Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Things You Notice When You Quit the News

raptitude.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 502 posts

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#311

Post by Chris2048 »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #222
graycat wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> gossip for just a handful of drivers. They are using the technique of formula fiction , that is, what the ancient Greeks discovered as a sure-fire way to get and hold the attention of an audience. So, in that formula, there is a protagonist the audience comes to identify with , that is, care about. Then the protagonist has a problem. Through various highly in doubt and improbable victories, from skill, guts, determ…

>"Teenage boys, your life is so much easier now: Have that climax music queued up ready to go at a single button click at just the right time with her on the living room sofa. Trust me: Richard Strauss understood her much better than you do!" While I appreciate your commentary on the music of Strauss, I disliked this particular comment. Is encouraging emotional manipulation really what we want for the younger generat…

Anytime a woman puts makeup on her face, or a man takes a date to a nice restaurant - isn't this manipulation of the same type?

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#313

Post by jyriand »

I would suggest this as a 30 day challenge. Remember doing it a while back. Found out that I had no idea what my colleagues were talking about when they started discussing some recent events. I was buzzled for a few seconds, feeling like I must have missed something important, but then I remembered that I'm doing this challenge. But it's interesting to observe how people start talking about recent news as if this was common knowledge.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#314

Post by masondixon »

scottishfiction wrote: post #300
masondixon wrote: post #297

I could not name any news outlet today that I would consider unbiased or trustworthy. Every news outlet seems to unashamedly have a clear political affiliation. Can anyone suggest one?

Disclaimer: I work for the BBC. The BBC doesn't have 'a clear political affiliation', and neither does Channel 4. Both are public service broadcasters that are committed to non-bias reporting. However, they are run by people, and people are bias.

I think its very common in most countries for public broadcasters to lean left, and there is nearly always the perception. In my experience this has always been true.

It might be because a right-wing government is more likely to make cuts in funding of a public broadcaster than the left. I have not thought the reason why it is in depth though. I wonder if you have an opinion?

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#315

Post by ElonsMosque »

thewarrior wrote: post #285
bshimmin wrote: post #261

I can't really get onboard with this. A lot of the comments here, and the commentary in the article itself, talk about how depressing the news is, how biased it is, about Gell-Mann amnesia -- and they're all right. But from my own experience, the people I know who don't follow the news (either at all, or extremely minimally) are spectacularly ill-informed; they get their news either third-hand (which suffers from all…

Some of the arguments here remind me of the puritanical strains of religions. For eg: I am against Wahhabi Islam. They're just like other Muslims but they take percepts that are valid in Islam and run with them to the ridiculous extreme. Same goes for cutting down on Social media or regulating your consumption of news. There is nothing to be gained by turning into a puritan. It makes you feel good about yourself for…

I agree to a certain extent on your point about puritans. However I know people that recognized they have a tendency to overdo news or social media as soon as they get a bit of it.

That might be partly due to the very nature of social media and news these days being made to be addictive eg. clickbait titles. Making people end up in a loop, without noticing and before they know it they've wasted hours on it or worse created a habit that is hard to control.

For which the only solution seems to be to go cold turkey in that case. As it seems much harder to reduce usage than to stop it entirely. So I guess it's a matter of what stage you identify yourself in, in this news and social media detox.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#316

Post by draven »

jokoon wrote: post #240

I've always thought that reading the news is only informing you of the very recent events, but by doing so, you lose the context of what is really important, which is the opposite of how history works. One way to be better informed would be to read a daily digest of world history and contemporary geography. I often watch a german/french short TV show called "Le dessous des cartes" (translates to "Under the Maps"). Th…

About le dessous des cartes, they're available with english subtitles. "Le dessous des cartes" has been translated as "Mapping the world."

Example: http://www.arte.tv/guide/en/067846-003-A/mapping-the-world-i...

Search for "mapping the world" on the arte.tv main page.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#317

Post by nostrademons »

sooheon wrote: post #215
nkurz wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eichenwald did not claim that the leaked information was false When I follow a link from Greenwald's piece I see this tweet that was sent by Eichenwald: "Russian gov manipulates email to @johnpodesta. Publishes disinformation. Takes it down. Trump recites false info." https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/785676641880027136 I interpret "manipulates" as claiming that the emails to Podesta were changed by the Russi…

I had the same question as you and skimmed Eichenwald's article. He claims that his own words were attributed to someone else (Blumenthal) in these manipulated leaks, and subsequently parroted by trump. He had written a long article about Benghazi, and the email leak takes Blumenthal's quotation of that out of context, misattributing it. It checks out, and at least on that point Eichenwald seems to be closer to the t…

Eichenwald's article is significantly rewritten from when it first came out, and you're probably not reading the version Greenwald was responding to:

First publication: Oct 10, 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20161010235349/http://www.newswe...

Today: http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hil...

Differences start around paragraph 6.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#318

Post by chrisdone »

sinatra wrote: post #125
cyberferret wrote: post #70

I haven't had a TV in the house for nearly 8 years now, and don't miss it at all. The biggest problem to me, seems to be the 24 hour news cycle for things like wars, elections and the like. I was visiting friends during a couple of major air accidents in the past couple of years (The MH370 and MH17 incidents in particular), and was astounded at the propensity for news stations on ALL channels to fill every minute of…

In general, I agree with everything you said. However, > No thanks. I would rather control my own news firehose, and be selective about the information that I want to learn more about. My worry is: Isn't this what caused the fake news / misinformation silos? By being selective about our information sources, aren't we distancing ourselves from how a majority of the world lives and thinks? And as product developers (as…

I've only truly learned about people in other places by traveling. Anything else is mostly caricature.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#320

Post by concinds »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #31
sean_patel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get why everyone is downvoting this. Care to explain, down-voters? > I told them that people in my life would let me know if anything occurred that I needed to know. This is so true. I told my girlfriend the same thing after she got mad that I quit news and said "Oh, you'll need to know important local news (stabbings, crime in San Francisco, protests for traffic etc). That 1 time where someone 4 blocks from…

Here are a few reasons * It puts the burden of collecting and summarizing relevant news on others * You are at the mercy of the grapevine effect, which only gets worse as more and more people take up this solution so your news takes more hops before you receive it * And, most importantly, your sources are also not getting their news first hand; their sources the very same crappy news outlets that you yourself rejecte…

How does knowing that a train derailed and 300 people died, or that someone got stabbed, change your behavior in any way, shape or form? This may seem callous, but in my country the average person watches 3h of TV every day. That's 3 hours they could spend on a side-job, on a hobby, improving professional skills, getting fit, spending more time with their kids. Who cares that someone got stabbed? Most people care to "improve the world" (however dyfunctionally and pathologically) when they can't even be bothered to take care of themselves (75% of people in US are overweight) or to be good parents (1/3 of families in UK don't eat together at the dinner table, or even have a dinner table).

Not following the news is a perfectly rational choice. You'll be less stressed, much happier, less distracted therefore have better self-knowledge and a better capacity to self-actualize, and you can spend more time with your kids (who really need it).

In life, there aren't the uninformed and the informed. There are the uninformed and the misinformed.

Post reply on HN