Rolf Dobelli's "Avoid News" [1] reads a bit more flesh out, while striking similar notes. My key takeaway from it, is from the closing paragraph:
> Go deep instead of broad. Enjoy material that truly interests you. Have fun reading.
Stop Reading News (2013)
31–40 of 63 posts
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#32"The problem is, the news doesn’t make us informed -- quite the opposite. The more news we consume, the more misinformed we become." "News is, by definition, something that doesn’t last." Couldn't disagree more. As a counterargument, consider, for instance, the question of how it would be possible to write history without a connection to news (and other things) stored to archives? But this I can agree with: "Like oth…
"Couldn't disagree more. As a counterargument, consider, for instance, the question of how it would be possible to write history without a connection to news (and other things) stored to archives?" I agree, to state simply: news becomes history So, my understanding of history is: integral(news) dt + history_reading I'd argue that watching the (news) dt occur also helps me to evaluate the quality/accuracy of the histo…
Hopefully historians rely on more than the various rags throughout time!
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#33If 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…
That's a slippery slope argument like no other. ("Reduce news consumption, turn into unsocialized disaster victim under the control of others.")
Hate to be that guy, but this literally happened to friends of mine in the apt complex I live in. Completely disengaged from local news, had no idea that the building was losing power and being flooded in 2 days. Lost shedloads in the basement carpark.
"oh, I am sure it will be ok" right until it wasn't.
But your point is good otherwise. It's a continuum. How far down the slider you dial it, is up to you. I dialled to "completely disengaged" but there's "keep an ear open" further up to "read obsessively every day"
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#34I recommend creating your own feed:
https://sturlabragason.github.io/blog/2023/06/15/Curated-New...
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#35If 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.
I think the answer is reading more varied sources of news, not less. But for sanity's sake, reading less might be good.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
> get from the headlines to Wikipedia as fast as possible This is the way. I treat news headlines as a list of recommendations for which Wikipedia articles to read today. I have even built my own archive of Wikipedia's "Current Events" pages[1] to make this process as seamless as possible, and skip all the non-news garbage that news websites tend to be infested with. [1] https://pastevents.org/
That's awesome! I'll be consuming this from now on, combined with newsminimalist.com . Should cover 99% of what I want to know. Can you add RSS feed to pastevents.org? That would be even better!
I've thought about adding RSS for a while, but have not yet settled on how this would interact with the filtering and sorting functions. I believe a feed would be especially useful if it could be constrained to events matching specific keywords.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#37It’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…
Dude that is pretty dismissive. Your not even trying to validate their claims, just shut it down.
Everyone knows there is problems with the media, particularly with attention seeking (read click bait), and bias (read telling you what you want to hear).
The news is a contributing factor in the current political climate, it is mostly unhealthy. Why is it unfounded?
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#38If 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…
Well, I don’t watch news, or any social network.
My friends tell me about the « big » happenings like Ukraine or Israel big.
The rest, I don’t get and I don’t care. I don’t miss anything regarding the local situation. Yes, if I’m going to see some stand up, maybe I’ll miss on some references, that’s the price I pay for the peace of mind I get by not subjecting myself to demotivating content on the daily. Funnily, about your locus of control argument, focusing on things you can’t control (like inflation, some disease in a land far away or another murder in the USA) is not going to help you deal with things in a better way. Quite the contrary. You have much, much less control than the info you can take in generally.
I don’t know, I think one should be more mindful of their mental diet whenever they engage with a piece of content they can access for free. Especially in our ad driven economy, always being aware of what’s being said and why is it said that way helped me understand a lot, more sometimes than the message in itself.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#39If 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 can read the info just b4 voting instead of submerging in all the madness all year. It's also funny how you've written 'unable to engage with peers on anything except history'. Like, do you speak with your peers only abt news and history? When we gather with friends we discuss many personal things too, and some news too, but not bc we follow them, but bc news were so big that these got to us through another chann…
A Priori, how can you know something (may) impact you, if you are unware of it until it impacts? Did you not wish the opportunity to avoid it? to engage in it?
"I didn't know the Stones were playing that gig" is big in this. If the stones decided to play the gig 24h ago, and you're in the city, the FOMO may be worse than the other choice.
Look I'm not dying on the hill on this. I think some amount of engagement is wise, beneficial. Too much is definitely bad.
Re: Stop Reading News (2013)
#40It’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…
Dude that is pretty dismissive. Your not even trying to validate their claims, just shut it down. Everyone knows there is problems with the media, particularly with attention seeking (read click bait), and bias (read telling you what you want to hear). The news is a contributing factor in the current political climate, it is mostly unhealthy. Why is it unfounded?
Oh you’re right - sorry, I forgot that everyone knows that the key ideas of the article are correct so they don’t require any evidence.
To drop the sarcastic frame - the article either argues something that could be incorrect or it makes a meaningless argument. If it’s arguing something that could be otherwise then it needs to give evidence for the things it’s saying. It doesn’t and treats everything it’s saying as completely self-evident. But these are empirical assertions that need evidence to be proven true or false, and the article stands out in using zero evidence. Personally, I think that this inadvertently reveals the disdain for news is really part of a broader undervaluing of evidence in general, but I don’t think that’s provable really.