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News is bad for you

theguardian.com

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Re: News is bad for you

#121

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

I'm a fully recovered Digg, Reddit, Huffington Post, & Perez Hilton junkie. I've been clean since 2009. It really is an addiction that takes over your life. It's like a stimulation that you always have to have. I quit cold by banning the offending websites using my linksys router:

● Go to http:192.168.1.1 using your browser, the default name and password is "admin" and "admin" (please change the password to a REALLY long one and write it down on a sticky note next to the router (if you haven't already)

● Click the "Access Restrictions" tab | Enter a policy name and select "Enable" | ignore "applied PCs"'s edit list | Set Access Restriction to "Allow" | Make sure the Schedule portion has "everyday" checked and "24 hours" selected | Enter the URLs of the 4 websites you'd like to block | and click "save settings" at the bottom.

● Sure you can come back here and disable the access restrictions, but it requires extra steps, requires you to get up, requires you to type in a long password. And by that time you'll have realized what you're doing isn't good and stopped yourself. The whole point is to stop the bad habit of subconsciously typing in Reddit.com every 5 minutes. It took me a month and after whatever chemical high I had in my brain that was addicting me to Reddit/HuffPo/etc. wore off I just disabled the bans and haven't been a Redditor ever since. I've visited Reddit months later maybe twice but didn't care and haven't been back since. I'm free.

Re: News is bad for you

#122

Post by sherman333 »

If you attach a negative connotation to news then you're obviously trying to make people hate it. Essentially this article equates reading the daily news to a quick fix of heroin. But we aren't feeding an addiction when we read the news. On a high level, we are trying to stay informed. But you must recognize the deeper connection our minds make with new information.

The psychologist Gary Klein has written about how people make decisions. His most recent book provides several pieces of evidence that we have good insights because we can connect irrelevant information/ideas to the problems we see everyday (whether these problems are at work, at school, in the laboratory, or on the toilet).

Learning is healthy. Reading is necessary. The news is irreplaceable: not because of its pertinence but because its insightful value.

Re: News is bad for you

#124

Post by thinkersilver »

This news article summarises nicely why I went on an extreme news diet over the last 4 months. I broke that streak today by reading the article on the guardian about why I shouldn't be reading the news. I couldn't resist because of the articles obvious reflexivity.

Re: News is bad for you

#125

Post by MartinCron »

mnw21cam wrote: post #4

http://xkcd.com/1299/ I grew up without a television - deliberate choice. My friends couldn't believe how much cool stuff I could get done because of this.

This implies that people are getting less smug about not owning a television since 2000, I don't see any evidence to support that.

Note: I gave up my television in 2000, and I am a bit smug about it.

Re: News is bad for you

#127

Post by elboru »

tokenadult wrote: post #47
marmaduke wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google News and try to train it Does this work? Does it work better than looking through TrueTrueReddit and hubski?

Google News is most definitely trainable. NO WAY would I visit Reddit for news (I was an early adopter of Reddit, and with Hacker News in my portfolio of news sources already, I don't see enough value-add in trying Reddit again.)

How do you do that? The only way I can think is discarding any story I'm not interested in, but how do I say, hey Google Now I liked this article?

+1?

Or how do I say: "this was a really bad article"?

Re: News is bad for you

#128

Post by tunap »

RSS Feeds saved me from a life of the bl-ews. I've got my hand-picked sites ranging from world news to space news to tech news with a little TIL and Adam Curtis mixed in. It takes me five minutes to see the state of things I am interested in & bookmark any interesting headlines for perusing later when time allows. Many days, there is no later perusing, but I get an idea of what is happening outside my circle of influence.

Now if I could get a continental breakfast one morning without being assaulted by the talking heads squawking on every TV in every hotel lobby saying the same shit every same day.

Re: News is bad for you

#129

Post by [deleted] »

kvee wrote: post #116
oskarth wrote: post #20

While I agree with the sentiment, Rolf Dobelli himself is a plagiarist. This whole reasoning is basically stolen from Nassim Taleb. http://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm http://blog.chabris.com/2013/09/similarities-between-rolf-do... EDIT: For another take on not reading the news, see http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

That this is the top comment on Hacker News, rather than discussion about ideas, demonstrates Rolf/Taleb's ideas pretty well

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