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Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

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Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#121

Post by dencodev »

mmierz wrote: post #63
monoideism wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> climate models appear to be more conservative than reality I've read this sentence multiple times and still not sure what it means. Would you please expound?

“Conservative” here is being used to mean “marked by moderation or caution”, rather than the set of political positions called conservatism. The poster is saying that global climate change is probably even worse than people think. Often, the reporting around climate change focuses on the best case, the average case, or what could be achieved with an immediate strong response. But the actual paths we are on seems to t…

It's not clear to me how anyone can make a judgement about whether models are more conservative than reality. We have no ability to independently measure climate change within our tiny data point of existence. Even a decade of observing it being hotter than it was in your younger years is not any sort of indicator of climate change.

Unless you're reading the entirety of academic research yourself and able to critically judge the validity of that research (by being a climate scientist yourself) it seems like you're always depending on someone else's biased interpretation.

To clarify: not disputing climate change. Only the ability for someone to make judgement calls on whether the reporting is accurate.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#122

Post by jwally »

Matt Taibbi has a pretty good take on it I think. (https://www.amazon.com/Hate-Inc-Todays-Despise-Another/dp/19...)

I just built an app to control my own addiction (addictionlocker.com) and have thought a lot about this recently.

My two cents: the media has gotten good at giving us what we want, and what we want is conflict. If bad news and fighting weren't what we wanted they wouldn't publish it. By engaging with it, we tell it what we want, and they just deliver more of it. Extrapolated ad absurdum; YouTube and Facebook's algorithms serve you what you're interested in, otherwise you'd get bored and go somewhere else. The rest of the media just got good at doing this too...

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#123

Post by originalvichy »

I think it is an easy, highly rewarding version of learning. Learning new things from a physics book and a news paper is probably not that enormously different on a chemical level.

News papers give you dozens of new things to learn every time you refresh the page.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#124

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

pb7 wrote: post #119
SamBam wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I completely stopped all news watching/reading entirely. ... I seem to be better-informed. How do these square? How is it that you become informed?

One way that I could imagine is having long-form discussions about it with friends rather than getting a journalist’s opinion and settling on it as fact.

But then you just had a discussion about your friends understanding of the issue, which is going to be another step removed from the journalist. And you're either relying on the friend to have done all the work for you, or you're just two people who haven't taken the time to look at the issue discussing it.

To me, it seems that was lies strong opinions and without context.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#125

Post by tgb »

Fiveplus wrote: post #110
tgb wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you believe it has largely the same negatives as other social media like Twitter or Facebook? (At least in terms of the present topic that "news is addictive".) Why drop one but not the other?

Fair point, why not drop all and become an internet hermit relying solely on RSS feeds? But then again, aren't these feeds addictive? Don't they leave you asking for more? At what point in the discussion of internet content can we truly(as a userbase) call it non-addictive then? I'm the furthest thing from an expert on the matter so for me, a website that opens once a week at 17:00 EST for a duration of 2 hours might…

I think HN is awfully addictive, though slightly less so than certain other sites due to a slightly bounded amount of content. Though I think it has helped my life in some ways, it's probably a net negative. My real problem is what should I replace it with? Trying to limit HN (and similar) time tends to make me increase my time on even-less-worthwhile activities like other sites. It's not that HN is good, it's just among the least-bad of the activities that tap this certain urge.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#126

Post by war1025 »

Balgair wrote: post #95
frereubu wrote: post #21

Seems an appropriate time to post my favourite piece on news addiction by Charles Simic in the NYRB. "I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expect…

Great quote I feel that way too. 2 ways that I've found some refuge in the chaos that is the hyper-modern world: 1) More news. Flood your brain. Find all the news sources you can in your chosen language. Most big-time newspapers have an English-language resource. Look at those. Once, I put the online English version of the top 100 newspapers in the world (by circulation and if they had an English version) in my morni…

> Read a book.

Non-fiction books have driven my world opinions more than any other source (besides I suppose lived experience).

One sad thing about the past few months is I no longer find time to read. My wife does ebooks, but I just can't get into them.

On the plus side, I'm getting a lot of projects done around that house.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#127

Post by [deleted] »

tgb wrote: post #73
kampsduac wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no longer reading the papers and watching television This is what I do, in addition to no social media except for certain personal alerts. I ask my partner to relay any significant news/events to me. I do support my local media group The Colorado Sun with a membership and sometimes read through their articles, which don't have advertisements so they are not incentivised to produce click-bait headlines and sponsored…

You don't consider HN to be social media?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#128

Post by pb7 »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #124
pb7 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way that I could imagine is having long-form discussions about it with friends rather than getting a journalist’s opinion and settling on it as fact.

But then you just had a discussion about your friends understanding of the issue, which is going to be another step removed from the journalist. And you're either relying on the friend to have done all the work for you, or you're just two people who haven't taken the time to look at the issue discussing it. To me, it seems that was lies strong opinions and without context.

There’s the rub. Your friend is more likely to have a similar point of view as you on a given topic so they can relay the necessary details for you, if the topic is important enough. No matter the topic, there will always be multiple spins on it so getting your friend’s spin is no better or worse than a journalist’s — or worse, the mob’s.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#129

Post by yetanta »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #117
yetanta wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live thousands of miles away from New York city. A few months ago I was reading about someone getting into an argument in central park. Why am I being show that? It was to provoke an emotional response out of me. They are using our emotions to manipulate us.

Or maybe the advent of easy to use and accessible recording devices is shining a light on the prejudice and abuse that people with certain characteristics have been suffering from for decades. Those with political power in the US could conveniently turn a blind eye to the problem with plausible deniability with a he said she said excuse, but now they have to face the problem. I think that’s an important development i…

Why? They were being quite racist towards each other. Should I get involved somehow? Other than 'be angry' what are my choices? I literally can not change what those two do to each other. I sure did not feel sympathy towards either of the two people. I see neither party doing much to help at all. I see one party who has promised to fix that exact issue and made it much worse with poor economic choices and making people think they are getting a good deal. The people of those cities have consistently voted for that. So it is what they wanted. Now they seem shocked that they have made it worse. They literally voted for it.

Re: Ask HN: Is it just me? why is “news” so addictive?

#130

Post by rootsudo »

tossthere wrote: post #109
frereubu wrote: post #21

Seems an appropriate time to post my favourite piece on news addiction by Charles Simic in the NYRB. "I’m having trouble deciding whether I understand the world better now that I’m in my seventies than I did when I was younger, or whether I’m becoming more and more clueless every day. The truth is somewhere in between, I suspect, but that doesn’t make me rest any easier at night. Like others growing old, I had expect…

I figured this out a few years ago and completely stopped all news watching/reading entirely. I have nothing but positive things to say about that decision, and surprisingly I seem to be better-informed and feel like I have a worldview that more accurately reflects reality than most of the people who follow news daily. Daily news watchers now seem like such ineffective people to me, and I’m reminded of the know-nothi…

This is a bit unrelated to HN, but in the terms of "memeculture."

What you've discovered and described is called "NPC" by meme culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPC_(meme)

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