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The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

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Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#221

Post by BethGagaShaggy »

slg wrote: post #157
steelframe wrote: post #14

I stopped reading the news about a year ago. I felt like my emotions were being manipulated by a sharply-honed system built precisely to invoke outrage and draw you in to read more and more of it. I've been able to direct my focus and energy to much more productive tasks since I disconnected. Of course I entirely missed that whole Supreme Court thing until after it was over, and I have no idea what people around me a…

It needs to be pointed out that this is an option that originates from privilege. Ignoring the news means ignoring politics. Ignoring politics is tacit support of the status quo. The status quo does not put everyone on equal footing. Disadvantaged people would therefore suffer more from disengaging with the news than people of privilege.

It also needs to be pointed out that the only political system where people aren't allowed to be indifferent is known by the charming name of "totalitarianism".

Truly "disadvantaged" people have little to win from any sort of politics and have little time for it. I don't think hobos give a lot of thought to the supreme court.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#222

Post by gwern »

f055 wrote: post #97
cleetus wrote: post #52

These links discuss "news diets" as a counter to the problem of news as low-quality information and/or information pollution: http://www.raptitude.com/2016/12/five-things-you-notice-when... . http://www.dobelli.com/en/essays/news-diet/ And here's a similar recent discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19084099

Your dobelli link is 404 :( anyway, this whole problem isn’t new but it’s very hard to solve. How to stay informed but not bloated? I don’t know... here they compare mainstream news to fast food so I guess that’s one way to look at it: https://thecontext.net/opinion/2017/04/4/the-post-truth-and-...

https://www.gwern.net/docs/culture/2010-dobelli.pdf

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#223

Post by XaoDaoCaoCao »

slg wrote: post #157
steelframe wrote: post #14

I stopped reading the news about a year ago. I felt like my emotions were being manipulated by a sharply-honed system built precisely to invoke outrage and draw you in to read more and more of it. I've been able to direct my focus and energy to much more productive tasks since I disconnected. Of course I entirely missed that whole Supreme Court thing until after it was over, and I have no idea what people around me a…

It needs to be pointed out that this is an option that originates from privilege. Ignoring the news means ignoring politics. Ignoring politics is tacit support of the status quo. The status quo does not put everyone on equal footing. Disadvantaged people would therefore suffer more from disengaging with the news than people of privilege.

You're out of your ing mind. One of tbe greatest abuses that lower classes have to endure is the 24 hour propoganda and emotional hijacking machine known as "the news".

God forbid people have the freedom to have cognitive peace, quiet, contemplation, and free play.

If anything, the "disadvantaged" have more to gain from disengaging from constant cognitive hijacking!

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#224

Post by Can_Not »

rayiner wrote: post #216
slg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs to be pointed out that this is an option that originates from privilege. Ignoring the news means ignoring politics. Ignoring politics is tacit support of the status quo. The status quo does not put everyone on equal footing. Disadvantaged people would therefore suffer more from disengaging with the news than people of privilege.

This view is pretentious and hypocritical. Let’s imagine that you’re a typical HN-er and you have a nice MacBook Pro or have taken a nice vacation or gone to Burning Man or whatever. For that same amount of money, you could have changed the life of a child in Bangladesh. Why didn’t you? Because you are a bad person, and you chose frivolities for yourself over necessities for someone far from you. Maybe if you read th…

I don't blame OP for choosing his macbook and burning man over a single Bangladeshi child when OP is likely paying rent to and also employed by people who are personally hoarding wealth to feed millions of starving children and instead using that wealth to invent new ways to make people pay even more for a basic modest existence.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#225

Post by quest88 »

slg wrote: post #161
netfl0 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is ignoring media tacit support of the status quo?

Because being politically active at any thing but the most basic level requires knowledge of the issues and knowledge of the issues requires following the news. If you are not politically active you are supporting the status quo because you are not putting in any effort to change the status quo.

Right, when it comes voting time look at actions a candidate took and what they said they would do. Make your judgements from there and vote. That's all that matters. Everything else is like watching a drama.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#226

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #207
AWildC182 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we should just never read any news again because someone wrote a click-bait article? I don't know if you've been to a library...but they usually have newspapers .

Most articles are little better than click bait. Journalists writing about X usually aren’t trained in X and usually have little time to build expertise in X. They are by training writers, so for the most part they’re reduced to parroting the narratives peddled by this or that group or political party. It’s very rare I read a general news article within my areas of subject matter knowledge and think “oh, this writer…

This is a reductive and misleading summary of what journalists do. Every blogger on the Internet also writes, with varying degrees of training and success. What reporters do that bloggers don't is reporting --- surveying and cultivating sources, visiting places, making a zillion phone calls, working with fact checkers (itself a tedious job that has little to do with the craft of writing).

That's the job of a reporter. Not knowing everything, but being willing to do the legwork to find people with firsthand knowledge of things, and then relating what they have to say. That's why we call journalism "the first draft of history", and not the textbook of history.

Like every profession, journalism has limitations and is itself practiced with varying degrees of success. We're fond of Crichton's "Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect" on HN, but ignore the Djikstra Amnesia Effect, holding journalists to a standard we rarely achieve in our own profession, where our own errors routinely cause direct harm to people through ignorance and omissions.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#227

Post by enraged_camel »

rayiner wrote: post #216
slg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs to be pointed out that this is an option that originates from privilege. Ignoring the news means ignoring politics. Ignoring politics is tacit support of the status quo. The status quo does not put everyone on equal footing. Disadvantaged people would therefore suffer more from disengaging with the news than people of privilege.

This view is pretentious and hypocritical. Let’s imagine that you’re a typical HN-er and you have a nice MacBook Pro or have taken a nice vacation or gone to Burning Man or whatever. For that same amount of money, you could have changed the life of a child in Bangladesh. Why didn’t you? Because you are a bad person, and you chose frivolities for yourself over necessities for someone far from you. Maybe if you read th…

So basically, if you bought a MacBook instead is spending that money to help a kid in Bangladesh, you are a hypocrite and shouldn’t criticize others for being privileged?

I think this is sufficient to demonstrate the sheer ridiculousness of your stance: https://imgur.com/gallery/ORdcf0R

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#228

Post by Faark »

clay_the_ripper wrote: post #23
steelframe wrote: post #14

I stopped reading the news about a year ago. I felt like my emotions were being manipulated by a sharply-honed system built precisely to invoke outrage and draw you in to read more and more of it. I've been able to direct my focus and energy to much more productive tasks since I disconnected. Of course I entirely missed that whole Supreme Court thing until after it was over, and I have no idea what people around me a…

Did the same thing about 4 years ago and haven’t looked back. I find though that a lot of people are actually offended by it since I have no clue what thing they and everyone else is outraged about. I get accused of not caring, being disengaged, blah blah blah. It’s difficult to explain to people who are still deep in outrage mode, so I mostly avoid taking about it. My life is so much better since cutting out the new…

How do you know whom to vote for?

I understand the US doesn't have a lot of choice on the ballot, political news is highly polarized and latest/developing news is probably not worth following. But somewhat keeping up with what your government does so you can hold it accountable seems like a civic duty to me. And what better way to do this than news?

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#230

Post by slg »

old-gregg wrote: post #191
slg wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It needs to be pointed out that this is an option that originates from privilege. Ignoring the news means ignoring politics. Ignoring politics is tacit support of the status quo. The status quo does not put everyone on equal footing. Disadvantaged people would therefore suffer more from disengaging with the news than people of privilege.

I disagree. News != politics. In fact, if I replace the "status quo" in your statement with "reality", the meaning will change significantly. I don't need a journalist to tell me that the healthcare situation (to pick an example) is absurd, or that taxation (fed+state) in some states is already at European levels, yet without any healthcare or education benefits. It's easy to be aware of these facts, you just have to…

I don't know what you are intending to mean with your first point. Yes, you can change a word in my comment to a word with a different meaning and it will change the meaning of what I said. That doesn't mean what I said isn't true.

Healthcare is really too big and broad of an issue to really highlight what I am saying here. There is no way not to at least be aware of it if not interact with it and it has been one of the biggest political issues in this country for decades. However you can take a look at certain pieces of that to see my point.

For example, a tiny minority of people reading this have any reason to know the price of a month's supply of insulin is over $450 or that 1 in 4 people with diabetes are rationing themselves insulin in order to afford the drug. But more and more news stories are highlighting this issue which is leading to political pressure to address it. Just today there was a congressional hearing on the subject. I have no idea if something will be done to reduce the costs of insulin, but I know the price wouldn't go down if people just ignored every news story about it.

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