How do you process the news?

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It goes even further back than Taleb:

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It is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits, than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.

General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will etc. But no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.

Thomas Jefferson - 1807 [1]

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[1] - https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/99-01-02-5... (highly recommended to read the entire letter - it's equal parts interesting, informative, and entertaining)

I'm hugely sympathetic to this, but at the same time, I want to say, "snap out of it!"

We shouldn't take on the burden of things we cannot control. I think telling kids that they can change the world is mentally damaging. They could easily come to believe that if the world sucks, then it's their fault for not trying hard enough.

As for how to actually process the news, I remember a scene from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Total Perspective Vortex is a torture device that shows your true place in a vast, uncaring universe. You are revealed to be an insignificant spec on an insignificant dot, thus demoralizing you. But when Zaphod Beeblebrox steps into it, he come out unscathed. "How?" ask the torturers. He replies, "I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox!"

I'm a Gen X'er. We lived through the end of the Cold War, when we expected 30 minutes to say goodbye after WWIII started. We lived through the AIDS pandemic, which made every sexual encounter (rare or not) a life-or-death decision. And we were at the tip of the spear of the technological revolution that is still changing the world today.

As a generation, we are cynical optimists. We believe people are idiots and the world sucks and it's probably only going to get worse, but...yeah...things will work out for us personally.

I felt pretty betrayed post election. Not exactly sure in what. It’s not like I didn’t see it coming. Not just by news sites (which I had lectured others on about how the profit motives work again and again). A lot of my “news” was actually coming from comedy/satire stuff, because it helped me cope and I like that stuff, but it was still just sucking me in. I found I was constantly morally outraged.

So I swore it all off (mostly). I just don’t want to be angry anymore. I read HN and some other tech sites.

One thing I do do is ask others about the news. I tell them I’m not interested in what’s going on, what they’re excited about or mad about, but ask them to tell me what new thoughts or observations they’ve had of late as news consumers. I have found that this studying/observing/listening how others are cognating is much more healthy for my own mental state.

I get two physical news papers. One English daily, covers mostly Indian news. One a regional daily in vernacular that covers my residential state.

International news for me is whatever shows up on my Twitter feed but I don’t pay much attention.