> Our obsession with being informed makes it hard to think long-term.
The news today is what history is tomorrow. You can frame it as not being able to think long-term, but it just smells like fresh history-making to me.
Stop Reading News (2013)
11–20 of 63 posts
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#12> The information you consume today becomes the raw material of your thoughts tomorrow. If you want to change your thoughts, start with the information you consume.
> What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention
I fully agree, but even after not reading/watching 90% of the news, I still feel like checking HN or watching the 17:00 news
I know that (audio)books and podcasts are way more informative, and I enjoy reading or listening a lot, but still, the news is simply addictive.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#13If you don't mind being unable to engage with your peers on anything except historical matters.
If you don't e.g. mind being unaware of the local situation, which goes to preparedness. -By all means don't read news outside of tornado season, and don't mind being caught up in current affairs with no situational awareness.
If you don't mind abrogating decision making to others, where you have some locus of control. If you have no locus of control in the situation then being un-informed is almost exactly what those who do have some levers, wish.
Certainly, reading "news" as "olds" is somewhat easier on the mind. perhaps we're just disagreeing about how old you should leave it to be.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#14Here is my favorite quote of all time and not just because I agree wholeheartedly. Try to guess who the quote is from and fron when.
> Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. 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, &c., &c.; 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 & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#15Well, a very similar case can be made about Stopping to Read Blogs...
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#16Redolent of Aaron Swartz' essay I Hate the News:
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#17I recommend checking out your local teletext offerings and seeing if there are any translated into HTML. The teletext format is much more terse, and there is less hubris in general.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#18If you don't mind being unable to engage with your peers on anything except historical matters. If you don't e.g. mind being unaware of the local situation, which goes to preparedness. -By all means don't read news outside of tornado season, and don't mind being caught up in current affairs with no situational awareness. If you don't mind abrogating decision making to others, where you have some locus of control. If…
99.99% people who read news don’t read it critically, so their “decisions” are completely at the mercy of what the very impressive propaganda machinery that we call news. Any control people feel they have by making opinions based on reading news is an illusion.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#19It’s pretty interesting to read what’s basically a long series of substantive empirical claims without a single citation. All the evidence necessary to support this argument is furnished entirely within the series of loosely-connected ideas and free-associations - an incredible feat for any article, much less a stream-of consciousness. Wow!
If we existed in a world where “News doesn’t make you more informed; it just makes you more confident the information you have is all there is.” was something that could be false, it would probably be Not Good to present it as true and move on here. Luckily, since this is an an obvious analytic truth, the author is right to simply say it and move on. As a suggestion to the author, it would be helpful to list all the propositions which need to be justifiable a priori for his argument to be justified (in this case all of them), so that readers can know whether or not to take him seriously at first glance.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what is honestly better than contextualizing today's news with (history * yesterday's news)? A tough question. The issue, I think, is that we cannot reliably reflect/contextualize about today's news/events until it becomes history, i.e. reliability (for a lack of a better term) comes only with distance to past. But now we are already on a dangerous ground because, you know, '84.
I'm lost; how does big brother play in? > " think, is that we cannot reliably reflect/contextualize about today's news/events until it becomes history, i.e. reliability" This is exactly my point so far:: the best approximation I have for contextualizing today's news is by examining the diff of today's history and yesterday's news. I'm not confident in my grammar; let me make a graphic: ...............................…
"'Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past."
Look to the East.