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News is bad for you

theguardian.com

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Re: News is bad for you

#71

Post by aaronem »

spydum wrote: post #7
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #2

I've been trying an experiment for the last year or two. I have an app that collects commentary, tech and science stories from across the web. (Recently I added news, but that was a mistake) I find I stay just as informed reading commentary, where I'm purposefully being manipulated, as I do reading news. In fact the news is better, as various authors advance various personal theories they've been working on for weeks…

I think this is a great observation that has really only become possible from the internet: the ability to consume viewpoints from others outside of your small social circle has been increased massively. Sites like HN, reddit, dig, slashdot, etc have enabled that dialog on top of the usual one sided article. Think back to when news was mostly distributed via TV or newspapers. Where could you get alternative views? Ne…

I've got a fiver that says your "twenty different viewpoints" are just twenty differently phrased reiterations of how Godawful bad it is that the NSA should do what the NSA does. Nothing personal -- but I strongly doubt that the ability to obtain, consider, and benefit by perspectives other than one's own, correlates meaningfully with the frequency with which anyone actually does so.

Re: News is bad for you

#72

Post by vbs_redlof »

oskarth wrote: post #20

While I agree with the sentiment, Rolf Dobelli himself is a plagiarist. This whole reasoning is basically stolen from Nassim Taleb. http://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm http://blog.chabris.com/2013/09/similarities-between-rolf-do... EDIT: For another take on not reading the news, see http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

Maybe Dobelli's ghost writer messed up.

Re: News is bad for you

#73

Post by tokenadult »

base698 wrote: post #65
tokenadult wrote: post #17

Whether news is bad for you or not probably depends more than a little on what the source is. I don't watch television—for years our TV was in a box in a closet, brought out mostly just for watching the Olympics. But I do look at Google News and try to train it to give me mostly long-form suggestions about science and world issues from diverse sources with professional reporting and editing. That helps. The claim tha…

You've entirely missed the point. News is bad because it focuses on the sensational and misses the actionable. Ie bitcoin articles focus on the speculative aspect and not that it's a more useful, less friction method of payment. Business shows focus on day to day movement instead of broad sweeping trends that are game changers. The medium is partly the problem.

News is bad because it focuses on the sensational and misses the actionable.

I think you've missed the point of my comment, which is that I actively disregard sources that have that defect, and look for sources that tell me about verified, actionable information. (I have been wondering about the pattern of upvotes and downvotes on my comment, and if this is what people think I am saying, that I like the sensational, they are badly misreading my comment.)

Re: News is bad for you

#74

Post by officemonkey »

Most major news sources are biased that the only way to get anything close to a healthy dose is (a) to turn the volume down and (b) turn the gain up.

Increase the number of sources, believe fewer of them, and use critical thinking. But only pay attention to things you care about.

I may be outraged with recent conflicts between tech carpetbaggers and SF residents, but I try not to invest any energy in it, because I've got my own local gentrification vs. crime issues and I only have so much bandwidth.

Re: News is bad for you

#75

Post by Aqueous »

protonfish wrote: post #70
Aqueous wrote: post #44

If knowing the reality of what happens in the world leads to fear and aggression then perhaps we should be angry and afraid? We can't just shut reality out if we don't like the emotional state it puts us in.

The reality of what happens is all around me - I observe it directly. What is on mass media is information that other people want to promote to further their own agenda. Whether it is for ratings, to get us to buy their product or to further political aims it does not matter (we all have our own motivations) but it is clearly NOT reality. The fact that you confuse the two is sad and frightening.

There are parts of reality that you can't possibly witness directly because you are located at a single geographic point. For example, someone suffering on the other side of the world because they've been gassed by a dictator or a terrorist group, or wrongly imprisoned, or they are dying of some easily curable disease. You would usually only ever hear of such a thing through the news media, and yet it is real

Things are not all one way or the other. The media is very imperfect, but it is not worthless.

No need to attack me.

Re: News is bad for you

#76

Post by diydsp »

nashashmi wrote: post #41

Anyone find it ironic that a news agency (the Guardian) is saying news is bad for you?

Yup. But like cigarette advertisers and spammers who intentionally misspell so only uncritical people pay attention, most mainstream news sources have so effectively created the atmosphere of _learned_helplessness_, they can tell people in bold letters straight to their faces, "this is bad for you" and people still pay for it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

Re: News is bad for you

#77

Post by PsychopompPoet »

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson

"Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists." Norman Mailer

"Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." George Bernard Shaw

"In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that it has." Mark Twain

"I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets." Napoleon

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." Malcolm X

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands." Oscar Wilde

"The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined by the word journalist." Soren Kierkegaard

Re: News is bad for you

#78

Post by dschiptsov »

It isn't new per se, which supposed to be just accurate reporting of the recent events and facts, but that unprecedented flow of unimaginable nonsense, propaganda, brain-washing, manipulations, lies and mere stupidity no mind could cope with. It is just unnecessary stress (especially from modern "dramatic" framing of third-rate media) we do not have any adaptation for. So, just switching off a TV and stopping reading nonsense (about Bitcoin or Docker) is really a relief. It is like giving up reading /b/ dramatically reduces the likelihood of developing ulcers.)

The problem is that every fool nowadays could write a blog post or a comment which would be indexed by a search engine, adding a bit to the total waste.

Re: News is bad for you

#79

Post by diydsp »

markyc wrote: post #48
tibbon wrote: post #31

I would have read this article, but according to the title... I probably shouldn't.

not all articles can be classified as "news"

Excellent point. I've been debating with my gf a lot lately about the diff. b/t "information" and "observations." I find many articles are simply observations... like molecules in bloodstream, they float around, but only rarely combine into anything worthwhile, as compared to controlled chemical reactions in which ideas and structures combine meaningfully.

Re: News is bad for you

#80

Post by base698 »

Aqueous wrote: post #44

If knowing the reality of what happens in the world leads to fear and aggression then perhaps we should be angry and afraid? We can't just shut reality out if we don't like the emotional state it puts us in.

The issue is the news is usually out of context. Last week a video of a BASE jumper smashing into a cliff got a lot of airplay. The same week 100 jumpers were jumping 4 times a day without incident in the same area. There were some obvious takeaways from the incident and causes. The news always reports as har, har isn't that nuts?

They do the same with war reporting and airplane crashes. See the knockout game reports for further reports of garbage.

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