If you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed.
Things You Notice When You Quit the News
191–200 of 502 posts
Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News
#192The local news seems to always be about murders and violence. Why is it beneficial to learn about every instance of "humans behaving badly"? (Celebrities, ok, maybe, but random people?)
>Why is it beneficial to learn about every instance of "humans behaving badly"?
Because it is your civic responsibility to care that such things are happening in your community, and to allocate your political activity, voting, and charitable giving in a way that you believe will mitigate that suffering.
Because if everyone said, "sometimes humans behave badly; why should I care?" we'd be living in a hellscape.
Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't get why everyone is downvoting this. Care to explain, down-voters? Please don't change the subject to downvotes. The HN guidelines already contain two admonitions against this and I'd like not to add a third.
But what if I really want to know. There is no explanation.
That's a burden we all must bear, for the sake of not degrading the site. At least we all bear it equally.
Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. This is true every time there is a news story on about anything that somebody around me is an expert on. It's always "what the hell are they talking about!?" I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a fe…
What you're describing is Gell-Mann Amnesia: "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cau…
This quote has always bugged me a little bit. It does seem reasonable to expect that reporters and editors know more about the major world events that are the paper's bread and butter and less about other things.
The structure of a typical science section doesn't help. There are typically only a few reporters--often only one-- and they tend to cover whatever's timely (e.g., has recently been announced/opened/published), which doesn't let them build up much expertise. I think this also explains why pop-science articles tend to conflate background (here's what was known before this paper was published) and whatever actual result was: it's all new to the reporter.
That said, I was recently interviewed by CBC about my research and I thought they did a very good job. Everyone seemed prepared, asked reasonable questions, and the final product matched what I said!
Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Not only that, I used to be a commercial pilot, and I could not believe the amount of disinformation and outright ridiculous theories being bandied about by so called 'reputable' news sources. This is true every time there is a news story on about anything that somebody around me is an expert on. It's always "what the hell are they talking about!?" I've seen this directly, too. I've been on the local news quite a fe…
What you're describing is Gell-Mann Amnesia: "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cau…
My favourite example of this is the Economist news magazine. The Economist reports on a much larger range of country and topics than the typical magazine or newspaper. Many of its readers like it for that exact reason: it gives them information on stories they won't normally find in their local or national news sources and they want to be informed about, say, hydroelectric developments in the Congo.
The problem is that writing about 25 different countries in a single issue doesn't mean they actually have experts on most of those places or people on the ground to do original reporting. Often, it devolves into British or American writers regurgitating inaccurate information from the Internet. But if it's the only thing you read about, say, forest exports from Myanmar, you have no reason to question it.
The easiest way to see this is to be a non-US/UK/EU person and read an article in the Economist about your own country. Then you realize that all the other articles are just as simplistic and uninformed.
Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
More people are interested in world events than in science, so it's reasonable to assume a newspaper will set a higher standard of reporting for those events. A journalist who studied political science isn't equally inept at writing on all subjects; he might have some very good insights on politics. Similar to how most HN readers have very little expertise outside of software engineering, and have said some pretty ri…
> Similar to how most HN readers have very little expertise outside of software engineering, and have said some pretty ridiculous things on other fields. Wow, that could hardly be more wrong. HN has repeatedly demonstrated expertise in a very wide range of subjects. Sure there is a bias towards software but that's hardly the limit. Even if HN was only read by SW exports assuming that they don't know about anything el…
> HN has repeatedly demonstrated expertise in a very wide range of subjects.
Although I agree with this, there is also a lot of nonsense and factually incorrect statements. Not everyone is an expert in every field, and many people will make bold claims about topics in which they're not well versed – even on HN. Unfortunately, this applies to me as well sometimes.
Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you're describing is Gell-Mann Amnesia: "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cau…
My favourite example of this is the Economist news magazine. The Economist reports on a much larger range of country and topics than the typical magazine or newspaper. Many of its readers like it for that exact reason: it gives them information on stories they won't normally find in their local or national news sources and they want to be informed about, say, hydroelectric developments in the Congo. The problem is th…
The Economist also has a fairly evident political agenda.
Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't just sign up to be a resident in another country. You have to be invited. I know its fun to say "Screw this! I'm moving to Canada", but it doesn't work like that.
But.. but what happened to "refugees welcome"?
> But.. but what happened to "refugees welcome"?
It died around the same time German women were molested by the dozens during New Year in Hamburg by newly arrived high-testosterone male refugees from war-torn Syria and parts of Africa (via Greece)
Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News
#199I quit watching the news right around 1999. My family once challenged me how I knew about important events, and I told them that people in my life would let me know if anything occurred that I needed to know. They challenged me by quizzing me on major recent events. When they did find one that I had no idea about, they asked, "See? Nobody told you about that!" I replied, "You just did." And they have not argued about…
The downside of this approach is that if we all did it then the world would be a much worse place. Paying attention to current events and bearing witness to some of the darkest aspects of human history is important at a societal level and if you don't think it is important to you personally then consider yourself lucky to live a life where the real world doesn't creep in often. Understanding topics such as why refuge…
> The downside of this approach is that if we all did it then the world would be a much worse place.
I can't fix the World or the dark aspects of the human soul, but hopefully made my local area a better place since I dropped-out of the news-cycle a few years ago. I use my former news 'time-budget' to become invoved in Council business, to follow the activities of my local politicians and to just go and do stuff that benefits people around the town.
I feel better informed as a result and I'm no longer surprised and enraged by 'unexpected' changes in my local environment.
I helped to fix a pothole in a local road last week. Utterly irrelevant on a global scale, but then so is a plane crash in Colombia.
Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
My favourite example of this is the Economist news magazine. The Economist reports on a much larger range of country and topics than the typical magazine or newspaper. Many of its readers like it for that exact reason: it gives them information on stories they won't normally find in their local or national news sources and they want to be informed about, say, hydroelectric developments in the Congo. The problem is th…
The Economist also has a fairly evident political agenda.
I don't follow it that closely, but aren't they also pretty up-front about their own bias?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_editorial_stance