just infuriate me, but I'm totally powerless. News exhaust me. It has no value for me whatsoever. I can't recall that I ever made any important decision based on it. This article is so true. When journalist write about a topic you know a lot about, there are often so many errors, that you wonder how many errors there are in topics you don't know about. If you read the news as a hobby, sure, be my guest. But that's something else.
HSO 14y ago
related, possibly of interest: [1] R. Dobelli. Avoid News. Aug 2010. --> http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par... [2] C. A. Johnson. The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption. O’Reilly, 2012. i myself am conflicted about the news. i agree with most of the negative points both by OP and the above; but i also feel i actually do learn something from the news, esp. as i have a relatively organized note-taking system, file and reference articles above a certain threshold of interest in bibdesk, etc. i think the reason i learn something is that i take the 5 secs to take a screenshot or copy-paste the relevant snippets of information in my system. over time, you can see interesting patterns. sometimes, i run across a reference to some other, deeper source of information (presumably the background material the high-level news article was based on), and file a to-do to check it out in my task manager. usually i wouldn't have thought of this source or reference if i hadn't seen it cited in the news. last but not least, just scanning the headlines and summaries can give you a sense of what the hivemind of "the market" (or "the public") is preoccupied with at the moment. so, at least to me, it's not all bad and yet i agree that it often feels like a waste of time and mental energy. i haven't figured out a solution yet but completely quitting the news is not going to cut it for me.
- dorian-graph 14y ago
  You're different though to the majority of people. It seems as if Aaron was making a case more so for the bland, mass news spewed out through the TV about wild stories and dirty things.
rdl 14y ago
I think it's important to look at some events as they unfold, vs. in retrospect, even if only to train yourself. Pick a historical event (say, the assassination which kicked off WW1). Read news in chronological order, as it came out. See how different things seem at any point in time vs. how they look retrospectively a century later.
mark-r 14y ago
A little OT, but seeing his posts end with "You should follow me on twitter here" makes me very sad. It's a constant reminder of what we'll miss.
propercoil 14y ago
I don't read news anymore (two years now), only watch tech shows in my "niche". But some say perception is reality, so maybe it's smart to be in the know from time to time.
edwardunknown 14y ago
The problem with this theory is that when a person who follows the news hears a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh or reads something from naturalnews.com they realize pretty quickly that it's bullshit. The people who fall for that stuff always seem to be uninformed about current events or get it only from warped sources. You can extrapolate that to nazis or communism or wherever but the bottom line is an uninformed populace is easy pickings for ambitious bad guys.
- VigUi7vv8G2 14y ago
  The problem, though, is that Fox news actually backs up the kind of stuff Limbaugh says. So people can "watch the news" and still see their worldview validated.
schneitj 14y ago
I found this paper by Rolf Dobelli to be very insightful. It was a TED talk a long time ago, back when that meant a little more. http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par...
chernevik 14y ago
"There is voting, of course, but to become an informed voter all one needs to do is read a short guide about the candidates and issues before the election." For one thing this places enormous trust in the guide-writers. For another it enormously oversimplifies the topics on which the guides would touch.
- waqf 14y ago
  And yet what alternative is there? If you follow the news you're placing the same trust in journalists. To become a truly informed voter, not relying on others' summary explanations, would be more than a full-time career.
  - pyre 14y ago
    How about people that are like-minded band together and dedicate one person to research all of the issues and present them, or an issue per person (or something else)?
    - aptwebapps 14y ago
      That sounds suspiciously like a meta-political party.
      - pyre 14y ago
        My thought was that if you kept it small, you could keep a better handle on whether to trust the person that was gathering the information for you. It's more difficult to scale this sort of solution without running into the same trust issues brought up. But there's not reason that a ton of small groups like this could dot the landscape.
    - dagw 14y ago
      people that are like-minded band together and dedicate one person to research all of the issues and present them That sounds a lot like what FOX News does actually.
billboebel 14y ago
I gave up main stream news 4 years ago and I pretty much only read tech news. However, I find that important news still bubble up to me quickly through other channels such as word of mouth and through the tech news feeds. And I find that none of my time is wasted by worthless news, such as partison bickering, the latest traffic accident on I-35 or celebrity gossip. You should try it.
cinbun8 14y ago
It is ironic that 'news' of his death has attracted attention to this article.
- contingencies 14y ago
  I wonder if Aaron would still agree that, in spending time reading coverage of this, we have not really changed our opinions or learned anything relevant to our lives? He sounds like a pragmatist, and I think he would. Personally, as devil's advocate, reading the reports of yet another intelligent young person being pressured and victimized by the sickly allied commercial/government capitalist establishment (of their own country), it redoubles my stance that current era government lacks any honest sense of democracy; we desperately need to claw back the power of nations (and business) against the individual. (Assange is in some senses leading the charge here, and doing a good job!) My point though is that sometimes news helps contribute to general impressions like this. I think that can be as valuable as the concrete relevant new life-actionable information that Aaron points out correctly is usually missing from news. In short I agree with Aaron, but there are counter-points. (I haven't watched/read news regularly since pretty much ever... but consider myself reasonably informed on the issues behind the issues, ie. structure of government, general state of society in different parts of the world, methods of oppression. But that knowledge comes from the hacking community and travel (eg. Tunisia during revolution, many years living in China, some time in US&UK, Europe, most of Asia, etc.) not from mainstream news.) Does anyone here still read news on a daily basis? If so, why?
jrogers65 14y ago
Relevant: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gel... > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. Journalists are people who know little of anything writing about everything.
- thisishugo 14y ago
  Depends on the journalist and publication. I at least like to think I understood the topics I wrote about when I was writing stories a couple of years ago. But I wrote for a niche publication, not a general news site, so I wasn't required to write about "everything," just the subset I was familiar with.
  - eru 14y ago
    Also The Economist is frequently not totally clueless about computer technology.
    - randomsearch 14y ago
      Completely agree. There are many great journalists out there. How easy it is to cherry pick or dismiss journalism based on examples of how bad it can be. fwiw, I couldn't agree less with this article. In fact, it scares me that an educated person could think this way. RS
dredmorbius 14y ago
Let us look at the front page of today’s New York Times....there is a story about Republicans feuding among themselves.... a photo of soldiers in Iraq. A stock exchange chief must return $100M... a concern about some doctors over-selling a nerve testing system... a threat from China against North Korea... 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. Reading them may be enjoyable, but it’s an enjoyable waste of time. They will have no impact on my actions one way or another. Considering the defining cause of Aaron's life, and apparently the straw that pushed him to end, turned out to be information liberation, including freeing access to legal and science documents, the latter strongly tied to "virtual science classes", I'd say Aaron misjudged the relevance of news to his life. I absolutely agree that most news is immaterial. That said, having lived over twice Aaron's age when he wrote this essay, what I've found is that sometimes the news does affect me, occasionally directly. Not terribly often, but I've had bosses nominated to government office by presidents, companies I work for turn up in major fraud investigations, former colleagues sentenced to Federal prison, acquaintances convicted of murder. Understanding economic patterns can help guide decisions and actions. Even weather and traffic can be useful at times. This doesn't mean that Fox News blaring in the corner is the best way to assimilate this information. Even selecting more fair and balanced (to say nothing of appropriate and informative) sources, I find myself switching from voice to music (increasingly classical) simply to avoid driving myself to distraction. But a brief, well-curated, reliable news source can be both broadening and useful. Key is to let it serve, not drive you. It need not be a daily habit (though it often is). I've also had numerous inspirations from "softer" programming via NPR and similar outlets -- culture, arts, and science programming can re-frame or contextualize problems I'm working on, and remind me that there are worlds outside my own experience (check your biases, always a first source of errors).
DennisP 14y ago
Years ago I saw Ray Bradbury give a talk at our city library, and he spent some of his time saying the same thing.

213 points by paupino_masano 14y ago

I think it's funny that the article about the news being irrelevant ends with the cliched tagline: "You should follow me on Twitter." Because that would be relevant.

halviti 14y ago
Comparing aarons twitter feed to cnn in this context; to me it actually would be more relevant.
bensw 14y ago
He added that line to all his blog posts when he redesigned his blog years after this was originally posted
rationalbeats 14y ago
This post is from October 20, 2006 Twitter did not exist then, so I think it is obvious to the people who read this website how a tag like that would be there now.
trentlott 14y ago
...and then his Twitter is littered with Huffington, NPR, etc links.

askimto 14y ago

Felt the same way this morning when I caught a few minutes of This Week, covering the next "fiscal cliff", the lack of women in Obama's cabinet, and so on. What a waste of time.

miles 14y ago

Similar sentiments from a brother several thousand years ago: "...I start up out of dreams and am disturbed, trembling at every message, with my own peace of mind depending upon letters not my own. Someone has arrived from Rome. 'If only there is no bad news!' But how can anything bad for you happen in a place, if you are not there? Someone arrives from Greece. 'If only there is no bad news!' In this way for you every place can cause misfortune. Isn't it enough for you to be miserable where you are? Must you needs be miserable even beyond the seas, and by letter?"

205guy 14y ago
I like this quote, only slightly newer, by Paul the hermit: "Tell me, I pray, how fares the human race: if new roofs be risen in the ancient cities, whose empire it is that now holds sway in the world, if any still survive, snared in the error of demons."[1] It epitomizes the futility of "news:" even if you live in a cave for many years (decades), as long as you know a bit about human nature and history, you know the news--just not the names. Like the OP, I find news pointless and go long periods without it. [1] http://www.hermitary.com/articles/paul.html http://www.hermitary.com/articles/paul.html

JacksonGariety 14y ago

Wow, great find. Thank you for sharing. This is why I love Hacker News, one of the best things on the front page right now! Something that takes me outside my comfort zone and makes me think. These past two days have been some of Hacker News' best.

lmm 14y ago
I have to disagree with that. We've got largely the same story and the same discussion happening ten times over, but I would feel bad about flagging them under the circumstances. I wish HN would get back to normal - and social conventions make me feel bad about thinking that, even though I never knew the guy, he was one of thousands of strangers to die that day.
Centigonal 14y ago
Are you being satirical?
- reinhardt 14y ago
  Most likely, and I share the sentiment. I wouldn't mind having, say, the first thread on this story pinned for a week as the top post to let everyone grieve, protest, vent, ramble and whatnot. Filling up the HN front page for two days in a row though is just too much though and may lead to desensitization.
- eyko 14y ago
  ^ this is actually an important question.

ericclemmons 14y ago

I've found myself feeling the same way since 2008 about the news. After 9/11, I was consumed by talk radio, talking heads, blogs of varying opinions, but ultimately found that I wasn't being more useful and informed...I was becoming angry, quick to judge, and worst of all, less intelligent and analytical with my decisions. Being in the tech field, we're trained daily to evaluate competing, languages, and technologies not only on their own merits, but how closely they relate to our way of thinking. Most importantly, we tend to be willing to accept this change. Since no longer being immersed in news, I spend time reading thins of value that either make me feel good, or something that I can apply for the betterment of myself or others. When elections come about, I do my research, cast a vote, and perhaps contact the office of the elected when news trickles down to me about a bill I want input on.

pscsbs 14y ago

I completely disagree with Aaron, but I respect his opinion. Reading the news is incredibly important, and it shapes your understanding of culture and circumstances outside your social bubble, which in turn affects your future social interactions.

seanalltogether 14y ago
I agree with you. It feels this defense is akin to saying, "Why bother reading history, it has nothing to do with me"
- diego 14y ago
  Did you read the whole article? "With the time people waste reading a newspaper every day, they could have read an entire book about most subjects covered and thereby learned about it with far more detail and far more impact than the daily doses they get dribbled out by the paper. But people, of course, wouldn’t read a book about most subjects covered in the paper, because most of them are simply irrelevant."
  - enraged_camel 14y ago
    Events typically don't become book material until several years after they occur. You might say that by the time you read about an event in a book, it is already history. News coverage is more immediate. And while 95% of all news is useless bullshit, there is still stuff in there that is useful and relevant for shaping one's understanding of the current times.
rshlo 14y ago
You're right. Reading the New York Times isn't about news to me, as it a tool to generate ideas. Their magazine articles or in-depth coverage of topics made me re-evaluate many times my standings on various topics.
ewolf 14y ago
I think this highly depends on the what you consider "news". Aaron mentioned things you find on the front page — those usually are short pieces of the latest information without much context or in-depth analysis. I don't think he wanted to condemn background articles, no matter if they are published in a newspaper or elsewhere (he mentions "longer-form essays or thoughtful books"). With this in mind, I agree with him — I benefit more from comprehensive articles describing long-term developments than from the latest events in some affair that affects me way too little for these details to matter to me. This is not to say that the happenings in faraway countries are something I ought not to know about, however, a short summary after the events have passed would usually suffice.

tinym 14y ago

Thoreau: "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."

frozenport 14y ago
It is a relevant quote, but it should be said that infrastructure facilitates commerce and that the New and Old World - despite Thoreau's humbuggary - had much to talk about. He would probably disapprove of the Internet in specific and modernity in general.
zecho 14y ago
Another Thoreau quote, also from Walden: "And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea."

frozenport 14y ago

Besides always having something to talk about when meeting with people, reading the news is an exercise in critical thinking and analysis. Distilling a narrative from various sources about remote subjects is a skill that is applicable to yourself. If you can understand the narratives you hear on you may gain the skills to understand your immediate circumstances. tl;dr Critical thinking is good for you!

thorum 14y ago
Reading the news is an exercise in critical thinking, but is it a better one than reading books? If you want to practice distilling a narrative from various sources, why not read several different books about history or science or philosophy instead?
- frozenport 14y ago
  This is a hard question and in my initial post I wanted to write a paragraph rant about it. I think there is a case for the similarity between the slow stream of aleatory snippets that characterize the websites like the New York Times and the way we receive information concerning our everyday lives. The way we get information in our lives is certainly granular, contains much noise, and is primarily observation. Novels are not granular with little noise. Philosophy is explanation and we may miss out on the initial gather steps. Although it would be fun to phrase this a testable hypothesis. I think its a different kind of critical thinking.
mieubrisse 14y ago
I think this is the point I agree with the most on the topic. Though some - not "all"! - news may not be relevant to the reader (it's sheer impossibility to claim that absolutely nothing is relevant), I find it's important to apply analytical skills to situations which have widely local impact.

lmm 14y ago

I've avoided newspapers for a couple of years, for much the same reasons described here. I still read a monthly news magazine, sometimes a weekly one. I find reading an international edition helps a lot (whether of a foreign or domestic news source) - less of the ins and outs of day-to-day politics and crime, which really don't enhance my life. What's left are two kinds of stories - actual "news", by which I mean events that are more unusual and important; the kind of content that will be history in the future. This... feels like it affects me; I would prefer to read the history books about it, but they're not written yet, and I want to know now while there's still time to do something about it. If I'm going to change the world, even at the very limited level of making a product that makes some people's lives easier, that will probably be made possible because of some new piece of information; waiting until it's accepted wisdom is too late. The other kind is features that are "still true", that aren't particularly time-sensitive. Things I could just as well read a book about, indeed. But my experience is that short essays are much better than books, to the extent that many of my favourite "books" are nothing more than collections of essays or newspaper columns. Likewise in fiction (and one thing that drives my choice of magazine is that it includes fiction), short stories are often more compelling and impactful than long ones.

Vivtek 14y ago

"Not about me." Richly ironic, that. But he was right. I feel much better about life when I don't read the news - and I'm typically far more productive during those periods when I manage to abstain.

ilanco 14y ago

I live in Israel, where if you start your day by reading the news, you will fall into a depression that, if lucky, will last until you fall asleep.

alan_cx 14y ago
I live in the UK and feel the same way, except now I feel a bit guilty about it...

FrojoS 14y ago

"I think following the news is a waste of time." I'm sure this plaid a role in him being so productive. But I do think its my obligation to read the news. Even if it makes me less productive. Without the news I would have never learned about Aarons hack and his trial. Of course, just knowing the news is not enough. One has to act. In the case of Aaron, we didn't act.

halviti 14y ago
You missed the point of the article entirely. Let's say you knew of Aaron's plight. Would this news have changed your life for the better by you getting this knowledge the day it happened?
- 205guy 14y ago
  And you missed the point as well: if you didn't know who Aaron was, and you didn't click any of the links on HN about him, would your life be any different? I didn't know about Aaron until all the articles started popping up here. Only curiosity drove me to find out the story, no real need or purpose.
pdonis 14y ago
Without the news I would have never learned about Aarons hack and his trial. Maybe it depends on how you define "news". Everything I know about Aaron Swartz, I know from following links I encountered here. True, this is a "news" site, but it's filtered news; I think that's an important point. The problem with "mainstream" news media is not just that they're bad at reporting; they're also bad at filtering, because their filter criterion is what will sell papers/get more viewers, rather than what information is genuinely of value to the most readers.
- eru 14y ago
  > The problem with "mainstream" news media is not just that they're bad at reporting; they're also bad at filtering, because their filter criterion is what will sell papers/get more viewers, Here we filter for karma..

chill1 14y ago

"[The news'] obsession with the criminal and the deviant makes us less trusting people. Its obsession with the hurry of the day-to-day makes us less reflective thinkers. Its obsession with surfaces makes us shallow."

patdennis 14y ago

A large part of my day to day job involves summarizing political careers from thousands of pages of news articles. As a general rule, I find that for every thousand pages of news copy, one can usually distill about thirty pages of useful facts (the rest being redundant, speculative, filler, or otherwise unimportant).

louwrentius 14y ago

I haven't watched television for like 10 years now and I only spend time on news sites. But recently I realised how much time I just waste on the news instead and how little I gain. I could have learned more about python or read a good book about an important subject. News is like junkfood for the mind. Very short topics that are not relevant to my life. Sometimes I read articles about rape or other injustice and those topics just infuriate me, but I'm totally powerless. News exhaust me. It has no value for me whatsoever. I can't recall that I ever made any important decision based on it. This article is so true. When journalist write about a topic you know a lot about, there are often so many errors, that you wonder how many errors there are in topics you don't know about. If you read the news as a hobby, sure, be my guest. But that's something else.

HSO 14y ago

related, possibly of interest: [1] R. Dobelli. Avoid News. Aug 2010. --> http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par... [2] C. A. Johnson. The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption. O’Reilly, 2012. i myself am conflicted about the news. i agree with most of the negative points both by OP and the above; but i also feel i actually do learn something from the news, esp. as i have a relatively organized note-taking system, file and reference articles above a certain threshold of interest in bibdesk, etc. i think the reason i learn something is that i take the 5 secs to take a screenshot or copy-paste the relevant snippets of information in my system. over time, you can see interesting patterns. sometimes, i run across a reference to some other, deeper source of information (presumably the background material the high-level news article was based on), and file a to-do to check it out in my task manager. usually i wouldn't have thought of this source or reference if i hadn't seen it cited in the news. last but not least, just scanning the headlines and summaries can give you a sense of what the hivemind of "the market" (or "the public") is preoccupied with at the moment. so, at least to me, it's not all bad and yet i agree that it often feels like a waste of time and mental energy. i haven't figured out a solution yet but completely quitting the news is not going to cut it for me.

dorian-graph 14y ago
You're different though to the majority of people. It seems as if Aaron was making a case more so for the bland, mass news spewed out through the TV about wild stories and dirty things.

rdl 14y ago

I think it's important to look at some events as they unfold, vs. in retrospect, even if only to train yourself. Pick a historical event (say, the assassination which kicked off WW1). Read news in chronological order, as it came out. See how different things seem at any point in time vs. how they look retrospectively a century later.

mark-r 14y ago

A little OT, but seeing his posts end with "You should follow me on twitter here" makes me very sad. It's a constant reminder of what we'll miss.

propercoil 14y ago

I don't read news anymore (two years now), only watch tech shows in my "niche". But some say perception is reality, so maybe it's smart to be in the know from time to time.

edwardunknown 14y ago

The problem with this theory is that when a person who follows the news hears a few minutes of Rush Limbaugh or reads something from naturalnews.com they realize pretty quickly that it's bullshit. The people who fall for that stuff always seem to be uninformed about current events or get it only from warped sources. You can extrapolate that to nazis or communism or wherever but the bottom line is an uninformed populace is easy pickings for ambitious bad guys.

VigUi7vv8G2 14y ago
The problem, though, is that Fox news actually backs up the kind of stuff Limbaugh says. So people can "watch the news" and still see their worldview validated.

schneitj 14y ago

I found this paper by Rolf Dobelli to be very insightful. It was a TED talk a long time ago, back when that meant a little more. http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par...

chernevik 14y ago

"There is voting, of course, but to become an informed voter all one needs to do is read a short guide about the candidates and issues before the election." For one thing this places enormous trust in the guide-writers. For another it enormously oversimplifies the topics on which the guides would touch.

waqf 14y ago
And yet what alternative is there? If you follow the news you're placing the same trust in journalists. To become a truly informed voter, not relying on others' summary explanations, would be more than a full-time career.
- pyre 14y ago
  How about people that are like-minded band together and dedicate one person to research all of the issues and present them, or an issue per person (or something else)?
  - aptwebapps 14y ago
    That sounds suspiciously like a meta-political party.
    - pyre 14y ago
      My thought was that if you kept it small, you could keep a better handle on whether to trust the person that was gathering the information for you. It's more difficult to scale this sort of solution without running into the same trust issues brought up. But there's not reason that a ton of small groups like this could dot the landscape.
  - dagw 14y ago
    people that are like-minded band together and dedicate one person to research all of the issues and present them That sounds a lot like what FOX News does actually.

billboebel 14y ago

I gave up main stream news 4 years ago and I pretty much only read tech news. However, I find that important news still bubble up to me quickly through other channels such as word of mouth and through the tech news feeds. And I find that none of my time is wasted by worthless news, such as partison bickering, the latest traffic accident on I-35 or celebrity gossip. You should try it.

cinbun8 14y ago

It is ironic that 'news' of his death has attracted attention to this article.

contingencies 14y ago
I wonder if Aaron would still agree that, in spending time reading coverage of this, we have not really changed our opinions or learned anything relevant to our lives? He sounds like a pragmatist, and I think he would. Personally, as devil's advocate, reading the reports of yet another intelligent young person being pressured and victimized by the sickly allied commercial/government capitalist establishment (of their own country), it redoubles my stance that current era government lacks any honest sense of democracy; we desperately need to claw back the power of nations (and business) against the individual. (Assange is in some senses leading the charge here, and doing a good job!) My point though is that sometimes news helps contribute to general impressions like this. I think that can be as valuable as the concrete relevant new life-actionable information that Aaron points out correctly is usually missing from news. In short I agree with Aaron, but there are counter-points. (I haven't watched/read news regularly since pretty much ever... but consider myself reasonably informed on the issues behind the issues, ie. structure of government, general state of society in different parts of the world, methods of oppression. But that knowledge comes from the hacking community and travel (eg. Tunisia during revolution, many years living in China, some time in US&UK, Europe, most of Asia, etc.) not from mainstream news.) Does anyone here still read news on a daily basis? If so, why?

jrogers65 14y ago

Relevant: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gel... > Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. Journalists are people who know little of anything writing about everything.

thisishugo 14y ago
Depends on the journalist and publication. I at least like to think I understood the topics I wrote about when I was writing stories a couple of years ago. But I wrote for a niche publication, not a general news site, so I wasn't required to write about "everything," just the subset I was familiar with.
- eru 14y ago
  Also The Economist is frequently not totally clueless about computer technology.
  - randomsearch 14y ago
    Completely agree. There are many great journalists out there. How easy it is to cherry pick or dismiss journalism based on examples of how bad it can be. fwiw, I couldn't agree less with this article. In fact, it scares me that an educated person could think this way. RS

dredmorbius 14y ago

Let us look at the front page of today’s New York Times....there is a story about Republicans feuding among themselves.... a photo of soldiers in Iraq. A stock exchange chief must return $100M... a concern about some doctors over-selling a nerve testing system... a threat from China against North Korea... 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. Reading them may be enjoyable, but it’s an enjoyable waste of time. They will have no impact on my actions one way or another. Considering the defining cause of Aaron's life, and apparently the straw that pushed him to end, turned out to be information liberation, including freeing access to legal and science documents, the latter strongly tied to "virtual science classes", I'd say Aaron misjudged the relevance of news to his life. I absolutely agree that most news is immaterial. That said, having lived over twice Aaron's age when he wrote this essay, what I've found is that sometimes the news does affect me, occasionally directly. Not terribly often, but I've had bosses nominated to government office by presidents, companies I work for turn up in major fraud investigations, former colleagues sentenced to Federal prison, acquaintances convicted of murder. Understanding economic patterns can help guide decisions and actions. Even weather and traffic can be useful at times. This doesn't mean that Fox News blaring in the corner is the best way to assimilate this information. Even selecting more fair and balanced (to say nothing of appropriate and informative) sources, I find myself switching from voice to music (increasingly classical) simply to avoid driving myself to distraction. But a brief, well-curated, reliable news source can be both broadening and useful. Key is to let it serve, not drive you. It need not be a daily habit (though it often is). I've also had numerous inspirations from "softer" programming via NPR and similar outlets -- culture, arts, and science programming can re-frame or contextualize problems I'm working on, and remind me that there are worlds outside my own experience (check your biases, always a first source of errors).

DennisP 14y ago

Years ago I saw Ray Bradbury give a talk at our city library, and he spent some of his time saying the same thing.