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Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#691

Post by derangedHorse »

macNchz wrote: post #631
throwawaythekey wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me put it another way. Trump is likely to try many outrageous and unexpected things. As someone who tries to be non partisan, and isn't even american, I am fatigued by all of the claims that the world within the USA is ending. Whenever I take the time to examine any of the claims they tend to be fairly hollow or making slippery slope arguments. As an international user of reddit, there are many of us I presume, I…

> slippery slope arguments If we review democracies through history that have at some point become less democratic, I think describing the process of how that actually happens as being a slippery slope is quite apt. I’d say it’s more of a fallacy to assume that democracy is a secure default state of being rather than an ideal that we must collectively support or lose entirely—that we can safely “slip” a little withou…

The reason why a slippery slope is a fallacy is that the starting point is an arbitrary threshold. Nothing here indicates the end of democracy to me. To someone looking to find some indication, anything can look like the beginning of the end.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#692

Post by exceptione »

majgr wrote: post #570

Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences: - Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. - It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They…

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#693

Post by magicalhippo »

magnetometer wrote: post #687
magicalhippo wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know what you can do? Subscribe to multiple papers, from both sides. Then you can do some comparison to see when things are reported differently. When I grew up we had at least two papers, sometimes three. One was leaning left, other leaning right. These days it's what Ground News[1] is trying to do from what I can gather, though haven't tried them as they don't cover the news in my country. [1]: https://ground.n…

Why should there be only two sides?

You can consider as many dimensions as you want. As I mentioned, for some time we had three papers regularly delivered, for additional perspective.

However typically, a single dimension is a useful first-order approximation[1], and so that's what's done in politics as well. As with all approximations, sometimes it works well and other times it does not.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_approximation

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#694

Post by williamdclt »

otteromkram wrote: post #678
ge96 wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have music/noise on all the time, rarely in silence. I play the same playlist/song over and over when focusing. Unfortunately working in an open office it sucks people having conversions (to each other or to computer)

Man, I hope you wear headphones. Fun fact: No one is impressed by your "sports" car, but I'll bet 100% don't want hear it and wish the worst upon you. I know some places are testing sound ticketing, which I cannot wait to see implemented everywhere. https://www.autoweek.com/news/technology/a39906304/californi... I hope you get over your noise addiction sooner than later. Or, go broke in the process.

They're clearly not talking about their car, let's chill out. They're just saying they're always listening to their own music or (white?) noise, because their open office is noisy from conversations.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#695

Post by bluebarbet »

user3939382 wrote: post #672
majgr wrote: post #570

Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences: - Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. - It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They…

> Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. All printed papers in the US that I’m aware of serve corporate political interests so I lost you there. Then you have magazines that are aligned with various think tanks and lobbyists. The truth isn’t somewhere in the middle of all this, it’s with totally independent journal…

This take seems to me to be a classic case of the US tendency to irrational suspicion as first described in the Hofstadter essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

I'm not American but I do subscribe to The Atlantic, which seems to be owned by some kind of philanthropic trust with a do-gooding billionaire at the helm. As a European, that's plenty good enough for me. Financial incentives are important but they're not everything. We also sometimes need to trust in the good faith of professionals who take their jobs seriously. In this case journalists. Journalism is itself a corporate body of sorts, i.e. a guild. Its mission is to seek truth, just as the medical guild's mission is to heal. Personally, I choose to take both groups of professionals at their word.

A subscription to The Atlantic is a great deal, by the way. The volume of content is manageably low and the quality is consistently excellent.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#696

Post by williamdclt »

lbarron6868 wrote: post #239
nineplay wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively carefully curate your social media accounts. My reddit home page is all books and formula 1. I'm quick to hit 'show me less like this' when anything drifts in from the front page. My Facebook feed is all friends and family who don't discuss politics and ads for nerd shirts. I've purchased a few. It is also easy and effective to hit show me less of this. I agree about LinkedIn and don't go there unless I…

This is how I've dealt with Instagram. My IG account is literally nothing but cats. it's actually very refreshing to look at for five or ten minutes. But it takes work. IG wants to keep feeding me their BS reels. Sometimes I don't think it's worth it, they really make you put up a fight.

I used to have the same thing (other less wholesome content has made its way back, I've not been strong enough). It was a better experience than what my feed was like before or after, but I'd still waste hours watching cat videos! Trying to stay off the feeds entirely, now.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#697

Post by zo1 »

dralley wrote: post #674
zo1 wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did look at the numbers, from the official US dataset published I guess by a Biden-controlled admin. https://www.cbp.gov/document/stats/southwest-land-border-enc... And I don't know how you claim such things: Trump 2019: 977,509 Trump 2020: 458,088 (46.86% from previous year) Biden 2021: 1,734,686 (378.68% from previous year) Biden 2022: 2,378,944 (137.14% from previous year) Biden 2023: 2,475,669 (104.07% from pre…

Look at month by month

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Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#698

Post by prox »

0xEF wrote: post #628
majgr wrote: post #570

Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences: - Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. - It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They…

You nailed it. For ages, we've known that we can be hacked by anything that solicits an emotional response from us. People who set their sights on abusing that power have only gotten better at doing it, so much so that often the victim of the manipulation has no idea they've been manipulated. There is still an alarming number of people out there who do not seem aware that this is even possible, let alone actively bei…

That’s also an alarm bell right there. If the answer to the question “Does this article/headline want me to feel anything?” is Yes, than it’s emotional bait. If its “boring” than it’s probably more neutral.

Emotional reactivity is the psychological name I believe. High reactivity means more anxiety, stress and sometimes sign of a disorder.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#699

Post by dieselgate »

madeofpalk wrote: post #661
majgr wrote: post #570

Living in Poland ruled by trumpists for 8 years I have these experiences: - Get subscription of high value newspaper or magazine. Professionals work there, so you will get real facts, worthy opinions and less emotions. - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. - It is not worth discussing with „switched-on” people. They…

> - It is better to not use social media. You never know if you are discussing with normal person, a political party troll, or Russian troll. Completely valid, but there is a middleground of very deliberately curating your social media: - Avoid using services that are engineered for outrage and views - be ruthless with who you follow and block (someone trying to drum up some unimportant javascript outrage? get them o…

Good points about how to better use social media but I don’t personally think the benefits outweigh the downsides

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#700

Post by yostrovs »

kbelder wrote: post #541
yostrovs wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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One of the very best things you could do for your cause is to tone down your rhetoric. You're driving far more people away than you're convincing of anything. There's no shortage of things to criticize Trump for that are clear and hard to argue against. What you're saying is only fuel for the extreme to become more extreme.

Sorry, my sarcasm got a bit too far.
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