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The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

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Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#61

Post by narrator »

irq wrote: post #58
clay_the_ripper wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the same thing about 4 years ago and haven’t looked back. I find though that a lot of people are actually offended by it since I have no clue what thing they and everyone else is outraged about. I get accused of not caring, being disengaged, blah blah blah. It’s difficult to explain to people who are still deep in outrage mode, so I mostly avoid taking about it. My life is so much better since cutting out the new…

Honest question, how do you turn off your empathy for the suffering of your fellow countrymen? Which is what ignoring their plight would require (at least, it would for me).

There is a lot of bad stuff going on all over all the time. Focus is what's important. There are billions of people on this earth. You could cry at hundreds of stories every day if they were told in great enough detail. Those stories could be embellished or made up, paid for by someone with an agenda to promote and you wouldn't know the difference.

Save your outrage for things you have first hand knowledge of or knowledge of through trusted contacts.

The world did ok before 24/7 news, so it's not like you, king of the world, need to be up to the minute informed on whatever thing you're supposed to take your outrage vengence upon today.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#62

Post by stcredzero »

tombert wrote: post #48
stcredzero wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the worst offenders of this are Fox News, but it's not like CNN or MSNBC are blameless. I remember being disgusted at Fox News, especially during the WMD debacle. I was right there with Jon Stewart when he criticized it as "Faux News." Certainly, "it's not like CNN or MSNBC are blameless." In recent years, they've become every bit as bad. there's this bizarre, us-against-them, almost-conspiratorial vibe to a…

I still don't think CNN or MSNBC are as bad as Fox News yet. Sean Hannity is basically Alex Jones-lite, and Tucker Carlson is pretty much completely disingenuous (and if you want to talk about us-versus-them, I recommend counting the number of times he says "elites" during his show). Plus, Fox and Friends is pretty much just an elaborate propaganda program for the president at this point. Even if you agree with Trump…

I cannot see how anyone could not see the blatant and purposeful right-wing propaganda of Fox.

It's easiest to see propaganda, when the lies are about you/your side. To see how CNN or MSNBC fit Noam Chomsky's "propaganda model" you have to look at the times when they pushed narratives against the truth. To do that, you need to have some perspective outside the bubble around CNN and MSNBC, or be unlucky enough to have them push a lie or false narrative about you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkcd_MQgEL8

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#63

Post by jaabe »

I subscribe to a paper that comes out each Friday, called weekendavisen. Until May last year it didn’t have news on the web, they do have an electronic paper now but I’ve never visited.

It’s high quality news in lengthy articles, in fact I’m not even in its demographic because it has a lot of culture stuff as well and I don’t really care about that.

I really like the fact that it’s relevant though. Because it only comes out on Fridays, only the stuff that actually mattered during the week makes it in there.

If something big happens I’ll turn to internet public service, but otherwise I mostly ignore news outside of my weekly paper. I highly recommend it if you want to stay informed but cut the bullshit and have a similar option.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#64

Post by sampleinajar »

stcredzero wrote: post #32
sorenn111 wrote: post #9

Amen, faster and more frequent news is certainly broken. However, I worry that we are fighting against human nature. The use of smartphones has demonstrated, I believe, that people will blindly chase their dopamine hits coming from a variety of formats because it is ingrained in human nature. The dopamine reward pathway gives a good feeling and people are naturally inclined to follow the path of least resistance to m…

The use of smartphones has demonstrated, I believe, that people will blindly chase their dopamine hits coming from a variety of formats because it is ingrained in human nature. The dopamine reward pathway gives a good feeling and people are naturally inclined to follow the path of least resistance to more hits. If an organization or app tries to fight this, then people will simply use it less. The way this has been r…

> The problem in 2019, is that people are trying to do end-runs around Freedom of Speech not through argument, but through reputation smearing and de-platforming.

This is absolutely not a new phenomenon. "Red scare" anyone? Free speech has never protected an individual from social consequences only government/state consequences. We probably agree that it's not a good thing, but it's definitely not new nor has it ever not existed.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#65

Post by tracker1 »

stcredzero wrote: post #43
edpichler wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful about what kind of news you ignore. The punishment to who ignore politics, per example, is being governed by who cares.

In 2019, Be careful about what kind of news you uncritically believe. The punishment to those who ignore due skepticism, is being governed by those who will manipulate.

Too true... I can't stand Trump on a personal level... but he's right about one thing. There's a lot of manipulation and outright falsities in news, and almost no research or fact checking in the twitter sphere.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#66

Post by stcredzero »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #50
stcredzero wrote: post #37

https://quillette.com/

Quillette has proven to be of consistent poor quality, IMO. (and further, I've found it dishonest) Please note that it's founding and leadership team includes alumni of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rebel_Media . That latter outfit is not known for it's...veracity.

Quillette has proven to be of consistent poor quality, IMO. (and further, I've found it dishonest)

I've found them willing to take unpopular positions for the sake of truth. What have they done which is dishonest?

https://quillette.com/2019/04/08/what-explains-the-resistanc...

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#67

Post by tracker1 »

tombert wrote: post #48
stcredzero wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the worst offenders of this are Fox News, but it's not like CNN or MSNBC are blameless. I remember being disgusted at Fox News, especially during the WMD debacle. I was right there with Jon Stewart when he criticized it as "Faux News." Certainly, "it's not like CNN or MSNBC are blameless." In recent years, they've become every bit as bad. there's this bizarre, us-against-them, almost-conspiratorial vibe to a…

I still don't think CNN or MSNBC are as bad as Fox News yet. Sean Hannity is basically Alex Jones-lite, and Tucker Carlson is pretty much completely disingenuous (and if you want to talk about us-versus-them, I recommend counting the number of times he says "elites" during his show). Plus, Fox and Friends is pretty much just an elaborate propaganda program for the president at this point. Even if you agree with Trump…

Try watching Tim Pool on youtube (timcast/subverse)... he's centrist/liberal leaning but absolutely calls out a lot of the crap on all sides of the coin.

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#68

Post by jjulius »

matt4077 wrote: post #54
_cs2017_ wrote: post #36

The article and the comments express the desire for news to be an effective tool to inform and educate the public. While appealing, this idea has never worked in the past, and there's no evidence that it can work in the near future. The reason is not that the media or the journalists do something wrong. Rather, the vast majority of the public is simply not interested in being educated or informed. You can send the be…

This sort of cynic pessimism is getting out of hand... By most any measure, today's western democracies are the best place, and time in history, to be alive: life expectancy, crime, food availability, mobility. This is also true of education and "being informed", although those are harder to measure. But literacy rates, high school and advanced degree proliferation, books being published, and of course internet acces…

None of what you wrote addressed the point of the comment you were responding to, which is that it's hard get people to be informed about the news if they just don't care. I'm not arguing that what you said is inherently wrong, it just doesn't have anything to do with the question at hand.

The OP wrote that, "You can send the best art / math / business professor to a school, but if the students are not interested in that field and have no need for a good grade, there will be very little learning done." Let's take that and combine it with the women going to medical school that you referenced.

OP is suggesting that the women going to medical school might put all of their effort into the classes that directly pertain to their field. But if they need an elective class (let's say, some kind of art class, for instance), then they might go into that and put forth the lowest effort possible to achieve a passing grade if it doesn't interest them. OP's suggesting, and rightly so I believe, that the general populous does the same thing with politics. Those that care about it invest more time in reading about it, while those that don't care about it won't invest more time in reading about it and will typically choose the lowest-effort, easiest-to-digest sources of news.

Going back to OP's original question, how to we counteract those tendencies?

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#69

Post by ghda »

steelframe wrote: post #14

I stopped reading the news about a year ago. I felt like my emotions were being manipulated by a sharply-honed system built precisely to invoke outrage and draw you in to read more and more of it. I've been able to direct my focus and energy to much more productive tasks since I disconnected. Of course I entirely missed that whole Supreme Court thing until after it was over, and I have no idea what people around me a…

I’ve managed to cut down my news diet to financial papers (the Australian Financial Review in my case).

All the important news filters through eventually, and most of the filler content is emotionally neutral (“some company you don’t own launches takeover bid for some other company you don’t own”) instead of outrage-porn click bait (“this sign spotted by a twitter user in the bathroom at a bakery in Des Moines will either outrage you or else the fact that other people are outraged about it will!”)

Re: The Urgent Quest for Slower, Better News

#70

Post by 1two1one »

stcredzero wrote: post #41
steelframe wrote: post #14

I stopped reading the news about a year ago. I felt like my emotions were being manipulated by a sharply-honed system built precisely to invoke outrage and draw you in to read more and more of it. I've been able to direct my focus and energy to much more productive tasks since I disconnected. Of course I entirely missed that whole Supreme Court thing until after it was over, and I have no idea what people around me a…

I stopped reading the news about a year ago. I felt like my emotions were being manipulated by a sharply-honed system built precisely to invoke outrage and draw you in to read more and more of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

Can you add some context for those who don't want to / are not able to watch the youtube video?
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