6 ms·

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 underg

by 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.
scott_meade 13y ago
Being "provoked to action" is not the same "making better decisions". The relevancy that the author is talking of is of things that you need to decide where the need to decide did not come from news. In other words, if you read no news you would still have many decisions to make, right? The question is - does news help you make better choices in those decisions? Said another way, how many decisions can you think of that: 1.) the need to make a choice did not arise from reading the news, and 2.) reading the news led to a better decision? The election is probably closest to these type of decisions. But I like Tim Ferriss's approach to discuss pros and cons of candidates with trusted friends instead of the press.
- loudandskittish 13y ago
  And how, may I ask, do those trusted friends become informed?
vacri 13y ago
I think the best counter to the faff in this article is simply: Talk to someone who watches the news. Then talk to someone who doesn't. Even if nothing else, watching the news is at least indicative of an interest in the world beyond arms'-length. Besides, there's a world of difference between "read the news being aware that the news-maker has an agenda" and "ignore the news entirely".
- GHFigs 13y ago
  That may tell you more about who buys into the popular notion of keeping up with the news than who's interested in the world. There's a lot of social signaling involved in appearing informed about a somewhat arbitrary selection of current events.
- juusto 13y ago
  I totally agree with what you said, some of my coworkers are blissfully ignorant to anything that happens beyond their household and talking to them feels almost like talking to a child. Sometimes it even gives me a sense of superiority when I see I am way more "prepared" than them. Having said that, I feel exhausted from news. Specially link bait or biased media. Almost like I have a burnout of BS and I am becoming very skeptical from almost all news source. Example, started watching CNN ditched in favor of BBC then stopped BBC in favor of Al Jazeera then... You get the point. I must say that I have an urge that I keep coming back to check the news, every so often, to satiate this weird need to staying informed. But if I could, talking almost like an addicted person here, I would totally stop reading all this "crap".
  - neltnerb 13y ago
    Yeah, it's this exhaustion from reading news that I think the article is trying to help avoid. It's great to be engaged in the world, but being engaged by consuming news is exhausting, literally causes constant anxiety, and is bad for you! That's not to say you should ignore the world, you should just try getting your information from in-depth reporting, long essays on topics of interest, from people who have actually been there, and so on. There's no freaking rush! If it's so important that I can't wait a month to read an in depth article with context and correct details, I will hear about it from friends.
bloaf 13y ago
A few other points: not everything we do ought to be subject to the criteria he laid out. Any hobby could be said to be a waste of your time or insignificant to your "real" life. I also agree that while the news may be designed to make readers emotional and cause them to miss details or make cognitive errors, whether or not those negative effects happen depends on the reader. I find reading the news to be an excellent exercise in figuring out which facts are really important in a story, especially when those facts are missing from whatever article you happen to be reading. One of my favorite things to do after reading an obviously lacking article is to ask myself "What fact or number could the author have presented to conclusively prove his point?" And then try to find that fact or number. As superficial as the news tends to be, it can still function as an entry point into a new subject. A sufficiently bad article on a sufficiently interesting subject will prompt me to seek out some additional information on my own. For example, silly rants about educational quality led me to read up on the ways that teacher performance is calculated. Lackluster articles about the visual changes in Windows 8 made me seek out articles on theories of computer UI design. Lastly, I will argue that some news consumption is in fact the imperative of good citizens in a democracy. Without some background on current events, a citizen can't make informed decisions in elections, or in their other civic activities. While following every gaffe is obviously not necessary, a critical review of politician's claims requires that people understand what problems the politicians will be solving.
neltnerb 13y ago
I looked into this and experimented with it a while back. My conclusion was that: a. If something is actually important to me, I will find out about it whether I read the news or not. b. Keeping in mind (a), any news that I don't hear about through other channels is not urgent. c. A quick "news" piece will have almost no depth or context that could actually give the story relevance. And will very often just be outright wrong. My conclusion from these three observations was that I should read news magazines like the new yorker, forbes, etc instead of reading the nytimes. With a goal of trying to find a reasonable mix of biases so that I don't get too closed off to different points of view. If the story is actually important, yet I didn't hear about it from friends, it won't matter that they spent a month investigating it and writing it up before publishing it. And strangely, facebook becomes much more useful when thought of as a news aggregator. It will of course have a tendency to produce a bubble, but I certainly found out about Aaron Swartz on facebook far before I saw it anywhere else.
- gizzlon 13y ago
  How do you test a) ? How do you know what you don't know? :) It seems like you're saying that something is not important if you do not find out about it..
  - vidarh 13y ago
    You test a) by following the news and making a note of what pieces are "important" and then whether or not you hear about them via other sources too.
  - neltnerb 13y ago
    Certainly a risk; in my personal case I read news magazines to see what I missed with the assumption that anything important would eventually be covered there. There were a variety of things that I was glad to be hearing about, but which I don't think hearing about sooner would have made me more informed. I could be wrong, certainly I missed Paris Hilton's sex tape entirely. But more seriously, there are very specific topics which I will miss by not watching the news if I have no other source of information -- particularly political action items and dangerous weather on the horizon. But both of those topics I am certain to hear about on facebook. Might vary by friend circle though, I have friends who work at NOAA as well as obama's campaign.

by ruswick 13y ago

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.

scott_meade 13y ago

Being "provoked to action" is not the same "making better decisions". The relevancy that the author is talking of is of things that you need to decide where the need to decide did not come from news. In other words, if you read no news you would still have many decisions to make, right? The question is - does news help you make better choices in those decisions? Said another way, how many decisions can you think of that: 1.) the need to make a choice did not arise from reading the news, and 2.) reading the news led to a better decision? The election is probably closest to these type of decisions. But I like Tim Ferriss's approach to discuss pros and cons of candidates with trusted friends instead of the press.

loudandskittish 13y ago
And how, may I ask, do those trusted friends become informed?

vacri 13y ago

I think the best counter to the faff in this article is simply: Talk to someone who watches the news. Then talk to someone who doesn't. Even if nothing else, watching the news is at least indicative of an interest in the world beyond arms'-length. Besides, there's a world of difference between "read the news being aware that the news-maker has an agenda" and "ignore the news entirely".

GHFigs 13y ago
That may tell you more about who buys into the popular notion of keeping up with the news than who's interested in the world. There's a lot of social signaling involved in appearing informed about a somewhat arbitrary selection of current events.
juusto 13y ago
I totally agree with what you said, some of my coworkers are blissfully ignorant to anything that happens beyond their household and talking to them feels almost like talking to a child. Sometimes it even gives me a sense of superiority when I see I am way more "prepared" than them. Having said that, I feel exhausted from news. Specially link bait or biased media. Almost like I have a burnout of BS and I am becoming very skeptical from almost all news source. Example, started watching CNN ditched in favor of BBC then stopped BBC in favor of Al Jazeera then... You get the point. I must say that I have an urge that I keep coming back to check the news, every so often, to satiate this weird need to staying informed. But if I could, talking almost like an addicted person here, I would totally stop reading all this "crap".
- neltnerb 13y ago
  Yeah, it's this exhaustion from reading news that I think the article is trying to help avoid. It's great to be engaged in the world, but being engaged by consuming news is exhausting, literally causes constant anxiety, and is bad for you! That's not to say you should ignore the world, you should just try getting your information from in-depth reporting, long essays on topics of interest, from people who have actually been there, and so on. There's no freaking rush! If it's so important that I can't wait a month to read an in depth article with context and correct details, I will hear about it from friends.

bloaf 13y ago

A few other points: not everything we do ought to be subject to the criteria he laid out. Any hobby could be said to be a waste of your time or insignificant to your "real" life. I also agree that while the news may be designed to make readers emotional and cause them to miss details or make cognitive errors, whether or not those negative effects happen depends on the reader. I find reading the news to be an excellent exercise in figuring out which facts are really important in a story, especially when those facts are missing from whatever article you happen to be reading. One of my favorite things to do after reading an obviously lacking article is to ask myself "What fact or number could the author have presented to conclusively prove his point?" And then try to find that fact or number. As superficial as the news tends to be, it can still function as an entry point into a new subject. A sufficiently bad article on a sufficiently interesting subject will prompt me to seek out some additional information on my own. For example, silly rants about educational quality led me to read up on the ways that teacher performance is calculated. Lackluster articles about the visual changes in Windows 8 made me seek out articles on theories of computer UI design. Lastly, I will argue that some news consumption is in fact the imperative of good citizens in a democracy. Without some background on current events, a citizen can't make informed decisions in elections, or in their other civic activities. While following every gaffe is obviously not necessary, a critical review of politician's claims requires that people understand what problems the politicians will be solving.

neltnerb 13y ago

I looked into this and experimented with it a while back. My conclusion was that: a. If something is actually important to me, I will find out about it whether I read the news or not. b. Keeping in mind (a), any news that I don't hear about through other channels is not urgent. c. A quick "news" piece will have almost no depth or context that could actually give the story relevance. And will very often just be outright wrong. My conclusion from these three observations was that I should read news magazines like the new yorker, forbes, etc instead of reading the nytimes. With a goal of trying to find a reasonable mix of biases so that I don't get too closed off to different points of view. If the story is actually important, yet I didn't hear about it from friends, it won't matter that they spent a month investigating it and writing it up before publishing it. And strangely, facebook becomes much more useful when thought of as a news aggregator. It will of course have a tendency to produce a bubble, but I certainly found out about Aaron Swartz on facebook far before I saw it anywhere else.

gizzlon 13y ago
How do you test a) ? How do you know what you don't know? :) It seems like you're saying that something is not important if you do not find out about it..
- vidarh 13y ago
  You test a) by following the news and making a note of what pieces are "important" and then whether or not you hear about them via other sources too.
- neltnerb 13y ago
  Certainly a risk; in my personal case I read news magazines to see what I missed with the assumption that anything important would eventually be covered there. There were a variety of things that I was glad to be hearing about, but which I don't think hearing about sooner would have made me more informed. I could be wrong, certainly I missed Paris Hilton's sex tape entirely. But more seriously, there are very specific topics which I will miss by not watching the news if I have no other source of information -- particularly political action items and dangerous weather on the horizon. But both of those topics I am certain to hear about on facebook. Might vary by friend circle though, I have friends who work at NOAA as well as obama's campaign.