Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Hate the News (2006)

aaronsw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 192 posts

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#151

Post by tomjen3 »

VLM wrote: post #46
Toenex wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because otherwise you leave the decision to those that do. Vote. Spoil your ballot paper if you must (these get counted, at least in the UK) but take part in the process. Otherwise you are indistinguishable from those that couldn't be bothered or didn't care.

If we know they don't care what we think, then why would it matter if they knew we didn't care? If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, did it make a sound? If 40% of the population votes, they don't worry about the 40% who are use voting as the opiate of the masses... the problem they see is the 60% who didn't fall for the scam. The arguments in the following essay are compelling. I haven't heard much of…

If everybody in the US voted, but only those who normally would vote didn't spoil the ballot the world would notice.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#152

Post by jacquesm »

grecy wrote: post #99

I agree wholeheartedly. The news is no longer interesting and relevant to me, it's merely all the bad things happening all over the world. i.e. the headline might be about a train crash on the other side of the world, rather than some good story that happened in my own country. I spent two weeks above the Arctic Circle in September hiking and camping, with no access to the world [1]. When coming back along the road,…

Beautiful!

In Nov '04 I went through the Northern Rocky Mountains:

http://pics.camarades.com/d/210055-1/dscf0537.jpg

And these Elk would like to say hi to you and they're happy they avoided your freezer ;) :

http://pics.camarades.com/d/210067-1/dscf0541.jpg

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#153

Post by plug »

serve_yay wrote: post #80

In 2010, I was living in Washington DC and one day I heard the pettiest political squabble between two strangers. It prompted me to stop paying attention to politics, which up to then I followed rather closely, because I realized how bonkers it was making me. Everyone is just a bunch of angry assholes yelling at each other. It doesn't improve life, it makes you upset and unhappy. It wasn't too long until I felt simil…

I think this is the nail on the head for me.

I came to the conclusion late last year that I was spending too much time reading social, news and commentary - getting really sucked in. It was a massive waste of time, a productivity killer, and often quite depressing.

For instance, I live in a country where the police have no guns, and gun crime is almost non-existent. And yet, I felt like I was constantly reading about police shootings and brutality, (primarily from the U.S). And... it started to really upset me. This news has no context in my existence at all, and yet I know about it in great detail.

Same goes for all the Twitter flaming, and all sorts of other stuff.

I realised it was actually making me very unhappy. I decided to see if I could take a step back - I deleted my Facebook and Twitter, and tried to avoid comments and most extraneous news. I expected I'd go a bit mad, but the opposite happened - I'm actually surprised at just how happier I am now. Ignorance is bliss?

That said, I do believe there is huge value in being informed - but it is hard to regulate and parse all the information out there into something meaningful.

HN is my only vice now - I'm a lurker mostly, and it's work related so that's okay, right? ;)

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#154

Post by PhoenixWright »

Since I was old enough to read I've been following the news. Politics, world, sports finance I am really well informed to the point that if someone mentions any recent headline I've read at least one source regarding the topic, usually two or more with updates as well.

During my freshman year of college I stopped following the news. I was so focused on starting off well in school that I avoided most distractions. I found that those months were some of the most focused and productive I've ever had. Sadly I fell back into the habit of reading news articles and catching cable news at night. But I've been trying to stop, although my smartphone is making it very difficult.

Like Aaron points out I can't point to one thing I've read or heard on the news that has turned into actionable information. I also agree that reading better developed thoughts on a specific subject would be more beneficial.

Lastly I'd like to say I really miss Aaron. This post is an example of his brilliance. Depression is a horrible disease and the circumstances surrounding his suicide make it all the more tragic.

RIP aaronsw.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#155

Post by webXL »

austenallred wrote: post #8

I, strangely enough, agree with Most of what Aaron says. And I'm the founder of a news company. I worry about this attitude on a macro scale, but it's hard to argue with on a micro one. I spend most of my day following what's going on in the world, and it hasn't added much value to my life. But I worry about everyone not caring. Not because that would kill my company (I started it because I hate news in its current f…

> A publication one can consume in thirty seconds with the most important stuff

If you don't allow the user to define "important", it's the same thing. You're just replacing the editors with random fact-checkers who are most likely regurgitating the headlines editors put on their screens.

I was surprised I couldn't filter by region. I think Aaron's point was that if it doesn't affect me, why should I follow it?

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#156

Post by duaneb »

smackfu wrote: post #114
neilk wrote: post #97

Let's say we never had "the news", and we all decided we needed to help society understand and react to novel events. Would we invent newspapers and cable channels? I don't think so. When modern institutions realize they have an information distribution problem, they don't get a bunch of ink-stained, dubiously sober arts graduates with no special qualifications, and tell them to write stories. They pay people to do r…

Wow, that's pretty damn dismissive of journalists. Is writing not a skill?

Writing is a tiny part of telling the news.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#157

Post by xnull6guest »

vinhboy wrote: post #141
xnull6guest wrote: post #116

I completely disagree with Aaron, who here seems to jump rather quickly to the (merely asserted) conclusion that the news (i.e. the world) doesn't affect him. (Without this same news we would not have heard of Snowden OR, in an ironic twist, of Aaron himself). Furthermore, how ironic is it that we're discussing this itself on a self-purported news site? The news, even global news, absolutely affects all of us even if…

So I browsed the comment thread, and you are the first "disagree" I found. I am going to join you here. I think one of the most wrong thing in the article is this statement. > Indeed, reading a voter’s guide is much better: there’s no recency bias (where you only remember the crimes reported in the past couple months), you get to hear both sides of the story after the investigation has died down, you can actually thi…

I had originally meant to include an argument about voters' pamphlets - I am glad that I did not as you covered it well. The pamphlet summaries, which issues are used for the face of a campaign and how these issues are carefully written about is all carefully crafted PR and not representative of the interests of the candidate, their constituents and investors or of their track record of fulfilling campaign promises. The information you get from a voter pamphlet is what a candidate wants to appear like and which voters they are trying to appeal to. This can help to understand their publicity campaign but it is not enough (alone) to understand their platform agenda.

Similarly, seeing the high coverage of Coptic Christians where coverage of attacks on Muslim minorities (which are much more frequent and equally horrifying) by ISIS and sometimes America, allies or contractors (or of similar atrocities by Mexican drug cartels in the Americas) is missing helps to understand how media and state moral narrative diverges from more universally applied and internally consistent humanitarian compassion - and how and when this and these narratives may align with broad geostrategic policy goals. Insofar as Coptic Christian moral narrative may be used, as an example, as justification for some activity or funding, one will know to look to see if that activity or funding has been a long-standing objective or has been proposed and denied before due to a lack of public support.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#158

Post by borkabrak »

westoncb wrote: post #135
asgard1024 wrote: post #117

Here are two ideas for non-traditional news, that would reduce the information overload, and make news more interesting and healthy: - Actionable news. Only news to which you can (or have to), as a citizen, take some action. Examples: Changes in law, cultural events that will take place in the future, openings of new institutions, planned political demonstrations or petitions. - Old news. Only give news about somethi…

The problem with actionable news is that you have to allow some individual(s) to make the decision for lots of other people what is actionable. Chances are you have someone in the audience whose creativity is greater than the filter's and could have figured out an action that was overlooked. With old news, it does seem like there's a class of news subjects that are picked before ripe in a sense, and it'd be great to…

"Allowing some individuals to make the decision for lots of other people" is the purpose of a representative democracy. It may not be ideal, but it's necessary because of the size of the group and the logistical nightmare of implementing a pure form on such a scale. Which is, I think, the issue to which this article is a response.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#159

Post by redthrow »

asgard1024 wrote: post #117

Here are two ideas for non-traditional news, that would reduce the information overload, and make news more interesting and healthy: - Actionable news. Only news to which you can (or have to), as a citizen, take some action. Examples: Changes in law, cultural events that will take place in the future, openings of new institutions, planned political demonstrations or petitions. - Old news. Only give news about somethi…

Can't it be done simply by checking out...

-Local events site

-Wikipedia's world events page once a month

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015#Events

Post reply on HN