Things You Notice When You Quit the News

Let me elaborate.

The article argues that you are better off 'switching off' from the media because you won't be doing anything about any of it anyway, other than having uninformed water cooler conversations.

The truth is, for the vast majority most of the news that's been happening for the vast majority of anybody's life, it's not worth doing anything about it, including investing the time to read books on the topics. Because, honestly, most of it is of no consequence to us, either way. And that's because the politicians know that people like us read the news and and are willing to spam social media and wreck their election chances at the slightest provocation, so policies that are against our interests are pre-filtered.

But it doesn't hold that this will always be true. If you and people like you grow complacent and block out the news altogether, one day you might notice that laws have been passed that oppress your demographic and your demographic alone. Because you didn't protest and the politicians know you wouldn't protest, because you switched off and they know that too.

This requires no ill-will on their part. It's just that their optimization function for re-election requires balancing the interests of only those who are willing to do something to protect their interests. Which necessarily requires them to be at least minimally informed. And for this, partial and shallow information is a lot better than no information at all.

The danger isn't that you end up 'voting wrong'. The danger is you'll stay home the day everybody else votes for the stormtroopers to kick your door in and take all your stuff.

Well ... there's a flip side to this.

The people I know who are absolute news hounds end up knowing all the talking points of the talking heads, but don't actually think for themselves. I'm on the board of a small prep school and one of the most important things we do is teach critical thinking. This includes analyzing statements from a historical perspective, recognizing that the speaker probably has an agenda and memorization of the logical fallacies.

In the '80s I was a big fan of Rush Limbaugh ... he was entertaining and for the most part, did talk about current events. I felt informed. In '92 when Clinton was elected, his monologue quickly became hateful and negative. My mood was dramatically worse and I became hateful too. Funny since the Clinton years were coincident with a huge boon in my businesses. And then I found myself repeating his talking points without even thinking about it.

Finally I realized that I didn't actually believe much of it ... and when I looked at the vitriol the other side was spouting I didn't believe it either. I think it's pretty important to know the facts of what's happened in the world but you can't do that through news.

Now I completely ignore the news channels and generally skim through headlines. Some headlines are factual while others are purposely skewed to the writer's biases. It's easier to tell that someone has an agenda from the headline and I even occasionally read the first paragraph. I don't miss the period of my life where I was under the influence of the news channels, and I spend the time I've recouped in my community ... I find it easier and more useful to know the pulse of the area where I live.

I honestly find coursera and edx are by far the best use of my time too. Structured learning with a beginning, an end and a few individuals (professors) that specialize in a field. I'm doing things that ARE actually in my field (similar to yours) but set me apart completely at work where most people don't take the time to do any sort of learning and just focus on the daily grind.

As a side note, the other more fun yet still kinda learning use of my time has been to watch a few older Japanese shows - not the crazy all-over-the-place stuff they have today. For example, Musashi (2003). It's fun to watch and at the end of every episode they talk about a site in Japan where Musashi traveled in real life. I find this type of show enriching. Another good one is a show called Change (from 2008) which is again Japanese about a young man randomly becoming prime minister of Japan. The show again discusses the intricacies of Japanese politics in a funny way but with a big dose of the real issues in Japan (e.g., the small number of young people vs the old).

The conclusion being:

You need a balance. Neither extreme works.

It's a rather universal principle.

I'm a fan of extremely selective news following - having tested, it makes me much happier and has very little negative effect - but it comes with an important corollary: if you're going to avoid a topic, it's very important to also understand that means you don't know much about it.

I make rather a point of saying "I don't know much about that" when the topic of current affairs that I'm not following come up.

Then again, that's partially because when I do want to know about something, I tend to deep-dive on it (https://medium.com/im-trying-to-fact-check-brexit). And it's largely because many of my friends are spectacularly highly informed on anything they're likely to comment on, and so any time I do slip and attempt to sound informed on something I'm not, I have about a 50% chance of sounding like a complete idiot.

So this may be much easier to do in my social circle.