17 ms·

News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

• zampano 13y ago
  On the other hand, when my own personal problems seem immense, sometimes it can give me a lot of perspective to see the problems the world as a whole has to face. Surely in doses too large or too often, it can be a major detriment to my ability to work (especially when there is a news "crisis" going on, real or imagined). However, I'd say overall the net effect of regularly ingesting the news has been to make me feel closer to my fellow human beings than before I read the news often and had only the things and people in my immediate surroundings to ponder about.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• anonozc 13y ago
  That sounds like what Tim Ferriss said in 4 hour workweek
  • Paul_D_Santana 13y ago
    Yes! Definitely! It is such an incredibly excellent book. I listened to the Audible version twice in one month (26 hours in total). I think everyone should check it out, at least for the alternate viewpoints on doing things. I actually wrote about this on my own site (link in my profile). On topic, I absolutely love the part in the book that says "Replace reading the newspaper over breakfast or dinner with activities like speaking with your spouse, playing with your children, etc." It's funny but this book has made me better at relationships, and even life. I wholeheartedly believe in the notion of not reading the news. It makes you more present, and more engaged with your own life.
    • Skibb 13y ago
      Tim, it's ok, we get it, you love your own book. Calm down babe. ;) Joking aside, the book has some very interesting ideas and personally has inspired me to seek change in my professional and personal life. Although, a blueprint everyone can follow word by word it's not.
      • Paul_D_Santana 13y ago
        Haha. I agree. It has some great and inspiring ideas but definitely not a blueprint for anyone. For example, I have no desire to live abroad so I completely disregarded the travel parts of the book, which is at least half of the book's content. I mean I did listen to those parts (via audiobook), but I focused my attention elsewhere. Whenever reading or listening to something, whether a book, podcast, or blog post, I look for at least one idea that I can apply to my own life. If I find something, then it was a worthwhile read/listen.
• mehrzad 13y ago
  I hope I'm not the only one seeing the irony of this post.
  • vy8vWJlco 13y ago
    I'm amazed to see an article trying to inform me that, indeed, ignorance is bliss. While I think people should watch their garbage intake, I'd certainly not encourage tuning out world events any more than I'd encourage running with both earbuds in. In either case one is likely to be taken off guard.
    • ruswick 13y ago
      Indeed. The article seemed quite hypocritical. For someone who decries the public knowing about how miserable the world is and emphatically preaches ignorance, he seems quite keen on informing the world about how much news sucks. (And undoubtedly selling books in the process.)
    • alexqgb 13y ago
      That's not what it says at all. What it says is that there are really big, deep, important, and world-changing stories happening all around us, but you won't get them from what passes for news. What you will get is a fragmentary sugar-high that actually damages your ability to grasp more meaningful accounts of the world. That is to say, the kind of news this story refers to (and which the Guardian sees itself as being above) will make you ignorant. Moreover, that ignorance is characterizes by anxiety and aggression. In other words, the opposite of bliss.
      • vy8vWJlco 13y ago
        I see what you're saying... It's just that the author says "news" when he means "the stuff called news that isn't news" which is hard to talk about without sounding like a hypocrite; he describes the phenomena - factoids - for example, but is ultimately participating in the proliferation of exactly the type of water-cooler/factoid/self-help pseudo-intellectual article that he's deriding. His article is filler in the "Media" section on guardiannews.com. The author might have said "too much junk 'news' makes people unhappy" and I'd have promptly carried on ignoring those types of articles. :)
• anactofgod 13y ago
  Says a newspaper.
• ctdonath 13y ago
  Any suggestions for a good neutral concise must-know news source?
  • richforrester 13y ago
    news.ycombinator.com Could, not, resist.
    • unimpressive 13y ago
      If you think that HN is neutral, need to know, or even concise, you're crazy. Though on the subject of neutrality, humans aren't neutral, so expecting their publications to be is itself insane.
      • OGinparadise 13y ago
        Not neutral at all. I believe that certain companies have their employees come here to flag or to ^ certain stories. Maybe not organized, but it happens regardless. I have noticed stories go from being on top to page 3 within minutes, simply because it was bad PR for a certain online monopoly.
      • richforrester 13y ago
        Cheers. Crazy, or maybe just misinformed. Thanks for enlightening me. (no sarcasm) Guess I'll think twice before posting something positive about HN from now on.
        • ajdecon 13y ago
          There are a lot of positive things about HN, without it being "real news". The major value for me is that it is (often) interesting. I learn a lot here that helps me find new ways to think about technology and the web industry. But it is not: * neutral: there are some pretty obvious biases, though they aren't consistent * need-to-know: there's nothing I've learned on HN which has been strictly necessary to me, though there's a lot which was interesting * concise: the net information density is relatively low, than higher on many other discussion sites. (Low bar, I know...)
• webwielder 13y ago
  See also "I Hate the News" by Aaron Swartz http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
  • pattisapu 13y ago
    See also Thoreau.
    • LeonB 13y ago
      Henry David Thoreau: All news is gossip http://wearethebest.wordpress.com/2007/04/09/henry-david- http://wearethebest.wordpress.com/2007/04/09/henry-david- thoreau-all-news-is-gossip/
  • zarify 13y ago
    Seems an odd thing for someone who was involved with RSS to write, considering that it lets you keep up with (selected) 'news' more effectively (sure, it might be the longer form stuff he says is more useful, but ultimately it lets you skim more individual articles which is the root of the problem). I agree that most mass media news is a waste of time since you have no control over the stories or the level of detail. I think news via feed is a lot better; you have more power to investigate the things that actually matter to you.
    • PavlovsCat 13y ago
      When it comes to mass media (and increasingly the web, too, thanks marketers), skimming content is not the problem, the sheer deluge of useless, distracting up to outright BS content is. Hence skipping that, and being selective about what you subscribe to RSS-wise :P
  • greenyoda 13y ago
    In the article (written in 2006), Aaron Swartz wrote: "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?" Ironically, he did unfortunately end up as a news story in which the government did something bad and he was personally involved.
• mattsfrey 13y ago
  Yeah honestly I've learned to repress my need to be informed due to just how depressing the news is in general. I don't find out about politics or world events until they are so big somebody IRL relays it. I keep it to HN, tech news, science, Nat Geo, etc, informative and positive (mostly).
• arikrak 13y ago
  Most of those reasons seem exaggerated, except one: News wastes time. It's just to easy and effortless to click on news stories and bam - there goes 45 minutes of time. Does anyone know a good program that blocks you from e.g. wasting more than 25 minutes reading news each day? Browser tools are too easy to bypass to be effective. (Editing the hosts file works, but then you can't visit those sites at all.)
  • OGinparadise 13y ago
    Most of those reasons seem exaggerated, except one: News wastes time. It's just to easy and effortless to click on news stories and bam - there goes 45 minutes of time. At least, but then you also need to know what's happening and not every second can be monetized, we'd become robots. I wish I could limit it to 15 minutes in the morning (Earthquake in ...; shooting ...; health care law ...; ....), 15 midday; 15 at night and then just chill looking at special interest sites like tech, archeology, history etc.
  • GHFigs 13y ago
    Editing the hosts file works, but then you can't visit those sites at all. Consider doing that for a week (or however long) and see if your habit changes. I've found that sense of effortlessness declines after such a break.
    • slig 13y ago
      One of my "new year resolution" this year was to block news sites on my /etc/hosts. Almost 5 months in and I'm not going back. The next step is blocking reddit.
      • pbhjpbhj 13y ago
        and HN?
        • slig 13y ago
          I believe I get positive value from HN. So while it's a good way to procrastinate, I'm think HN is a good news source to learn about new stuff, new frameworks, neat projects, etc.
• HunterV 13y ago
  I totally agree, hardly ever read the news even with a slight background in journalism. But I have to say the title alone sounds a tad Nineteen Eighty-Four. News does have a purpose as a balance of power.
• Aqueous 13y ago
  "News is Bad For you" by Guardian News. What's their angle here?
  • jugglinmike 13y ago
    The real irony comes from the author's claims: > Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which > require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities > of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for > the mind. ...and the manner of publication: > This is an edited extract from an essay first published > at dobelli.com. The Art of Thinking Clearly: Better > Thinking, Better Decisions by Rolf Dobelli is published > by Sceptre, £9.99. Buy it for £7.99 at > guardianbookshop.co.uk But there's a good case to be made for knowing your audience. In that sense, this version is actually much more likely to reach those who might be influenced by it.
  • greenyoda 13y ago
    It looks like the author of the article wants to promote his book (see the end of the article) and The Guardian will profit since it provides a link to the book in their own "book shop". And they figure that nobody will actually give up their news addiction after having read the article, so there's no risk to the newspaper's business. For those who like the article, the complete version from which this article is excerpted can be found here, in PDF form: http://www.theartofthinkingclearly.com/no-news-2?lang=en http://www.theartofthinkingclearly.com/no-news-2?lang=en
  • jeffmess 13y ago
    That's the first thing I thought. Oh the irony.
• tathagatadg 13y ago
  I used to read HN all day and felt good, elevated, enlightened ... pretty soon I was trying to learn every new language, trying every new framework, trying a new todo regime - needless to say I was getting no where. Soon I was very unhappy ... everybody was doing something cool other than me! Every Show HN: makes me feel I'm wasting my life in school ... and should dropout and start building what I've started sometime back ... But then someone told me, "Believe what you are doing is cool, inundating yourself with what others are doing won't get you anywhere other than giving you the false sense of wisdom!" Now I spend a lot less time on HN. And since it has the best content of the net .. I don't need to look anywhere else.
  • zabramow 13y ago
    I had a similar experience with Twitter, especially in terms of keeping tabs on competitors. Recently, I've stopped reading the tech blogs and I've found it's made me a ton happier and allowed me to focus on what I'm doing and stop looking in the rear view mirror. This post really resonated with me.
• DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  I've come to a similar conclusion. Because news emphasizes the dramatic over the contextual, they're always providing me poor information in an even poorer context. That's just the way the business works. I've done something weird, though: I switched to plaintext commentary. So each day I scan my personal news site, http://newspaper23.com http://newspaper23.com. It only does commentary. I find that by scanning the titles I can see what news items are hot in the world without getting so wrapped up in them. If I like, I can always read commentaries with opposing views on a particular issue. But the kicker is, somehow once the material is slanted, once I know it's spin, it no longer has the high level of emotional engagement. Writing an Op-Ed along the lines of "We must do X!" is simply a different art form than news fearmongering. Seriously, if you haven't given up MSM news, you need to. That shit will rot your brain. It's crisis-of-the-hour stuff over there. And the pundits just make it worse.
  • Osiris 13y ago
    http://newspaper23.com http://newspaper23.com looks like a great site. I've been looking for something that just shows headlines and doesn't require launching into an image-heavy site just to read the article. However, the JavaScript appears to be broken in Chrome. Switching categories doesn't work, for example.
    • mayank 13y ago
      You can try my news side project: http://newstandoff.com http://newstandoff.com
    • brador 13y ago
      Try http://skimfeed.com http://skimfeed.com. 60 news sources, 10 titles each, one page, all text.
      • verygoodyear 13y ago
        I like this, great on my iPad. Any plans for a mobile version? Also, what do you the stars signify? And I think Lifehacker is showing double links.
• tippenein 13y ago
  "New has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world." Which news is this? weather.com has some rather shallow "news" but it's a pretty big blanket statement..
• chinmoy 13y ago
  This blog post "The power of ignoring mainstream news" by Joel Gascoigne is also worth a read. http://joel.is/post/31582795753/the-power-of-ignoring-mainstream-news http://joel.is/post/31582795753/the-power-of-ignoring-mainst...
• debt 13y ago
  in america each election is similar to an exam in school. you need to study to pass an exam. your textbook is the news outlets of your choice. hopefully you've been keeping up on your studies so you can vote for the right candidate and pass the exam. you can determine for yourself if you've passed by...reading the news.
• bbbhn 13y ago
  There's also a certain arbitrariness to what the media establishment chooses to cover and how they choose to cover it. It often seems as if the "news" is nothing more than what entrenched political and/or private interests want people to be thinking that day. That's one of the reasons I'm really enjoying the new Vice show on HBO -- they're covering topics nobody else is touching, they don't censor or clean up the horrific aspects of the human behavior they're covering, and their presentation doesn't try to pretend that their reporters are anything other than human beings who possess their own viewpoints (rather than "objective" beings capable of transcending their own subjective perceptions and beliefs, like poor CNN still claims).
• ruswick 13y ago
  This article irks me. Although most "news" has regressed into banal link bait just plain yellow journalism, and the notion of the "news organization" has undergone an inexorable transition towards the likes of Buzzfeed the the Huffington Post, it's absurd to assert that all news is worthless. First, his point that no news can be of value to one's personal situation or decision-making is false. News has impacted my life thoroughly throughout the past year. Off the top of my head, some stories that have provoked meaningful consideration and or action from me include: Aaron Swartz, the election, several Supreme Court cases, the Bitcoin bubble (which inspired me to start my first true weekend project this week, http://twitter.com/Bitcoin_Ticker http://twitter.com/Bitcoin_Ticker)... There are still valuable and significant things happening in the world every day. Moreover, there is something incredibly presumptuous in his assertion that "we are not rational enough to be exposed to the press." The fact that many people are not particularly analytical and prefer to consume simple, superficial stories does not mean that every person is necessarily incapable of thinking critically about events and about how we ought to consider the dangers in society. Even if we can't help instinctive, irrational fear or bias, most people can acknowledge the irrational nature of their opinions and still intellectually acknowledge the true nature of the news. It's simply perverse to state that everyone is too stupid and or manipulable to rationally understand the news. His other problematic assertion, that "learned helplessness" is detrimental, is questionable. Regardless of knowledge, the world will still be filled with misery, poverty, death, bigotry, and fear. Is it better to be knowingly miserable or ignorantly blissful? I tend towards the former. John Mill's famous line, "it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied," comes to mind. This is a question that philosophers have puzzled over forever, and I won't get into it, but the fact that he dismisses such a philosophically significant and contentious argument so quickly is worrisome. Maybe it is better to know what the world is like, regardless of our ability to change it.
  • carleverett 13y ago
    About your last paragraph. It has always puzzled and bothered me that there is this popular notion that to truly understand the world is to be miserable and hopeless - that there exists this trade-off between knowledge and happiness. For me, the one blinding truth that exists about humanity is its undeniable progress on the grand timescale. You won't find anyone arguing really that we are worse off now than we were 100 years ago. I'm talking about the extremely basic progress indicator of the average quality of life of a human being on Earth (which is of course mostly subjective). Expand the timescale back beyond 100 years, and our progress just becomes more and more clear. We are so much better than we were 500 years ago in every single aspect of living on this planet: health care, wealth distribution, civil rights, freedom, scientific discovery, overall happiness... There is not a single aspect of humanity that was better back then. I should note that a huge reason our progress is not always as evident within 100 years is this pattern of people's adamant belief that the generation below them is somehow screwing up the world forever. Technology is making people stupid/socially retarded, music these days sucks, no one cares about other people anymore, blah blah blah. I could talk for hours about how much I hate this, but I'll just say that it is incorrect, and aspects of that idea that are true stem from the fact that younger people are generally stupider than older people, because they haven't lived as much. Everyone was once stupid, and "Kids these days" will eventually learn, like everyone does. If you let yourself become affected by the misery and despair that is definitely still around us on Earth, then in my opinion you are a part of the problem. You may not be Joseph Kony or Kim Jong-Un, but you are contributing just as much to the fear and hopelessness on Earth by becoming a part of it. And you are short-sited. The world is certainly not perfect, but it is also most certainly getting better. The most knowledgeable people on this planet are optimistic. They understand that horrific things are happening across the globe right now, but they also understand the world's natural condition of progress. These are also the people that contribute most to the progress of humanity. Sorry to rant. I agreed with your comment for the most part aside from that.
• wildgift 13y ago
  There's a ton of useful news out there. I get it filtered through serious people, or people interested in important things like labor laws, Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, local politics, urban development, civil liberties, and hacker news :). These are things that will affect me, and I can affect (in groups of course).
• mrgrieves 13y ago
  I do like the concept of information obesity, and the importance of budgeting one's attention. The article seemed to borrow it from The Information Diet: http://www.amazon.com/Information-Diet-Case-Conscious-Consumption/dp/1449304680 http://www.amazon.com/Information-Diet-Case-Conscious-Consum...
• shurcooL 13y ago
  "Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it - allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you." I agree, yet I find my main use for news is to make me feel connected with other humans... If I cut myself off from it, I feel disconnected and lonely. I feel like I'm missing relevant context. Is that an unfounded fear, and I should find ways to get rid of it? Or is it a valid concern, but are there better ways to feel connected? I work from home so I don't interact with a lot of people regularly.
  • greenyoda 13y ago
    As the article pointed out, you don't have to consume an endless, up to the minute, stream of news to know what's happening in the world. There are magazine articles, which are better researched and go into the stories in more detail, and there are also tons of books about recent history and politics. If you wait a week or a month before reading about some event, you can weed out a lot of the sensationalistic noise that constitutes news reporting, not to mention all the things that the reporters got wrong in the heat of the moment and had to correct later.
  • rubinelli 13y ago
    You can start by not having meals alone. It may sound silly, but having meals in a group is a great way to form stronger bonds.
    • shurcooL 13y ago
      Yes, that's very helpful. I do that whenever I work at my university lab. Unfortunately, it's not really an option when I work from home.
• Hitchhiker 13y ago
  I think Taleb was among the first to hit this tune. " To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers. " " The best test of whether someone is extremely stupid (or extremely wise) is whether financial and political news makes sense to him. " " There is a certain category of fool—the overeducated, the academic, the journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic "scientist", the pseudo-empiricist, those endowed with what I call "epistemic arrogance", this wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved. " " Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner. " source : http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb
  • MichaelGG 13y ago
    I played with options for a bit. Nearly all the "financial news" is information free. No matter what happens, there'll be an article explaining why. Even decent-seeming publications would join along in the "Stock X moved <direction> because of event Y", even though you could flip the predicates around and still have a coherent story. As Eliezer writes, "If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you have zero knowledge"[1]. To be fair though, I suppose the real "news" is subtle information and isn't likely to become a simple headline and the people able to make use of it are unlikely to detail the causation afterwards. Although, sometimes I wonder, at least in stocks, if the nonsense "news" ends up driving things more than any fundamental reasons. 1: http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/
• dhughes 13y ago
  I used to like watching the news but these days supposedly reputable news organizations are what tabloid shows were 20 years ago. "Guess what happened today!?" instead of just reading the news. And everyone editorializes, everything has to be dramatic no news organizations seem to be impartial anymore news organizations are classed as either left or right of centre and people have to choose their side. Someone once said about watching TV news "Your central nervous system isn't meant to handle seeing death and disaster everyday". The only US news I like is PBS. Here in Canada CBC isn't too bad but I find it drifting to the left instead of the impartial center and also it seems to also be fascinated with making everything dramatic. I think this problem with news these days is only for the under 30 crowd since it seems nobody I know under that age reads a newspaper or watches TV news, maybe at most a one paragraph blip on a website.
• eyeareque 13y ago
  I gave up my multiple time per day reads of news.google.com. I decided that it didn't improve my life to hear what shooting took place, or what North Korea had done this time, every day. I still read technology news, but the normal day to day stuff I've completely stopped following. It's been a few months since I gave it up and I must say that I'm happy with my change. I did the same thing with reddit. I gave that one up because it was too much of a time sink.
• aaron695 13y ago
  I went on a 'news fast' a while back and felt amazing after it. It might be herd vs individual health but watching / reading the news will not make you better off. I do think concentrating on knowledge of the world is important but I think this is separate from news.
• bjhoops1 13y ago
  I would agree to the degree that "News" refers to shallow news reporting. News on TV? Undoubtedly detrimental. Long form journalism? Lots of merit. Sensational coverage of a kidnapping? Waste of your time. Coverage of the political process? Could lead you to a revelation about certain political entities. Basically, I would not recommend completely dismissing all forms of news. News consumption can lead you to change your mind about something. If you never expose your self to new data, you will find yourself holding onto stale beliefs and opinions. There's something to be said for remaining an informed citizen.
  • alexqgb 13y ago
    Exactly. This article doesn't make much sense unless you read it carefully enough to understand that "news" has a very specific and limited definition in this context. Indeed, when it described the damage done by news, it notes an inability to grasp the kinds of deep, large, and truly world-changing stories that are happening all around us, and which the shallow, fragmented, and sensationalistic sugar hits of "news" can never convey. Generally, following these larger, deeper stories (to say nothing of participating in them) requires both a measure of focused interest, and pre-existing knowledge. A lot of the news on HN fits into this category. This is very different from the parade of horribles that is found on FOX News, CNN, in USAToday, etc.
• Mc_Big_G 13y ago
  I knew this when I was very young and people still look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them I don't watch the news.
• viame 13y ago
  AMEN! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5wkZ-dJXA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5wkZ-dJXA minute 4:30
• nwzpaperman 13y ago
  Heroin is supposed to make you happy, if that's the goal. Being an ignorant member of society is a recipe for personal and societal disaster. How many people have taken the time to define news? Not in terms of what makes one thing more interesting than others, but at the simplest level: what is news? You can't ask for more substance until you define what the substance you are after is. Once you've defined it, you will see solutions where you haven't before. After that, ask yourself if the information sources you've historically related to as news media are in fact news sources or public relations sources. More third-party aggregators and readers are only going to disappoint the market because they don't do anything about the underlying news problems.
  • LatvjuAvs 13y ago
    Have you tried Heroin? :)
• afterburner 13y ago
  Reading news articles that are informative can be thought provoking and improve my understanding of people and the world around me. Over time, many smaller pieces of information can accrue into an understandable whole, providing context for future experiences and information. If you never end up understanding the information thrown at you, or consume garbage news, then yeah, it won't help. It's possible you need to ingest a lot of background material to really make sense of the news in a useful and non-helplessness-inducing way. The news to me is incremental history, economics, and political science. I wouldn't watch low-content information like daily TV news, but that's not the only option. That said, you don't have to do it all the time, because sometimes, in your topic of interest, nothing much happens for a while... The most I do on an actual daily basis is read the top three headlines on the BCC News site, just to check that nothing incredibly crazy happened. Oh, and read too much HN, but that stuff can be interesting... and I mostly read the comments...
• renanbirck 13y ago
  I stopped using Google Reader recently; this has had the side effect of making me read much less news and, thus, being less buzzed to write a scathing or snarky comment/reply. I browse a few news sites once or twice a day, read the 1 or 2 news that look relevant to me, and that's it.
• mbloom1915 13y ago
  you do realize you are posting news right? on Hacker NEWS
  • alexqgb 13y ago
    RTFA. Or don't, and simply understand this: "the news", as referred to in the OP, is actually a subset of news in general, in the same way that fast food is a subset of food in general. The point is what while most people can easily distinguish between fast-food and proper food, many people aren't nearly so discerning when it comes to their information diets.
    • VLM 13y ago
      Not sure if I'm that pessimistic. Check the actual ratings. Google for it, I am glancing at "Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for Thursday, April 11, 2013" In a country of 400 million people, "1,133 thousands" aka about a million watched fox news. There is the hidden assumption that the million who watch are true believers as opposed to out for a laugh or just filling time or curious what the opposition thinks. But for the sake of argument I'll assume any TV tuned into fox news is a true believer. That means 1.1 million people cannot distinguish between the information diet equivalent of fast food and proper food, but roughly four hundred million can distinguish. Lets assume there are around 10 or so other networks pushing meaningless mind candy. Making it a problem around the two percent range. Its a narrowcasting thing. Could you make a news station that appeals broadly to maybe 25% of the population, which would be about a hundred times as many as watch fox news? Yes, but from a narrowcasting perspective they've convinced themselves that having 1% of the fans but having them be absolutely rabid fans is "better" for advertising sales or whatever. The same thinking is killing mass media in general. For example saturday night live appeals intensely to about 2 million hard core fans. The other 398 million in the population will not watch it for free. Does "Survivor" define the american cultural obsession with reality TV? Maybe, but it doesn't define american culture because only 9.38 million bothered to watch last week for free... the other 390 million are uninterested. Not quite as severe as the obesity epidemic.
• StacyC 13y ago
  News programming should be pronounced noise. It's mostly gossip and tragedy and crap. We stopped watching it years ago. My parents watch the news and talk about "staying informed" and "keeping up" with things. What exactly is newsworthy? You need to know about that apartment complex that caught fire or the shootout between drug dealers?
• DigitalSea 13y ago
  There are some serious offenders who take the low and quick road when it comes to journalism but I have seen a swing of sorts in higher quality journalistic standards. While Fox News is considered the epitome of everything wrong with biased news, there are lot of smaller shows and websites that have a higher standard. Here in Australia while we have the likes of news.com.au (a joke and a half) we have other online news outlets in the form of Crikey! and the philanthropically funded long-form journalism website The Global Mail who put effort into their articles and don't misconstrue the facts to get more Facebook shares and readers. Not all news is bad news. I see the likes of Facebook and Twitter are forms of news, both have their fair share of gossip and junk, but also have their share of information that we need to know; massacres, accidents, bank robberies and slaughter of innocents in countries that try and control their people and shield their actions from the rest of the world. Choose your news carefully, don't believe everything you read and always look further into things (there is more than meets the eye).
• bhashkarsharma 13y ago
  I remember reading (can't recall the source right now) that a study conducted over multiple newspapers over a period of time revealed that 95% of news carry a negative tone. Add this to the fact that most news channels focus on trivia more than important issues and I have a perfect reason to not dive into news. I still sneak a peek at any interesting story that shows up on my twitter stream though.
• lefinita 13y ago
  so, you said, I should give up Hacker News?
  • scotty79 13y ago
    I'd say yes, but I'm not entirely sure. I ditched TV, apart from TV news, then the TV altogether, then mainstream news on the net. I moved to digg, I moved off digg. For the last two years I read hacker news, and occasional newspaper I can get my hands on (I'm not buying them though, I firmly believe that not funding your addiction is the first step to limiting or even shedding your addiction). I read hacker news for almost two years now. The problem is that I can't dismiss hacker news as easily as I did with all the other news sources because I strongly suspect I'm learning some valuable things here. Sure, 90% is just amusement, 9% has some conversational value but I'm afraid 1% is actually enriching for me and I'm afraid where could I get this if I ditch HN. Best (sort-of) news addiction I had so far was being addicted to stackoverflow. Helping strangers with their problems as fast as I can was really good for me. Unfortunately I got the job, then I lost the job. That messed my mind somehow and now stackoverflow seems like too much work.
• vacri 13y ago
  "I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie" is not the same as "stop consuming the news altogether, it's bad for you". It's a horribly fallacious argument.
• gpcz 13y ago
  As the footer to the article says, this is a shortened version of a much longer essay he wrote in 2010 (src PDF: http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par... ) that shares a similar layout to the article. There's some subtle irony here -- the original essay asserted that heavy news consumption prevented most people from reading more than 4 pages straight, while the essay was 11 pages. I guess he realized he needed to shorten it to get the message out.
• ufmace 13y ago
  I completely agree with the premise... but does anybody else find it ironic that an article explaining why you shouldn't read the news is published on a news website owned by a major newspaper?
• mindstab 13y ago
  ... "Ignorance is bliss" Happiness maybe isn't always the optimal end state.
• mesozoic 13y ago
  Does this include hacker news and reddit? Cause I already gave up most other news.
  • saber_taylor 13y ago
    Me too. But it would be nice if news aggregator sites let you opt out of if it bleeds it leads (given the responses here, there's a market). It's certainly within the limits of the filters they use already for personalization bubbles. I wrote a script for my local newspaper to spider links from their front page and display the city next to the "read more" links, so I knew if a catastrophe was local or national. If it's national then the wtf improbability goes down and it should be less interesting.
  • GHFigs 13y ago
    Sites like these mitigate some of the problems with news but they make others worse. A good comment thread can provide a lot of valuable background and context, for example. On the other hand, the bias towards unimportant but attention-grabbing stories is not especially improved by making editorial decisions with a literal popularity contest.
• SCAQTony 13y ago
  What about culling the news to those stories that you exactly need or want, such as heath, medicine, art, a favorite sport, the weather, and/or business. Perhaps that can lead to a more productive and creative life?
• mudil 13y ago
  The world is a dangerous place. There is no way around it: it's always been this way. Whether it is a North Korea crisis, something burning in the Middle East, or our national debt, the news can bring you to the reality of danger, of war, of looming financial crisis. Sure, by not reading it, you can retrieve yourself to a happy place in San Carlos or Palo Alto, but the danger still irks there, and it is not going away... Reality check!
  • jQueryIsAwesome 13y ago
    Mass media focus on drama not in information; so your emotions are appealed more than rational thoughts. You can't do nothing about the North Korea crisis even if you watch the news, that's a "Reality check".
    • mudil 13y ago
      That's right, jQueryIsAwesome, jQuery is awesome in Palo Alto. And you can do nothing about North Korea. And you don't care about North Korea, because the only thing you care about is Palo Alto, its organic restaurants, its girls, and, of course, jQuery. But NK isn't going away. And you, American kids, can stick your heads in Palo Alto sand, and assume that all is good, and by not knowing what's out there, you will make yourself happier. Happy happy joy joy!
      • jQueryIsAwesome 13y ago
        I'm Colombian, like, live in Colombia/South America.
• deleted 13y ago
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• kragen 13y ago
  I came to some of these conclusions in 1997: http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/real-news.html http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/real-news.html In 2008 I savaged Digg and Reddit for the same reasons: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2008-January/000878.html http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2008-January... I recommend watching the EPIC 2014 video I allude to in that post; even though it's nine years old and clearly depicts an alternate history at this point, I think its core points have aged well. http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/ http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/ Today, I think there actually is a better alternative to reading news sites. You can read Wikipedia. Instead of reading the HN frontpage post about how Sebastian Castro likes having his office in Kendall Square http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/square-still-place-for-start-ups/JcqbMI98Drrb2NG17jH54M/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/square-still-... you can read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square and get the history, polysemy, and local attractions of the place — with photos of Kendall Square instead of Sebastian Castro. Or you could read something on Wikipedia that there will rarely be a news story about, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadhu http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadhu or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina%27s_12th_congressional_district http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina%27s_12th_congres..., or never, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis-viva_equation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis-viva_equation. And the things you read will be verifiable, objective, and most likely true — unlike the vast majority of crap that passes for journalism today. And most of what's true will still be true five or ten years from now. But the Grauniad piece is, mostly, not really about how to form a better understanding of the world. It counsels ignorance: don't learn about the world because it isn't practical (doesn't help you make better decisions affecting your life), stresses you out, is enjoyable like a drug, confirms your pre-existing prejudices due to confirmation bias instead of changing your mind, makes you feel helpless, limits your creativity, and is deeply intertwingled, which "inhibits thinking". Reading the encyclopedia has these same drawbacks! But I don't believe that ignorance is bliss, that ignorance helps you think clearly, or that ignorance limits your creativity. Instead, I believe that a broad base of knowledge gives me perspective on our current problems, helps me think more clearly, and enables my creativity. Up to a point. You can become a mindless factoid junkie from any source of factoids. Building real knowledge out of facts requires really understanding a subject; as David MacKay says in the preface to "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itila/ http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itila/, that means you must "creat[e] it for yourself." I admit I'm pretty distracted by news items myself, at the moment. (edit: changed "more or less these conclusions" to "some of these conclusions", which is a lot truer.)
• jdrobins2000 13y ago
  That article is either an ironic metacommentary with itself as exhibit A of what is wrong with news stories, or the edits were ironically introduced by the editor doing what he typically does. For starters, the title is hyperbolic click bait, and the hyperbole continues. "The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely." Clearly the only choices are inundation and complete isolation. I suppose moderation is one of those "non-stories" too boring to report, because it doesn't stimulate the limbic system and get clicks. One clue of intentional irony: "In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases." In the article, that sentence contains a hyperlink. That said, I agree with 98% of the article. Like everything else, moderation, critical thinking, and self-reflection are essential. Food for thought: perhaps the author's reaction is similar to an alcoholic who realizes their weakness. Though for many people, alcohol can be a healthy and beneficial part of their life, for some the most effective relationship to alcohol is complete abstinence.
• dsfasfasf 13y ago
  News used to be bad for me when I was a young kid in my teens. It used to depress me. Now that I'm in my thirties I've become desensitized and pretty much nothing bothers me. News is only bad for you if you let it affect you.
  • smtddr 13y ago
    I'd say becoming desensitized is a problem in itself. http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2042953 http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2042953
• deleted 13y ago
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• homakov 13y ago
  yes this is why i am not going to read this item
• usablebytes 13y ago
  I believed so for years and haven't intentionally tried to read or watch news for almost more than 10 years; and I like it that way. Instead, I focus on tech updates especially related to the field I'm involved with. And feel, even sitting idle will do less harm, hypothetically.
• random2 13y ago
  The article makes some bold affirmations, which I'm not sure are covered by actual research (they may be). That being said, having stopped watching TV in the last years had made me better spend my spare time (e.g. studying or working on personal projects).
• jdrobins2000 13y ago
  "It is in literature as in life: wherever you turn, you stumble at once upon the incorrigible mob of humanity, swarming in all directions, crowding and soiling everything, like flies in summer. Hence the number, which no man can count, of bad books, those rank weeds of literature, which draw nourishment from the corn and choke it. The time, money and attention of the public, which rightfully belong to good books and their noble aims, they take for themselves: they are written for the mere purpose of making money or procuring places. So they are not only useless; they do positive mischief. Nine-tenths of the whole of our present literature has no other aim than to get a few shillings out of the pockets of the public; and to this end author, publisher and reviewer are in league." Schopenhauer, 'On Books and Reading', from early 1800s I think. http://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Books_and_Reading http://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Books_and_Reading With some small changes in language, it could easily apply to today's news. There are many great quotes, but in essence he says reading is essential, but you must be discriminating about what you read, because most of it is garbage. And you must be careful not to read so much that you aren't able to process it or drown out your own independent thoughts and activities. I had already reached these conclusions on my own long ago, but he puts it into words very well, and it is interesting that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
• bharath_mohan 13y ago
  The article takes a primordial approach to what news is. Technology and media have long addressed this problem, and news is really free now - thanks to Blogger, Google News, Twitter and the like. Its also an irony that most of us discover our news on a site like Hacker News, and are seconding an opinion that news has become bad. Some ways to rethink news: 1) News should be an ambient thing. It should be around you, and relate to what you are doing, where you are, who you are, and the people you care about. 2) The good things you do today must reflect in what you receive as news tomorrow. 3) News can be seen as appealing to the producer or consumer in you. When you read something just for infotainment, its for the consumer. When you read something, and you go like - this can help me, its helping the producer. We should strive to tilt the balance of news, and make it more productive - for you.
  • kaizen-konpusai 13y ago
    One of the main reasons I come to Hacker News is because a) the upvoted articles tend to be of high quality and in-depth, and b) the comments section tends to have even greater depth of discussion and variation of opinion. I think both those points make HN fall outside the article's criticism, for the most part.
• jmtame 13y ago
  How exactly do you define "news" here? Right now, I'm on a news site, because it says that in the top left corner of my screen. I've seen this type of story mentioned before, and in the past the response was "the purpose of news is to give people conversational topics to talk about." On Hacker News, I'm possibly saving myself some time. I don't have to sift through all of the content out there, the filter exists for me and that of itself is performing a lot of work. Hacker News is essentially a crowdsourced sorting mechanism done by its users. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I still decide what I'll read and what I'll pass over. I am reading essays and articles that do a lot of the thinking for me. Sure, I may think less critically by letting someone else do that for me, but I ultimately decide whether I agree or disagree with the point being made. I'll choose the things that I really care about and I'll think harder about those, and maybe I'll contribute my own findings, which other people will find helpful. I'm not sold that giving up news entirely is good. And how do you define the word? Google News is an aggregate collection of news articles. Am I still reading "the news" if I'm on Google News or Hacker News, or do I need to be on a direct source such as AP or CNN? Does it even matter, since the aggregators and other bloggers will refer back to them?
• nate 13y ago
  During 1999-2005 I was a news junkie. I was constantly scanning popular news sites. In 2005 I attended the first Startup School, which is incidental but sticks in my brain of course. I took my lunch break that day and went to the Harvard Book Store. I browsed around and saw a book on positive psychology that looked interesting. I devoured that book. One of the biggest changes I took from that book was to avoid most of the news. It was for all the reasons mentioned in this article. I've been pretty good at sticking to this. Not perfect of course. There obviously needs to be a balance. But removing the tie to the news has made me a lot more creative and optimistic about the opportunities in my life. We should all spend more time creating than reading about other people creating and destroying.
• podperson 13y ago
  Seems like the article is true for "bad" news -- e.g. Daily newspapers, cable news, and nightly news (which I have gone without for over ten years). Most of the criticisms of news in the article do not apply to the news sources I consume, although perhaps they shouldn't be called news so as to avoid confusion. My favorite is the New Yorker, which frequently breaks major stories despite being (or because it is) a weekly with long lead times. Similarly, The Daily Show usually does a better job of providing context than "serious" news broadcasts.
  • bbbhn 13y ago
    Are you serious? The Daily Show is no more "news" than Hannity is.
    • podperson 13y ago
      I've never watched Hannity so I really can't make an informed reply. There's no question that the Daily Show has a Liberal point of view, but there's a difference between having a point of view and intellectual dishonesty. Humor is a trap in portraying the truth because the funny thing may not be the true thing, but it's less of a trap than the Cable news cycle.
• pinaceae 13y ago
  great "article" shilling for his own book. news is bad for you. everything is bad for you. every single thing will kill you in the long term. should write a book about that. is it important to know about current events in politics? what the sequester is and how it impacts a US citizen? who won the venezulean elections? latest financial news out of europe? well, it depends on the person. do you have an interest in the world around you? do you feel that a cultured individual should not be fully ignorant what's happening around him? and then, the business perspective, this is HN after all - shouldn't you know what's affecting your target group or maybe investors? being able to talk with someone you meet from India about something that is going on in his/her country proves you care about what's going on outside of your little tech bubble. is it necessary to know who won the US masters? No, you will survive without. but it provides context if you meet someone who cares about golf.
• ohwp 13y ago
  I read the original "Avoid News part 1" (http://dobelli.com/?page_id=827 http://dobelli.com/?page_id=827) some time ago and also quit reading news. What occurred to me is that a lot of decisions people make are based or have to do with fear fed by news. For example: fear for bad weather. Rain is just rain but reading the forecast in the papers sometimes make you wonder if you will survive the next day.
• polskibus 13y ago
  Bad news is even worse! Seriously though, Kahneman in his last book described very good experiments that show bad news having a much deeper effect on ones psyche than good ones. This obviously extend to social sites, like facebook etc..
• bambax 13y ago
  > In the words of Warren Buffett: "What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact." That confirms what I always thought.
• biggfoot 13y ago
  The author should have added a TL;DR "ignorance is bliss" at the top.
  • OmIsMyShield 13y ago
    Slightly more subtle - TL;DR: news does nothing to cure you of ignorance, so avoid the aggravation of news
• kislayverma 13y ago
  This is why, paraphrasing Taleb, I shun newspapers and TV and keep hoary tomes by my bedside.
• lucb1e 13y ago
  News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier (guardian news .com) Hmm...
• jpswade 13y ago
  Hence the phrase: ignorance is bliss.
• yason 13y ago
  I don't read news anymore. I haven't, for years. After reading a newspaper I didn't remember anything of what I had read. I was as well off after reading the paper as before reading it. The same with internet news sites, there's just... news, everywhere. It doesn't seem to stick, and it doesn't change my life. If something truly important happens, the information will eventually trickle down to myself via friends and friends of friends. I can then look it up on the internet, and read more.
  • Kurtz79 13y ago
    And yet you are posting on Hacker "News".
• lignuist 13y ago
  I once thought about starting a news service that only publishes good news, but the problem would be, that probably nobody would read it.
  • kaizen-konpusai 13y ago
    South Africa has a site like that: http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/ http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/
• koltkorivera 13y ago
  This all comes down to a distinction that is not made in the article at all. One has a choice in engaging the news: one can be a passive consumer of whatever gets thrown at one, or one can be a thoughtful consumer who directs one's own reading/viewing of the news. None of the issues mentioned by the author apply to the latter approach. In a highly interconnected, multicultural, technological world, it is more important than ever for the ordinary citizen (let alone the entrepreneur, thinker, or "creative type") to be aware of what is going on in the world, and on every scale (global to local). The author's recommendation would lead to a radical disengagement that would be suitable only for those aspiring to be hermits or stylites.
• cturner 13y ago
  James Althucher is a writer who has lived through a bunch of nasty experiences, and now writes about what he's learnt. In his writing he often preaches to cut yourself off from news. Here's an article I found quickly that makes reference to avoiding stress sources like news: http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/09/how-to-cure-stress-before-it-kills-you/ http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/09/how-to-cure-stress-befo...
• TeMPOraL 13y ago
  There's one thing apparently missing in the article (and discussion here) that for me is the most important reason not to read news - namely, they lie. All the time. And when they don't, they systematically confuse stuff, ending up in writing wrong articles anyway. Proof? Just pretty much every article about science, technology or business submitted here on HN gets debunked in the top comment. If they can't get simple facts right in the matters of basic science or business, I seriously doubt (by induction) that anything else they write is anywhere near the truth.
  • anigbrowl 13y ago
    Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
    • VLM 13y ago
      Regardless of their intention, the outcome is the same. I like the astrology analogy. They don't hate you, they're just making up stories you like to hear, so you'll stay and listen.
  • blots 13y ago
    Oh yes. Even with documentaries which should usually be better researched there is so many inaccuracies on the subjects I do know something about that I'm careful to remind myself that the stories on subjects I don't know about are probably equally inaccurate.
• jspiros 13y ago
  I haven't been reading or watching the news for years, now, and it's had a huge positive effect on my life. But it's also made me, I think, somewhat more sensitive and aware of how other similar things affect me. Which is why I've started to cut down on Twitter, and Hacker News.
• duncans 13y ago
  Obligatory Charlie Brooker "How To Report The News" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4
• deleted 13y ago
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• bjourne 13y ago
  News is useful for exactly one reason: to have something to chat about. Don't underestimate that. You may have no interest in NK, Beckham, sports, the stock market or other stuff that frequents the news, but having something to talk about with people around you is important.
  • scotty79 13y ago
    I prefer talking to friends about what happens in their lives. If we mention news its in exact same way as telling jokes.
  • zcid 13y ago
    “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.” -Eleanor Roosevelt Edit: I don't mean this to be rude. I am just trying to point out that discussion of news items usually IME is nothing more than idle gossip. While possibly beneficial in social bonding, it can also have potential negative effects on the mind.
• soundwave 13y ago
  This is a VERY naive point of view about news.
• meerita 13y ago
  I read/watch less news, but those related to the world. Everyday I care less. I just read tech news, they're happier and much more interesting.
• jschuur 13y ago
  Also worth a read, this piece by Steve Pavlina on Overcoming News Addiction, all the way from 2006: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/overcoming-news-addiction/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/overcoming-news-add...
• blots 13y ago
  I don't have TV at home and don't read any news online, except maybe once a month while procrastinating. I rarely find anything that really concerns me there and if I do I usually skip right to the comments for the broader range of opinions or search the internet for more information.
• blablabla123 13y ago
  This is an adventerous claim. But maybe they are right, maybe giving up reading the Guardian and similar news sources makes you happier. I for instance prefer fpif.org, fas.org and a random selection from news.google.com to stay up to date. "Out of the ­10,000 news stories you may have read in the last 12 months, did even one allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your life, asks Rolf Dobelli." I used to spend at least 2 hours a day on reading news. (Only a part of that consisted mainstream news.) At least every month I felt I read things that totally mattered towards my personal life. Maybe because I did read more scoped news and really tried to understand the issues. Papers like the Guardian are just there to make Joe Average happy and feed his average interests. It's good to not approximate yourself with Joe Average. Anyone ever wondered why Twitter got so popular as News Reader?
• Skibb 13y ago
  Generalizing title is generalizing. The title actually proves the point it's trying to make: that news often skew towards less details, dramatized, click-bait-y. Of course news are bad for you as most of the information is not directly important to your immediate life and usually the information is presented in a very toxic way which creates a certain mood and actually, an addiction to the certain "SMH" behaviour.
• solarflair 13y ago
  National vs. local news is an important distinction here that many of these "The key to happiness is ignoring the news" posts miss. The breathless CNN story about the latest missing white woman might not be relevant to your life, but your local newspaper's stories about property taxes, parking fees, local entertainment events and people in your community most certainly are.
• dredmorbius 13y ago
  Even following nominally "quality" news sources -- NPR, PBS, The New York Times, the Economist -- I've been finding the points of this article increasingly true. Mainstream commercial news -- CNN, HuffPo, my local city paper / news site, and much of what passes for news on the Web, are virtually intolerable. Banal, lowest common denominator (erm: "greatest", but nobody would understand) content, celebrity gossip, baiting headlines, "ten reasons" pageview content. Gratuitously paginated articles. Excessively overdesigned pages with floaters, social nags, and pop-up interstitial surveys and yet more "social" pleadings. Fake-viral advertising whether "flash mobs" orchestrated by banks or Hollywood movie hype engines. Intentionally infuriating political tactics. Get off of me! Somewhere during the past Presidential campaign I think I started to snap. Whether it was talking heads blathering about things they understood poorly, incessant focus on horse-race (and ignoring the deeper historical and policy stories), everything just started grating on me. The lack of depth and context to much news coverage has also been apparent to me for quite some time. Particularly in the case of large developing stories, or those with a long backstory, I've found that Wikipedia is often a much better source of information. I'd first realized this during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake & tsunami -- far too vast a story for any one news article to wrap its head around. TV and radio could merely repeat the basics or show the same footage repeatedly. Wikipedia could organize and contextualize the facts as they came in. There are also the odd stories which do affect me, my life, my neighborhood, or my professional interests. They're rare, but they do happen. A benefit of today's world over, say, 20 years ago, is that when such events do occur, it's much more possible to dig in and get more than the very light spread of truth and misreporting that's inevitable in the lay press. Not that I've stopped paying attention to the news. But I'm very conscious of when it is annoying, and there are days I'll turn it off. The day of the Newtown shootings I heard the news late in the day, and just turned it off. I knew largely how it would unfold, that it didn't affect me directly, that there was nothing I'd be able to do that day, but that listening would just sicken me. Increasingly, rather than turn on news, I'll put on music. Often classical or jazz. And listen to that instead.
  • 3825 13y ago
    I would not worry too much about people misconstruing greatest common denominator as something "great". At least not here on HN.
• edw519 13y ago
  With 7 billion people in the world, it's very likely that these things will happen today: - someone will get killed in a horrible car accident - a child will be killed in a freak accident - someone will die from cancer, leaving much grieving behind - someone will molest a child - someone will lose all their money in a scam - someone will get raped - someone will be killed by a never-to-be-found hit-and-run drunk driver - someone will beat a woman - someone will be murdered - someone will die in a disaster/fire/earthquake/storm - an innocent bystander will be randomly shot to death - someone's favorite team will lose In addition, it seems like something like this (unbelievably) happens all the time: - someone will murder many people - someone will shake a baby until it's brain dead - a soldier will lose vision or use of their limbs in action - someone will post a horrible crime on youtube - someone will tie a pet to railroad tracks - a whole family will die in an accident I really do feel bad about all of these things, but frankly, I just don't want to be reminded 40 times every day. <closing browser and going back to work>
  • astrodust 13y ago
    What's the list for Hacker News?
    • mosselman 13y ago
      - Someone will think of some shitty startup that has no added value to anyone. - Someone will claim that technology xyz is the perfect solution to all of the web's problems - Someone will give some wise ass advise stated in the form of 10 things I ... from ... - Someone will discuss why he would or would not work at some big company. - Someone will pretend to care about some minority, meanwhile insulting them and everybody else.
    • neilk 13y ago
      Most of the things on HN are reasonably relevant to my life. The upvote/downvote system actually is better than editors picking and choosing. But we have our emotional triggers. I think they are more about our collective fears of missing out on things, or anything that flatters or threatens our identity as smart people. * New language/practice enabled me to do Y faster/easier * New technology X will change the Y industry * Trend X will make you obsolete * Stupid startup X was bought/funded for $Y dollars * You might not be as smart as you think you are!! ZOMG OH NO. (and here's the corrective action to take) * Programmers are great because... * Programmers are terrible because...
• xradionut 13y ago
  Depends on what you consider news and how you consume it. I tend to view conventional "news" as limited information/propaganda tool. In the mornings/afternoons I listen to the local news broadcast for weather and traffic. These affect my daily activities, I live in a commuter region of Tornado Alley and own a house that involves outdoor maintenance. I skim my local newspaper and local feeds, sometimes there are items that directly impact my community/household that I need to consider/deal with. (Local elections, West Nile, etc...) My spouse keeps up with the more entertaining items, so I've outsourced the fluff consumption. I use a RSS reader to stay current in my work and hobbies. It allows my to filter out the cruft in a timely manner. If I need to be knowledgable on a political, economic or other topic, I have a wide range of resources available on the web and through the local libraries. I don't often dig deeply into the serious macro-issues, the truth is very disturbing, most people can't handle it or deny it, there's little change I can make, so I limit my "briefings" to a couple of times a year. Knowing the "true" national/global situation and being powerless, is damn depressing. Maybe I should be a sociopath, but unfortunately I'm not wired that way.
• api 13y ago
  I completely agree. I have cut nearly all ordinary news from my life. I read domain-specific news, industry news, news from various little corners of interest, and occasionally glance at the headlines just so I have some clue of what's going on in the world. But ordinary "if it bleeds it leads" news is generally one of: (1) sensationalism, (2) government propaganda, (3) corporate propaganda, (4) veiled advertising, or (5) filler.
• motters 13y ago
  News isn't necessarily bad for you, and it's not a good idea to live in a bubble of cherry-picked information. However, the mainstream news is fraught with all kinds of problems so you need to be prepared to believe that what appears there is at best a partial picture of the events. The phenomena of churnalism also illustrates that it's easy to believe that what looks like impartial information is actually just crudely re-arranged press releases from particular companies who likely have a vested interest in the content and framing of the story. So don't switch off the news entirely, lest you fall into a state of general ignorance about wider events, but be prepared to interpret it critically.
• hawkharris 13y ago
  I think the problem is a little more nuanced than watching news or not watching news. It has to do with what media scholars call agenda setting theory. That is, media can't always persuade us to believe in a story, but they're very good at persuading us to think about a story. News sources like Fox, MSNBC or CNN might dwell on 3-5 leads in a day. Because they're so ubiquitous and influential, they might make you concentrate on (even debate) an issue that has little relevance to your life. The solution is not shut out news altogether, but to consciously seek out sources of news that are relevant to your interests and your community. It's analogous to consuming food: if you pay attention to what you're taking in and where you're getting it from, you'll feel a lot happier and healthy.
• joshguthrie 13y ago
  "Meta".
• bjoe_lewis 13y ago
  yes. but wait, I developed an [android application](https://github.com/joelewis/emotionreader/bin/emotionBBC.apk https://github.com/joelewis/emotionreader/bin/emotionBBC.apk) that categorizes news by emotions, so why not just try to ignore the anger, sadness and fear sections of the app and read the rest?
• dstorrs 13y ago
  I gave up on reading newspapers and watching TV news over a decade ago and I can't point to a single way that it's ever harmed me. My basic theory is as follows: - I miss out on the fearmongering - I save a tremendous amount of time - If anything important IS happening, everyone will be talking about it, so I'll hear about it - Even if I do miss hearing about an important issue, what does it matter? What can I actually do to prevent e.g. the fiscal cliff, or the failure of Lehman Brothers, or etc? - When it comes time to vote, I talk with my friends who actually care about news / politics and, if use their information (plus a bit of research if needed) to decide my vote - I read Hacker news or other sites like it because the news that geeks want to know about is far more likely to be interesting / relevant. Aside from some occasional mild embarrassment when someone asks me an opinion on something I'm not aware of -- which can usually be deflected simply by saying something innocuous and then turning the conversation back to them -- this has worked excellently for me.
• j_s 13y ago
  What about tech news? :)
• ttrreeww 13y ago
  Ignorance is bliss.
• devgutt 13y ago
  Also news has the dangerous ability to dim your faith in the humanity by exceptions.
• ranman 13y ago
  Oddly relevant today.
• gadders 13y ago
  Certainly if you read the left-wing propaganda from the Guardian it will./
• Wonderdonkey 13y ago
  This writer should have qualified "news" as general consumer news. Professional/trade news, tech news, science news, health news, environmental news — all of these have a direct and sometimes meaningful impact on our lives.
• totmann 13y ago
  That really depends on what kind of news we are reading, and when we are reading, sometimes skimming and scanning is a good way to save time if you are just to comprehend the main theme of the news, or decide whether you will continue to read. But, obviously, over-read the news will kill your brains like chronic diseases.