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

Why We Should Watch Less News

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 90 posts

Re: Why We Should Watch Less News

#61

Post by jessaustin »

dingaling wrote: post #44
asdkhadsj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He suggests going on a news diet by mindfully curating the news content one plans on consuming, and thinking about its relevance to everyday life I've actually wanted to do this for multiple things too. Ie, I want to spend ~15m a day getting a curated list on various topics that interest me. From tech, programming, etc. I don't want to feel I'm "missing" anything. My desire stems from not wanting to miss tech relat…

Don't overlook hyperlocal news; what's happening in your community. Even 'boring' things like reviewing planning applications have brought me closer to the other people in my town. It's very easy, particularly as dormitory commuters, to know more about what's happening elsewhere in the World than on our own doorsteps. I feel a lot happier that I don't know much what's happening in London, 400km away, but I'm making a…

Keeping an eye on local news helps prevent getting screwed, too. The highway passing a property is slated for safety improvements. One particular idiosyncrasy of the design was going to severely inconvenience us, our tenants, their customers, and our neighbors. We lobbied the highway department to change the design slightly, and they did change it. This is the same state highway department that has happily put dozens of local businesses under. A rare actual case of "Hanlon's Razor". If we hadn't paid attention we'd have had no recourse.

Re: Why We Should Watch Less News

#63

Post by tw1010 »

I like to say I don't watch the news. But I'm also almost never surprised when news articles arises in discussion irl. So I guess I still consume a lot of news, it's just that I don't read the NYT much, but I get it from podcasts and HN and similar instead.

Re: Why We Should Watch Less News

#64

Post by stlHusker »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #15
chrisco255 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty on point. I tend to lean towards realclearpolitics.com for my news as it alternates liberal and conservative columns every other headline. The juxtaposition of the two slants is pretty telling about how each side sees current events.

One of the funny things I've noticed about reading opinion columns in this format is how often you get these bombastic headlines on both sides of something. "X is bad! The end!" and right afterwards "X is goodness! A new age dawns!" (X may be something like "local pickle farmers protest new holiday". The topic doesn't matter, oddly enough, it's audience size that counts) If you scan the first column, it's very weak.…

"I'm left with opinion on those days that not much of anything has happened regarding X. But folks still need views!"

In a strange way it validates how well off we are, particularly in the U.S., that outrage needs to be manufactured in this way. Of course the impacts are extremely negative and no journalist ever gets views or prizes for "hey it is important but society won't collapse and we are pretty well off..."

In the end it is a number of factors and cycles between the public and the media:

1) News is now a entertainment with eyes to attract.

2) The public loves death, destruction and crisis. "We like to watch things die from a safe distance; better you than us."

3) Journalists don't get any personal or professional benefit from covering important but "mundane" things. Look at who wins the Pulitzer.

4) On an individual level, people will still find things that are problematic regardless of how well off they are (see "First-World" problems).

5) Knowing of 4) there is a typical over-reaction to actual things of importance; but the reaction is hysterical.

"A kid was kidnapped today, that could happen to mine!"

6) Now that every individual, isolated event can be distributed to millions; every single crisis abstracted to be systematic and endemic (based on 4) and 5) above); it is not that bad things happen, it is that there needs to be a solution and we need to solve for it.

"We've got to do something about this kidnapping crisis, I see it on the news all the time!"

7) Realizing 6) the media can now take political positions and feed into this need to produce more stories that satiate that.

A year later...parents are charged with neglect after letting their kids walk home from school alone. Turns out it was a relative who kidnapped the kid. Also turns out there were only 10 of these this year in your community and the chances of this are much smaller than they were years ago, but all of them hit the news, so...

Re: Why We Should Watch Less News

#65

Post by wenc »

have_faith wrote: post #7

If you where to move your news reading to once weekly, what news sources would you use to catch up on anything useful you might have missed in that time? traditional online news outlets are too fast paced for this purpose I think, very high signal to noise.

Yes! I stopped following daily news because the stories were just so low quality due to the news cycle.

I started subscribing to "slower" news media like Time Magazine, which gives me the important highlights but only after they've had some time to develop. The content quality is much higher.

Re: Why We Should Watch Less News

#67

Post by beat »

MrEfficiency wrote: post #59
beat wrote: post #5

OMG THIS. I recently deleted social media apps from my phone, and replaced most of my social media diet with reading books again, like I did in the good olde days before the internet. I feel... healthier. Smarter, for sure. After reading a ton of philosophy and history recently, the day-to-day political debate on the internet looks like nonsense most of the time now. And when I see someone is wrong on the internet, I…

Social media is just as untrustworthy as traditional news. Friends sharing news/propaganda from various outlets. Fake users astroturfing on reddit/twitter/HN/facebook/insta. I dont know what the future is, but I'm positive its going to be first-hand sources. At least that way, you are going to be skeptical the entire time and that persons reputation is at stake.

We kind of have that first-hand future already. Consider Trump's twitter feed. He speaks directly to the public, in a simple and direct way, largely immune to editing/manipulation. Sure, it's insane, but it's the most direct communication we've ever had from a president, and that's kind of impressive.

But in general, the problem with first hand sources is credibility. How do you know you can trust a first hand source you've never heard of? Are they giving us a complete or fair picture? Or are they either unintentionally or intentionally misleading us with incomplete/incorrect information?

I'd like to say the future is in credibility and integrity, but I fear that's actually the past. Now, people just believe what they want to believe, and pick and choose their facts to fit their internal narrative. It's nihilistic and terrifying, and I have no idea how society can resist it.

Re: Why We Should Watch Less News

#69

Post by AltruisticGap »

I've started thinking more seriously about this as well.

When we're home, we like to think there is this whole wide world "out there". Behind the walls that surround us, is this world full of events and good things and bad things.

Yet in actuality, it is all mind. And much of this mind (ie. memory) is not of having actually visited those places or experienced those events -- it's information that we were just fed (images, videos, myths and beliefs).

It got me thinking about this saying "your body is what you put in it". Likewise then, "your world (and thus all your hopes and dreams) is what you put in it".

I mean, I used to think this was some kind of New Age / pop psychology, like "positive thinking".

But it isn't. By acknowledging the actual nature of this world right now, which is mostly in my mind right here as I type this message... then the validity of this becomes more evident. Everything I think, everything I do, comes from this internal map of self and of the world...

Re: Why We Should Watch Less News

#70

Post by dzuc »

lifeformed wrote: post #42
abhiminator wrote: post #19

I recall reading and saving (in my Instapaper) a super relevant essay[0] written by a Swiss entrepreneur/author -- Rolf Dobelli -- that talks about how news systematically alters your 'risk-map' of the world, thus making you worry about things that'll almost never affect you while distracting you from things that actually might; as an example, the author talks about how terrorism is overrated and chronic stress is un…

Are there any good sources of daily curated news? I'd like to read a condensed version of important news without all the emotional manipulation. I would pay money for that.

I quite like Quartz Daily Brief: https://qz.com/emails/daily-brief/
Post reply on HN