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Stop Reading News (2013)

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Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#31

Post by solipsism »

skilled wrote: post #6

For the last 4-5 years, Hacker News has been pretty much my only source of any kind of news outside of the topics that I work with on a daily basis. This is true. Before that, I did not read newspapers or follow any kind of journalism. I still recall being around age 12 or 13 and making a conscious decision not to watch TV anymore. It has been around just as much time since I last saw a TV news report. Maybe it has s…

Wow you just shat on people who read the news and people who don't in a single comment, while elevating your own head-buried-in-the-sand preference as the elite choice.

I'm not even mad! That's amazing!

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#33

Post by dagaci »

If you don't read the news then how are you supposed to make a judgement about who to vote for or understand current trends or be alerted to issues with products recalls or where the great bargins are?

I stopped reading newspapers very a long time ago too, haven't watched TV in several years, and because of this i miss out on most of the above.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#34

Post by quietbritishjim »

keiferski wrote: post #13

I, for one, would love a monthly email newsletter that summarizes the top ~100 news stories of the past 30 days. Things that turned out to be irrelevant would be ignored, while things that turned out to be important would be included and briefly commented upon. Magazines like The Economist sort of fulfill this role, but they are often a little too detailed for the high-level overview I'm looking for.

The Economist does include a one page summary of the week's news near the start, with just one or two sentences for each story. You can use that to decide which you wish to read a whole article about later in the paper. You can even choose not to read any, though admittedly it would be a bit expensive to buy the paper and read only one page of it. (There is also a page about business news, reflecting the publication's title, and it's often worth looking at the first couple of those.)

Also worth looking at unconditionally are the letters page, which is always very good and sometimes has very famous correspondents (occasionally from tyrannical regimes making preposterous statements, with no response from the paper), and the obituary, which has an eclectic selection of very famous and very unknown individuals.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#35

Post by lifeisstillgood »

keiferski wrote: post #13

I, for one, would love a monthly email newsletter that summarizes the top ~100 news stories of the past 30 days. Things that turned out to be irrelevant would be ignored, while things that turned out to be important would be included and briefly commented upon. Magazines like The Economist sort of fulfill this role, but they are often a little too detailed for the high-level overview I'm looking for.

I think of something similar but less "news" lead - for example a backlog of the most "important" global issues (yes we can out climate change at number one) but it's things like "water shortages in southern sudan" at number 18 and so on that really will give perspective - when we see things like Brexit at number 67 that we know we have a proper balance.

I would start with a metric like "estimated number of excess human deaths from this issue in next year, five years fifty years" and have open transparent ways to assess the metric

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#36

Post by minikites »

>The point is, most of what you read online today is pointless. It’s not important to your life. It’s not going to help you make better decisions. It’s not going to help you understand the world.

That's an awfully privileged position to take. I'm going to guess the author isn't likely to have their status as a person invalidated, their religion declared illegal, or their citizenship revoked any time soon. I'm going to guess he's of a race that isn't likely to be a target of a government endorsed hate crime.

---

I purposefully wrote that paragraph before I looked up the author:

>Shane Parrish has become an unlikely guru for Wall Street. His self-improvement strategies appeal to his overachieving audience in elite finance, Silicon Valley and professional sports.

When a member of an elite class gives you advice, consider if the advice is truly in your best interest, or if it serves to cement their elite status in society. The elites benefit from keeping "the proles" in the dark.

As a member of the elite, trying to sell to other elites, Shane represents the ultimate in privilege: the type of person who is going to be just fine no matter what the government or any company decides to do. Some of us aren't so lucky.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#37

Post by nailer »

zimpenfish wrote: post #18
skilled wrote: post #6

For the last 4-5 years, Hacker News has been pretty much my only source of any kind of news outside of the topics that I work with on a daily basis. This is true. Before that, I did not read newspapers or follow any kind of journalism. I still recall being around age 12 or 13 and making a conscious decision not to watch TV anymore. It has been around just as much time since I last saw a TV news report. Maybe it has s…

> I think the new generation is caught up in quizzes that stir up emotions, and psychological tests that determine whether a giraffe is your spirit animal. Given the activism they're showing in, eg, the US, I think if you read the news, you'd be surprised how wrong you are. > How can anyone justify reading news that only talk about negative things? To be aware of them in order to help fix them?

A lot of that activism is more performative than practical, judging by voter turnout.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#38

Post by jaabe »

I buy the bit about being critical about what news we consume, but I just don’t see a complete avoidance of news as being a good solution. To me, not reading news would remove more value from my life than reading too much.

My personal fix for news media was to identify exactly what I wanted from a news paper and then identify the one which suited my needs best.

This turned out to be a paper, which at the time (2017) only had a printed version. No online version at all, they do now, but I’ve never visited it. It’s a high lixcount paper with a heavy focus on society (as in statecraft not cocktails), culture and arts/literature. It’s basically the perfect paper for our cultural elite. I’m not really part of that, and I always skip the book and arts sections, so you could say the paper isn’t exactly a perfect match. It’s underlying political philosophy doesn’t even align with mine.

The thing is though, it only comes out on Fridays. This means the paper only focuses on the stuff that’s actually relevant. It also means the articles have actually journalistic depth. The combination of this means I get to stay informed without being bothered by all the irrelevant noise in the regular news cycle.

It’s been truly awesome, and if something critical happens I can always turn to internet news.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#39

Post by charlysl »

If you want to understand better than 99% of the population where the world is heading, you could do a lot worse than reading a few of the titles in the Economist's books of the year list.

Even better, read Machiavelli, human nature hasn't changed and it will help you interpret the news.

Also watch the documentary "The Century of The Self"; most news is propaganda, and this will help you spot it.

And, if you must read the news, aim for a bit of diversity (i.e. both media from the right and the left, and events in your country as seen from abroad, and triangulate), otherwise you will easily get brainwashed, censorship in dictatorships tries to block media it can't control for this very reason.

Headlines are clickbait more often than not, don't believe them, and "breaking news" is abused so often that it's become a meaningless tag.

Don't use social media as a news source, it's abysmal, even worse than tabloids.

Re: Stop Reading News (2013)

#40

Post by smt88 »

skilled wrote: post #6

For the last 4-5 years, Hacker News has been pretty much my only source of any kind of news outside of the topics that I work with on a daily basis. This is true. Before that, I did not read newspapers or follow any kind of journalism. I still recall being around age 12 or 13 and making a conscious decision not to watch TV anymore. It has been around just as much time since I last saw a TV news report. Maybe it has s…

> Is the new generation reading news? I highly doubt it.

Instead of doubting it, try doing some research.

"Age does not impact people’s attentiveness to various news topics. Even the youngest adults are as likely to pay attention to news [...] as older adults. Further, they are no more likely than older adults to follow news on lifestyle topics."[1]

> I think the new generation is caught up in quizzes that stir up emotions, and psychological tests that determine whether a giraffe is your spirit animal.

This is incredibly condescending and seemingly not based in any statistical reality.

> I know the system is broken, corrupt, beyond repair -- why remind me about it every day?

Because knowing how "the system" is broken today (which differ from yesterday or last week) makes you an informed citizen. When enough informed citizens vote, the system is significantly less broken.

If you don't inform yourself and vote, you are one of the reasons the system is still dangerously broken. I hope well-run governments are not a matter of life and death for you, because they are for billions of other people.

1. https://www.americanpressinstitute.org/publications/reports/...

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