Things You Notice When You Quit the News • Hacker News Board

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#421

Post by christop » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 4:46 PM UTC

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #414

bshimmin wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question (apart from the scare quotes!). I run a software consultancy based in the UK. I work with a variety of subcontractors, most of whom are based in Europe. The outcome of Brexit might potentially have a significant impact on my way of working with Europeans; I don't think it will, but keeping abreast of that (developing) situation is fairly important to me. I'm going to Venice on Wednesday. If there had be…

Weren't the newspaper polls misinforming regarding the Brexit result? Perhaps their interest in Brexit is contrary to yours. And haven't news organizations been known to exaggerate/mischaracterize small peaceful protests as large scale riots? I would think simply looking up "Venice riots" on YouTube and filtering for the last week or month would provide you the information you'd need rather than watching a talking he…

But presumably you wouldn't even know to search YouTube for "Venice riots" if you hadn't been consuming any news?

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#422

Post by irrational » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:02 PM UTC

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #148

blhack wrote: post #105

Earlier 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…

It's funny to me the quote mentions Palestine. I once spent six months in Israel on study-abroad (I was a near eastern studies major). While there I saw certain things firsthand. When I came back I noticed that all the US newspapers I could find in the University library all reported falsehoods regarding the events. I actually found that the BBCs coverage was the most honest and accurate. This experience has always left me wondering, "If an event that I have personal knowledge of was not reported accurately in the newspapers, how do I know that other events that I do not have personal knowledge of are reported accurately?" It doesn't seem to be enough to use multiple sources since all of the US sources I could find were inaccurate and how would I know if the BBC was always accurate?

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#423

Post by TheRealDunkirk » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:15 PM UTC

gurneyHaleck wrote: post #95

tasty_freeze wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If there's only one source of news that feeds into the grapevine effect then you only need to tune into the grapevine. There are like five journalistic camps that feed into my grapevine, and they all report the same stories, and spin five different opinions on the same daily topics. Thus, the grapevine provides the same complete set, five times, redundantly. All of the stories from these camps are useless. The storie…

Going one step further, I think 99% of the facts are irrelevant. It's the COVERAGE of the facts that matters. The presidential debates were a perfect example. WHAT was said was of absolutely no consequence. HOW it was said was equally inconsequential. What was important was all the chatter ABOUT what was said, and how it was said. The handful of media conglomerates TELL the vast majority of the population how to feel and what to think about what happened, and THAT'S the only important part to understand.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#424

Post by bigchewy » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:16 PM UTC

eigenvector wrote: post #235

zmb_ wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience is the opposite. And I'm definitely not blind to the Gell-Mann Amnesia, I notice it on Wikipedia all the time. I've noticed that in The Economist the articles about my field of technology, work, and my small home country, have been accurate to the point that I suspect they have had experts in the field involved in creating them. That gives me confidence in the articles about issues I'm not intimately fa…

Interesting. My own area of knowledge is renewable energy, a topic which appears with moderate frequency in TE. I would say 8/10 articles are merely repackaging reports published by major global consultancies like McKinsey, Navigant, etc. that I had seen two or three months earlier through my employer (a large multinational energy company). I would not say the information is not correct, but it hardly insightful and…

perhaps not insightful to you, someone with knowledge of the area. but how about others? how about me? where should I gain my insights into all of the various industries that I don't have direct knowledge of today?

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#425

Post by _ea1k » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:20 PM UTC

makomk wrote: post #379

trendia wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought this episode was rather funny, because they found that a right wing fake news site was actually run by a liberal who wanted to prove there was right wing fake news (and that it would be shared on social media, which they ensured by spreading it themselves). It turned out to be rather profitable for him.

The part I found hilarious is that there was one particular quote from the NPR coverage which spread like wildfire on social media - the one about how he tried to write fake news for liberals, but it just didn't catch on. Except that when I went looking for more information, one of the first successes I found reference to - via the Denver Post's article[1] about the FBI agent suicide fake - was "ATLANTA OFFICER KILLS…

Yeah, I got the feeling that they fake news author was feeding his agenda with that narrative. It was really strange to see so many people taking the statements of a confessed liar at face value.

Naivity and foolishness are not partisan traits.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#426

Post by anthony_romeo » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:21 PM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #406

mSparks wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes and no. Ive noticed the economist has a habit of playing policy games. In that case they publish nonsense to further certain policy aims. But often its well researched unbiased material. not that easy to tell the difference. but infinately better than the junk put out by the likes of the bbc fox cnn times etc.

Totally agreed. But the nice thing about the newspaper (The Economist refers to itself as a newspaper, not a magazine) is that they provide pure opinion journalism and as a reader you know exactly where they are coming from. While I agree a lot with the publication (for example: they argued to liberalize drugs, or advocated gay marriage literally decades before it was chic). I encounter my share of (what I lovingly r…

Additionally, I feel they present opposing opinions with proper weight and fairness (before arguing against these points), so you never quite feel totally in the dark about the full controversy.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#427

Post by xemdetia » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:29 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #422

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #148

Earlier 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…

It's funny to me the quote mentions Palestine. I once spent six months in Israel on study-abroad (I was a near eastern studies major). While there I saw certain things firsthand. When I came back I noticed that all the US newspapers I could find in the University library all reported falsehoods regarding the events. I actually found that the BBCs coverage was the most honest and accurate. This experience has always l…

The main way I've found is to just read something from multiple countries. For a given article I care about or feel dubious about I always try to get at 3 or more country's take of it. While it doesn't help you find the 'truth' writers tend to misinterpret the same things different ways while things that are actually reported figures will lean more consistent.

Also for lots of things there is generally the direct source available if it is economic/legal/statistically relevant and a quick skim of that is a good get you up to speed thing. The writer made mention of something as 'interesting' so that's just a key to me to go looking for information in that direction where otherwise I would not.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#428

Post by lucb1e » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

knz wrote: post #67

codingdave wrote: post #13

I 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 think on the way to that happening, the world would become a much better place before it gets worse. Only a very tiny percentage of us needs to try to understand events around the world and repeat to peers what they think is worth repeating, then those peers repeat to their peers what they thought was important to hear, and so on.

It's already kind of happening since journalists aren't a big percentage of the population, but instead of filtering out the important stuff, it's what we call the "media circus" and big business.

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#429

Post by _ea1k » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:36 PM UTC

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 think that you are getting downvoted for implying that an extreme position is the only alternative. I don't think that is necessary at all.

Its not that you have to ignore all news sources because of the possibility of bias (or easy, emotion filled "emotional truth" nuggets that fill so much of the discourse), but that you should be aware of these issues and react accordingly. Take time to reanalyze whether the narrative being pushed really makes sense. Compare it to other sources and validate the findings.

Don't just throw out everyone and only trust "NYT" or "WaPo" or "Fox News".

Re: Things You Notice When You Quit the News

#430

Post by iamcasen » Mon, Dec 12, 2016, 5:54 PM UTC

smoyer wrote: post #343

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…

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 m…

You hit the nail on the head. There is real wisdom in your last sentence, and it's something I've come to know recently.

In the end, it is unlikely that all of us will have an impact that goes beyond our local community. What is the point of endlessly fretting over things far removed from us, and far out of our control? We can't all be heroes, and we can't all be a guiding light for the world, so what can we do?

We can be a force for good in our local community! I think it's the healthiest mindset to have, even if you do want to stay informed about world events.