Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

751–760 of 980 posts

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#751

Post by myrmidon »

lostmsu wrote: post #744
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…

This is too complicated. There's a much shorter working plan: - fact check exceptional claims - report factual failures to the source - if the source doesn't apologize publicly in the same channel, permanently remove it from trusted sources edit: ok, after the rage comment I realized that one more item is missing: discarding sources with systematic reporting bias (when it is obvious they aren't reporting things that…

Factual correctness is a different dimension from how "outrage-inducing" news are. Those are orthogonal.

Consider: "Illegal immigrants strike again, having raped 2 teenagers already this year"

is outrage-inducing regardless of factual correctness.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#752

Post by mistermann »

lostmsu wrote: post #744
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…

This is too complicated. There's a much shorter working plan: - fact check exceptional claims - report factual failures to the source - if the source doesn't apologize publicly in the same channel, permanently remove it from trusted sources edit: ok, after the rage comment I realized that one more item is missing: discarding sources with systematic reporting bias (when it is obvious they aren't reporting things that…

Rare is the individual who does not make numerous errors while engaging in fact checking, in no small part because of our cultural norms of cognition.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#753

Post by HEmanZ »

slg wrote: post #497
HEmanZ wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you making the jump from calibrating your emotional response to distant political changes that have no immediate significance on your own life, are par for humanity, and don’t matter in the long run, to nihilism in your immediate experience of meaning? I don’t connect distant political to my own personal experience of meaning in the world, so i can’t follow this line of reasoning.

>How are you making the jump from calibrating your emotional response to distant political changes that have no immediate significance on your own life, are par for humanity, and don’t matter in the long run, to nihilism in your immediate experience of meaning? The primary difference I see between these two is how you define "your immediate experience". At what distance does something become "distant political change…

I’m not advocating for ignoring the world. I’m advocating for contextualizing it so that your emotional response is sane. I think I put it in another post, but someone I know closely has become catatonically depressed this year because of what political news he reads on Reddit. He makes statements like “there has literally never been a worse time to be alive”. His personal life was great, there was nothing in it to suggest the US president’s decisions affect him, but his emotional response to Reddit news is about as extreme as if his wife died. He stopped going to work and won’t get out of bed most days, which will actually impact his life and give him things to be depressed about.

Caring should not be binary. If in your life, caring about things is all or nothing, and a political event that is extremely common and minor in the context of political history feels as acute as the death of a loved one, then I’m really sorry for you. The world will always be a miserable place for you.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#754

Post by caminante »

Terr_ wrote: post #666
caminante wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> you want to stereotype [...] innuendo [...] slippery slope [...] you're pre-convincing [...] thought crimes You're the one who's been making all the personal condemnations of evil intent, stop with the psychological projection.

OK. Why did you dismiss the claim above that "some but not all" aren't radical?

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#755

Post by mistermann »

majgr wrote: post #743
CrimsonRain wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure these high value professionals are fair? I saw this story the other day; don't have much idea about Poland. So verify yourself. https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/02/03/polish-billionaire-of...

I think it is fair, because professionals do not use cheap tricks, but at least they are trying to distance themselves when writing a report. I like discussions when Sławomir Sierakowski (from Krytyka Polityczna) is present, because he always have some new ideas, new ways to describe reality. Although, I do not follow Krytyka Polityczna.

When someone is hired into a professional job, is there something in the laws of physics that prevent them from doing wrong?

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#756

Post by taylodl »

_qbxi wrote: post #436
taylodl wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call spades, spades. It's not my job to prove to you the object is actually a spade. At some point you have to tell disingenuous people spouting nonsense to go eff off. You're not obligated to provide counterexamples to their nonsense. Time is valuable. You're not obligated to let idiots waste it.

> It's not my job to prove to you the object is actually a spade. > Time is valuable. You're not obligated to let idiots waste it. Right on both counts! However: If insufficiently many people put in the effort to explain their proof/reasoning to others, then we shouldn't be surprised when that side loses.

It depends on the amount of effort required and the impact of what's being discussed. I'm not going to argue with people that grass is green, or the earth is round. SM started to engage in politics in the mid 20th century, and I even provided some examples of topics they've covered in that period. They then got pissy and demanded evidence, which in the context of what's being discussed, is a dick move. So, I told him where to get off.

In cases where the discussion is actually important, such as anthropogenic climate change for example, or issues with Test-Driven Development, I provide the receipts.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#757

Post by lostmsu »

myrmidon wrote: post #751
lostmsu wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is too complicated. There's a much shorter working plan: - fact check exceptional claims - report factual failures to the source - if the source doesn't apologize publicly in the same channel, permanently remove it from trusted sources edit: ok, after the rage comment I realized that one more item is missing: discarding sources with systematic reporting bias (when it is obvious they aren't reporting things that…

Factual correctness is a different dimension from how "outrage-inducing" news are. Those are orthogonal . Consider: "Illegal immigrants strike again, having raped 2 teenagers already this year" is outrage-inducing regardless of factual correctness.

What exactly is the problem with inducing outrage?

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#758

Post by wonderwonder »

tuukkah wrote: post #716
wonderwonder wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guardian openly states on their website that they are anti-trump. So going to posit they may be less that neutral. From the banner on their home page: "From Elon Musk to the Murdochs, billionaire owners control much of the information that reaches the public. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of bad actors are spreading disinformation that threatens democracy" also "After Trump remarked that “in this term, everybody…

If you read carefully, that's not anti-Trump, that's nuanced. A newspaper isn't supposed to be friends with politicians - it's supposed to report on them critically and truthfully.

I would agree with you if you can point to a similar post being made by them when Biden was elected.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#759

Post by macNchz »

derangedHorse wrote: post #691
macNchz wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Many of the circumstances being called out as concerning in recent weeks map well to historical examples—the framing of the argument alone doesn’t inherently invalidate it when we have good examples of comparable events (e.g. purge and installation of unqualified loyalists) precipitating critical, difficult to recover from outcomes (democratic backsliding) in other societies. When the stakes are so high, vigilance is rational.

Re: Avoiding outrage fatigue while staying informed

#760

Post by delfinom »

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…

Sadly I don't know if a high value newspaper exists anymore.

Wapo and NYtimes have slowly evolved into elitists papers. That over focus on some issues and completely ignore others.

Post reply on HN