Endless Doom Scroller • Hacker News Board

Re: Endless Doom Scroller

#111

Post by msla » Tue, Aug 04, 2020, 8:34 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #101

mekoka wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> honestly looking at the world in sober fashion I think most people are probably not scared enough. I see your comment as the perfect irony. First, you presume that your outlook is sober, but have you considered that the way you perceive the world is just that, the product of your biased (by all the gloom) state of mind? Do you think the world is getting worse? It's been "getting worse" forever . As for fixing probl…

Some things like the size of the US National Debt are genuinely getting noticeably worse rather quickly. It’s ~125% of GDP (26.6T) ignoring COVID and likely to get significantly worse over the next year. Interest added up to 383B in 2009 and 574B in 2019 that’s insane. https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.ht... Plenty of issues do evolve slowly. The Ogallala Aquifer is rather critical to the Midw…

> Some things like the size of the US National Debt are genuinely getting noticeably worse rather quickly.

Without context, this is meaningless. Most people lack the context to understand what National Debt even is, let alone how it works in an economy; for proof of that, look at all the people who are, to all appearances, utterly convinced that China can "repossess" massive tracts of land because it "owns" some of our debt. The utter confusion of ideas required to hold such convictions is beyond me, but such notions are out there, and quite potent in certain circles.

Re: Endless Doom Scroller

#112

Post by AndrewDucker » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 9:22 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #35

I don't really understand the 'doomer' debate, that is to say complaining about negative news when the world in fact is facing enormous negative events. It seems to me sort of like the 'three-wise-monkeys', just think happy thoughts and the world gets better or something. It seems infantile. I don't see how you can fix problems if you aren't willing to in the first place look at them, as we've seen in this pandemic t…

Being informed is great. Everyone should have enough of an idea to be able to make informed decisions about the world and engage with it usefully.

But that's not what Doomscrolling does for people. If you already know that X is wrong, reading 500 more instances of how X is going on doesn't add to your knowledge. It doesn't allow you to do anything more about it. It doesn't change anything meaningful.

Gather enough knowledge to be useful. Beyond that point it's just going to make you miserable without adding anything to you or the world.

(You probably want to gather a little more than that, to be sure you're not missing anything key. But learn to spot when you're just pointlessly bathing in horror.)

Re: Endless Doom Scroller

#113

Post by thinkingemote » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 9:29 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #35

I don't really understand the 'doomer' debate, that is to say complaining about negative news when the world in fact is facing enormous negative events. It seems to me sort of like the 'three-wise-monkeys', just think happy thoughts and the world gets better or something. It seems infantile. I don't see how you can fix problems if you aren't willing to in the first place look at them, as we've seen in this pandemic t…

8.5/10 great comment

Re: Endless Doom Scroller

#114

Post by Retric » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 11:09 AM UTC

msla wrote: post #111

Retric wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things like the size of the US National Debt are genuinely getting noticeably worse rather quickly. It’s ~125% of GDP (26.6T) ignoring COVID and likely to get significantly worse over the next year. Interest added up to 383B in 2009 and 574B in 2019 that’s insane. https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/ir/ir_expense.ht... Plenty of issues do evolve slowly. The Ogallala Aquifer is rather critical to the Midw…

> Some things like the size of the US National Debt are genuinely getting noticeably worse rather quickly. Without context, this is meaningless. Most people lack the context to understand what National Debt even is , let alone how it works in an economy; for proof of that, look at all the people who are, to all appearances, utterly convinced that China can "repossess" massive tracts of land because it "owns" some of…

Digging in you could learn the actual effects when a country defaults or even makes real effort to avoid defaulting. However, failing to understand the details is not protection. So, the point is you can directly see a major problem getting worse.

Further, that was simply a random example. Substitute the global obesity crisis and the point stands.

Re: Endless Doom Scroller

#115

Post by teddyh » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #86

This is a brilliant work of interactive digital art that perfectly captures the zeitgeist. The artist, one Benjamin Grosser, describes it as follows: > "Doomscrolling" refers to the ways in which people find themselves regularly—and in some cases, almost involuntarily—scrolling bad news headlines on their phone, often for hours each night in bed when they had meant to be sleeping. Certainly the realities of the pande…

Yes, the submitted link should have been this instead.

Re: Endless Doom Scroller

#116

Post by teddyh » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 1:25 PM UTC

Tepix wrote: post #22

Elon Musk on avoiding daily news: “ The daily news I find to be a lot of noise. Generally newspapers seem to try to answer the question, ‘What is the worst thing that happened on the Earth today?’ ”

I prefer Aaron Swartz’s take:

“[…] they think these are aberrations; that underneath all this, the news is worth saving. I simply go one step further: I think none of it is worthwhile.”

— http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

Re: Endless Doom Scroller

#117

Post by Tepix » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 2:28 PM UTC

goalieca wrote: post #61

I want to stay informed about the world but I'm unable to read the highly editorialized doom scrollers. I'm tired of the news cheering for the hurricane and I'm tired of pointless feel good stories to bring "happy news" that isn't really news at all. I've started to read more long-form essays on current events topics. I find they nicely summarize events in a chronological order with all of the benefit of hindsight to…

I feel similarly. I started subscribing to the monthly magazine "Le Monde Diplomatique" - they focus on in-depth analyses and not the daily or even weekly events.

Re: Endless Doom Scroller

#118

Post by fragmede » Wed, Aug 05, 2020, 3:55 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #35

I don't really understand the 'doomer' debate, that is to say complaining about negative news when the world in fact is facing enormous negative events. It seems to me sort of like the 'three-wise-monkeys', just think happy thoughts and the world gets better or something. It seems infantile. I don't see how you can fix problems if you aren't willing to in the first place look at them, as we've seen in this pandemic t…

How are you doing? It's a simple question that's difficult to answer honestly in these trying times. If the relentlessly negative news has you overwhelmed, unable to do anything, and you're a husk of a human being, unable to do anything other than eat, sleep and scroll, then you gotta stop with the doom scrolling and take care of your mental health.

The virus doesn't care about how optimistic you are, but with suicides rates rising, and known factors of that are anxiety and isolation, which are both abundant right now, it's emotionally facile to say thinking happy thoughts is infantile. You can't do anything if you're depressed and stuck on the couch, and in that state no problems can be fixed.

It doesn't no one any good if you're too scared to work on fixing problems. If that means lying to yourself and believing that the only way out of this mess is a vaccine that will arrive in February, just to be able to put pants on to go grocery shopping, then anyone who judges you harshly (including yourself) for that is being an asshole.