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

161–170 of 192 posts

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#161

Post by sdeutsch »

skrebbel wrote: post #130
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…

Wow the "old news" idea blows me away. I really, really want that.

You would probably really enjoy Delayed Gratification. It's a quarterly publication that wraps up global news day by day from 6 to 3 months prior (e.g. the March issue covers Oct/Nov/Dec). They have a great mix of short and long form articles and I think a reasonable balance for world news.

http://www.slow-journalism.com/

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#162

Post by DubiousPusher »

_bfhp wrote: post #33

How would Lawrence Lessig feel about this article? Lessig obviously believes that the U.S. political parties' activities are consequential to everyone's lives. Aaron seems to reject the notion of the implicit involvement, in a democracy, of every citizen in the affairs of their government. We supposedly elect (a significant portion of) the government, we pay for its activities, so we should care about what it has don…

I don't think Shwartz was advocating a position of ignorance regarding geopolitical affairs. Just read a book or an essay on important geopolitical topics instead. If you want to know what important legislation is being advanced go to town halls, visit .gov sites, make an activist friend. All those are better ways to find out what's going on than the news.

I stopped following the news, other than this site, after years of dedicated reading/viewing. I'd become disgusted with the amount of time that's dedicated to manufactured scandal, fained outrage and disemination of non-facts. I'm happier now and actually feel better informed.

Sure, if I want to know about something I'll hit a major news site from time to time but honestly the longer I go without digging through the daily news pile for information gold, the more it just looks like a midden concealing a few soggy turds.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#163

Post by redthrow »

Ciantic wrote: post #6

I wish news sites had a periodical system built-in. One could choose the period, e.g. 7 days to the past, and see all important news from that time-frame. It would of course require a human to tag the news as important within a period. Subscriber only feature would suffice.

For Hacker News, you can do something similar by visiting

http://www.hckrnews.com

once a week and scan "Top 10" news for the last week and check out the articles that pique your interest.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#165

Post by logn »

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…

Actionable news: Ryot is doing this. I've never paid much attention to them but they've hired away people from other media companies I do follow.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#166

Post by westoncb »

borkabrak wrote: post #158
westoncb wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a separate question from how to organize our government; the notion of 'representative democracy' doesn't apply to news (at least in the proposed or present form).

The problem with news, as described in the essay, is that it's mostly not useful. The above solutions talk about ways of filtering it in order to make it more useful. Filtering, however, isn't the only way of solving this problem. For example, you could keep all the information available but categorize and label it, or impose some sort of hierarchy. Of course options for doing that are limited (though not exhausted) in traditional, non-interactive mediums—but that's probably a large part of why communicating it in an interactive medium instead is the current trend. Which obviously comes with benefits of de-centralization when done via the internet.

I think the solution is, as in the article, to stop consuming traditional news sources; there are intrinsic limitations to informational organization in a static medium. Instead, grab something interactive where you can select what's relevant to you.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#167

Post by abstractConcept »

jessriedel wrote: post #132
abstractConcept wrote: post #129

> There is voting, of course, but to become an informed voter all one needs to do is read a short guide about the candidates and issues before the election. I have often wondered how people can make uninformed decisions easily. Now I know. Only reading a short guide, is akin to reading a Wikipedia article for a monumentally important decision, and not bothering to check the edit history, let alone the references.

Rather than make a snide remark, it's more useful to "steel man" this argument: Consider the X hours you spend over the course of a year reading the news, which for most people you would consider "informed American" is in the triple digits. (That's less than 20 minutes a day.) Now, rather than reading any news that year, imagine that before the election you sat down for X hours and read a some books and long-format e…

I have not heard the term (to) "steel man" (rather than (to) "straw man") before, interesting.

Admittedly, I was writing emotionally, as the sarcastic "Now I know" might suggest. However, I would argue that reading "a short guide" seems vastly different from what you suggest.

---

My emotional reaction was in response to how "a short guide" seems to suggest a very biased source; for instance a pamphlet that might be given out by a political party/group. Perhaps this was a flaw in phrasing, but that does not seem likely to me from the text.

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#168

Post by [deleted] »

abstractConcept wrote: post #167
jessriedel wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than make a snide remark, it's more useful to "steel man" this argument: Consider the X hours you spend over the course of a year reading the news, which for most people you would consider "informed American" is in the triple digits. (That's less than 20 minutes a day.) Now, rather than reading any news that year, imagine that before the election you sat down for X hours and read a some books and long-format e…

I have not heard the term (to) "steel man" (rather than (to) "straw man") before, interesting. Admittedly, I was writing emotionally, as the sarcastic "Now I know" might suggest. However, I would argue that reading "a short guide" seems vastly different from what you suggest. --- My emotional reaction was in response to how "a short guide" seems to suggest a very biased source; for instance a pamphlet that might be g…

[deleted]

Re: I Hate the News (2006)

#170

Post by jeffsco »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #164

"Read not the Times. Read the Eternities." Thoreau agrees.

"I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. ...Instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party," Emerson lamented in his eulogy of Thoreau.
Post reply on HN