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News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

m.guardiannews.com

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Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#91

Post by saber_taylor »

mesozoic wrote: post #87

Does this include hacker news and reddit? Cause I already gave up most other news.

Me too. But it would be nice if news aggregator sites let you opt out of if it bleeds it leads (given the responses here, there's a market). It's certainly within the limits of the filters they use already for personalization bubbles.

I wrote a script for my local newspaper to spider links from their front page and display the city next to the "read more" links, so I knew if a catastrophe was local or national. If it's national then the wtf improbability goes down and it should be less interesting.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#93

Post by oinksoft »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

I've come to a similar conclusion. Because news emphasizes the dramatic over the contextual, they're always providing me poor information in an even poorer context. That's just the way the business works. I've done something weird, though: I switched to plaintext commentary. So each day I scan my personal news site, http://newspaper23.com . It only does commentary. I find that by scanning the titles I can see what ne…

Your argument rests on the flawed premise that the reader is a passive fool waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration. An article may be the top story of the day, but that doesn't mean it is important or relevant to me. Clearly there is a "news cycle" and every day there must be some top story. The reader is not compelled to pay heed. The discriminating reader does not perceive a newspaper to be some distilled briefing of matters important to them personally.

As with anything else, you must research your news if you hope to understand it, and you must seek out the truly pertinent things.

I truly fear that the research culture fostered by Google searches, etc. is greatly damaging our own ability to parse sources. It is a wonderful convenience to have indexing machines working in concert with query engines, allowing the researcher to skip the 300pp of drivel to unearth some crucial paragraph by asking the question in their own words.

It troubles me greatly that the solution always is to find a better indexing engine or aggregator (or sharpen one's skills with the software), rather than refining one's own ability to parse sources. Yes, these engines expose an impossible amount of information, and this is tremendously valuable technology. It will never be a full substitute for the pain of manual research.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#94

Post by kragen »

I came to some of these conclusions in 1997: http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/real-news.html

In 2008 I savaged Digg and Reddit for the same reasons: http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-tol/2008-January...

I recommend watching the EPIC 2014 video I allude to in that post; even though it's nine years old and clearly depicts an alternate history at this point, I think its core points have aged well. http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/

Today, I think there actually is a better alternative to reading news sites. You can read Wikipedia. Instead of reading the HN frontpage post about how Sebastian Castro likes having his office in Kendall Square http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/square-still-... you can read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square and get the history, polysemy, and local attractions of the place — with photos of Kendall Square instead of Sebastian Castro. Or you could read something on Wikipedia that there will rarely be a news story about, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadhu or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina%27s_12th_congres..., or never, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis-viva_equation. And the things you read will be verifiable, objective, and most likely true — unlike the vast majority of crap that passes for journalism today. And most of what's true will still be true five or ten years from now.

But the Grauniad piece is, mostly, not really about how to form a better understanding of the world. It counsels ignorance: don't learn about the world because it isn't practical (doesn't help you make better decisions affecting your life), stresses you out, is enjoyable like a drug, confirms your pre-existing prejudices due to confirmation bias instead of changing your mind, makes you feel helpless, limits your creativity, and is deeply intertwingled, which "inhibits thinking". Reading the encyclopedia has these same drawbacks! But I don't believe that ignorance is bliss, that ignorance helps you think clearly, or that ignorance limits your creativity. Instead, I believe that a broad base of knowledge gives me perspective on our current problems, helps me think more clearly, and enables my creativity.

Up to a point. You can become a mindless factoid junkie from any source of factoids. Building real knowledge out of facts requires really understanding a subject; as David MacKay says in the preface to "Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms" http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itila/, that means you must "creat[e] it for yourself."

I admit I'm pretty distracted by news items myself, at the moment.

(edit: changed "more or less these conclusions" to "some of these conclusions", which is a lot truer.)

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#95

Post by jdrobins2000 »

That article is either an ironic metacommentary with itself as exhibit A of what is wrong with news stories, or the edits were ironically introduced by the editor doing what he typically does. For starters, the title is hyperbolic click bait, and the hyperbole continues. "The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely." Clearly the only choices are inundation and complete isolation. I suppose moderation is one of those "non-stories" too boring to report, because it doesn't stimulate the limbic system and get clicks. One clue of intentional irony: "In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases." In the article, that sentence contains a hyperlink.

That said, I agree with 98% of the article. Like everything else, moderation, critical thinking, and self-reflection are essential.

Food for thought: perhaps the author's reaction is similar to an alcoholic who realizes their weakness. Though for many people, alcohol can be a healthy and beneficial part of their life, for some the most effective relationship to alcohol is complete abstinence.

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#99

Post by jQueryIsAwesome »

mudil wrote: post #89

The world is a dangerous place. There is no way around it: it's always been this way. Whether it is a North Korea crisis, something burning in the Middle East, or our national debt, the news can bring you to the reality of danger, of war, of looming financial crisis. Sure, by not reading it, you can retrieve yourself to a happy place in San Carlos or Palo Alto, but the danger still irks there, and it is not going awa…

Mass media focus on drama not in information; so your emotions are appealed more than rational thoughts.

You can't do nothing about the North Korea crisis even if you watch the news, that's a "Reality check".

Re: News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

#100

Post by shurcooL »

rubinelli wrote: post #73
shurcooL wrote: post #40

"Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it - allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you." I agree, yet I find my main use for news is to make me feel connected with other humans... If I cut myself off from it, I…

You can start by not having meals alone. It may sound silly, but having meals in a group is a great way to form stronger bonds.

Yes, that's very helpful. I do that whenever I work at my university lab.

Unfortunately, it's not really an option when I work from home.

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