In 2017, I’m going to stop watching the news | Hacker News Reader

In 2017, I’m going to stop watching the news

ma.ttias.be

183 pointsMojah178 comments

I find that my personal happiness is a lot higher if I don't watch the news. I tend to be a rather analytical person who obsesses over ideas, and I find that ruminating over news or politics drains my energy. Thinking about math or science for a few hours energizes me, but doing the same for social issues wears me out.

Part of the problem is that I feel most people underestimate the enormous complexity of social issues. There's so many variables and so many different types of interactions that my opinion on a lot of issues is "I don't have enough information" or "it's too complex for me to pick a side". A lot of people get upset if you say this to them though, and then they attempt to persuade you otherwise using some well-known argument that I've already researched in depth and found to be largely inconclusive. It's easier just to abstain from these conversations.

I don't think the average person actually likes exploring topics in extreme depth to figure out "the truth"; the surface level conversation is much more interesting to them. How many people have actually looked at the original studies on climate change themselves? I have a hard time imagining how anyone who actually reads these studies could possibly deny the occurrence of global warming. Strong opinions based on weak data seems to be the prevailing theme lately, but perhaps that's just my perception.

"Thinking about math or science for a few hours energizes me, but doing the same for social issues wears me out."

I feel exactly the same way.

I can't tell if this is an introvert trait, or whether it arises from the kind of problem your mind is attuned to solving (perhaps both).

Reading social news makes me pessimistic for the future, and feel more withdrawn from the world. Reading about mathematics or science excites me, makes me more optimistic for the future, and makes me want to engage with as much as possible.

I would guess it is an introvert trait. I believe introverts are emotionally drained by activities that involve other people, and are energized by activities that don't.

You're not wrong that politics is enormously complex, but I think you are wrong that the average person is able to pick a side perhaps only because they lack analytical depth or consideration. Rather, it may be that most people are more comfortable than you are at making judgments in these fraught, ambiguous scenarios, and that this is not at all a bad thing.

Most art, politics, and even sports (physical qualities being considered equal) are all areas that can't really be solved by a complete analysis because, as you say, there are too many variables. Nonetheless, some people are much better at these things than others due to qualities that are hard to describe exactly. This ability to make good split second decisions without a complete analytical understanding of the problem or even the current state is one of those qualities.

I don't think this ability is superficial, or without value. Rather, it just goes to show how different people are from one another. So I would encourage you not to suggest to others who do have strong political views that their views are unfounded just because they are strong and the domain is complex.

do you have "strong political views"?

While I partially agree, some of these people will also actively ignore information when presented and do not have a skeptical mind. Many people do not change their mind after they first form an opinion on a subject or it takes a lot of effort to change it afterwords. Forming opinions quickly and never revisiting the underlying assumptions, I would argue can be dangerous as well and is probably more normal that either of us care to acknowledge.

Some people are in very high positions of power and can make decisions that impact peoples lives. Ignoring them and letting them do whatever they want may not always lead to good outcomes. But I will agree that purely ruminating on it does not improve one's situation.

Practicing skepticism and always being analytical is a lot of work. Listening to the SGU podcasts shows that even when people are actively trying to be skeptics they still catch themselves shortcutting to opinions.

Let me ask you this. Take something you believe 100%, how much evidence the other way will it take for your opinion to change? Now imagine that item is somehow part of your identity. It's not an easy fight every single day.

The reason I bring this up is instead of saying 'some of these people', it's better to say all of us.

I stopped watching the news for similar reasons. I got tired of the polarization, spin, editorializing, and vilification. I got tired of politics too, since most people simply play team-sports, and couldn't care less what the facts are.

Having said that, I can speak to your comment on global warming. People reject it because:

1. Many of us lived through the 1960s and 1970s, when the government and scientists claimed we were heading into an ice age. Didn't happen.

2. Many of us lived through the late 1970s and 1980s when the media and environmentalists claimed that Earth would be a lifeless rock by the end of the century due to deforestation. Didn't happen.

3. In 2005, climate scientists predicted that by 2010, global warming would cause oceans to rise to the point that populations would be decimated, and we would have 50 million "climate refugees" fleeing these flooded areas of the globe. Didn't happen.

4. NASA, CRU, NOAA, and other government and scientific organizations have been caught falsifying data.

5. There are claims that federal funding is biasing climate research; that the federal government isn't just funding research, but are buying science that promotes specific agendas.

Sure, if you only look at scientific climate data, it may look like climate change is an issue. However, if you look at government behavior, scientific scandals, evidences of falsified data, historical climate facts, and even current temperatures, there is more than enough evidence to cast a serious doubt on the accuracy and even legitimacy of climate change data, don't you think?

Did you live through people claiming the ozone layer was disappearing? And the ensuing global action to remedy it?

At the current rate and compliance with the Montreal protocol we should be back to pre-CFC levels in 30 years or so

Yes, I did. How does this even remotely refute what I wrote?

The parent poster said, "I have a hard time imagining how anyone who actually reads these studies could possibly deny the occurrence of global warming."

To answer his/her question, I provided multiple reasons why people, in fact, do reject climate change.

I think your response, and the knee-jerk responses of those who down-voted me, are perfect examples of why I don't watch the news anymore. None of you bothered to read and understand what I said, or why I was saying it. You just assumed that my views on climate change differ from yours, and down-voted me based on your emotional views.

Instead of leaping to irrational conclusions, regarding my post, I invite you to read it and understand why I wrote it and what I was responding to. I believe it will give you a great insight into the matter at hand, and the challenges you must overcome in reaching those who refuse to accept climate change as an issue.

Or, you could just polarize the issue, down-vote those you assume don't agree with you, and keep things at the status quo.

It doesn't make any sense that your comments here were down voted.

You haven't said anything out of line.

I think people mistakenly felt that he was kicking their religion in the balls or something. It doesn't make any sense to me either.

That is a logical fallacy, coldfire. You cannot conclude that because the ozone layer was a legitimate issue that anything else is. All things must stand on their own merit.

In addition, the legitimacy of of climate change wasn't his point. He was answering the original posters question, as to how anybody could not believe in climate change. In this, his points were factual. Those are the exact reasons that naysayers give.

Do you actually believe these points or are you simply showing the flawed logic people use to justify climate change denial? 1. Maybe the sensationalist news was claiming an ice age was coming, but it was never really claimed by scientists. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1 4. Is there any evidence of these claims? How do current temperatures cast doubt on the accuracy of climate change? Each of the first 6 months of 2016 were the hottest months ever recorded.

As I said a couple of posts down, the parent poster said, "I have a hard time imagining how anyone who actually reads these studies could possibly deny the occurrence of global warming," and I simply answered his question; both accurately and truthfully, I might add. Feel free to do a Google search on "why people reject climate change," if you believe my statement is wrong.

Nowhere in my post did I ever speak to, or infer, my views on the subject, since they are irrelevant. I merely answered a question with factual data.

I find the knee-jerk down-votes and negative commentary disturbing, since my post is being judged not by the accuracy of the answer I provided, but rather based entirely on the irrational assumption that I don't think the same way others do. I would think, being the intelligent lot we're supposed to be here on Hacker News, we would see my commentary as a list of obstacles to overcome in order to reach those who reject climate change based on these observations, rather than killing the messenger, so to speak. Seems like the prudent course of action to me, anyway.

"my post is being judged not by the accuracy of the answer I provided"

Actually, it is. Every single point you list either is outright false or is twisted beyond recognition from the reality of the situation. That's why you're receiving downvotes.

Phrasing things as e.g. "People are told that the government is running a conspiracy to invent global warming" would be a better way to put things, if you're merely stating factual information. Phrasing it as something like "the government is running a conspiracy to invent global warming" makes it sound as if you yourself believe it.

He clearly said, "There are claims that federal funding is biasing climate research; that the federal government isn't just funding research, but are buying science that promotes specific agendas."

Being a college-trained writer, I'm having a difficult time discerning the difference between, "There are claims that..." and "People are told that..." Both are passive sentences, suggesting that some unspecified entity is making claims, and others are believing them. Perhaps you could explain the difference between the two with whatever English degree you have. From my professional perspective, innocentoldguy literally said exactly what you just suggested he should have said, which leads me to believe that he is correct, and that you are judging his post based on emotion rather than rational thought.

As innocentoldguy said, whether people agree or disagree with climate change is not the issue. The issue is that many people don't agree with it, and they believe they have legitimate reasons not to (some of which innocentoldguy outlined in his post). As someone who thinks climate change IS an issue, and wants something to be done about it, you can either down-vote and insult those who you perceive as not agreeing with you (and I’m not convinced innocentoldguy falls into that category), or you can acknowledge their concerns, and work to fix whatever negative perceptions exist in your position. In other words, you can listen to their concerns, and then work to resolve them.

You're never going to convince anybody when you shout them down and down-vote them, but you might if you actually try to listen to what they’re saying and try to have a reasonable dialogue with them. Which seems to be the brightest course of action to you?

"Many of us lived through the 1960s and 1970s, when the government and scientists claimed we were heading into an ice age."

You wrote, "Every single point you list either is outright false or is twisted beyond recognition from the reality of the situation," but that is simply not true. The reasons innocentoldguy listed are EXACTLY the reasons that skeptics give for denying climate change; which is what he claimed, isn't it? Sure, his original post could have been written better. So could yours. innocentoldguy did go on to clarify his position though, yet you're still trashing him because of your perceptions regarding his original post, rather than the validity of what he said, aren't you?

Here's a HuffPo article you can read that outlines many of the same issues innocentoldguy brought up, if you still have doubts as to the validity of his statement:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/climate-change-denial-ps...

Sad you're being downvoted. I have many climate-change denying friends and family members, and these are exactly the arguments they use. So much of it basically boils down to them perceiving the left-wingers as crying wolf for many years. Now we're in a position when most scientists agree the wolf is actually coming, but the right is desensitized and politically incentivized to oppose action. We have to thoroughly understand both sides of a debate if the truth is eventually supposed to win out.

I have a question for you as well. One argument I've heard from climate-change skeptics is that the earth has gone through ice ages in the past without any intervention from humanity, so who's to say we're responsible for the changes we're seeing now? There are some obvious counterarguments, but I'm curious of your opinion and others here.

Why would his opinion matter? Doesn't what he has already said stand on its own merit?

In my experience, the reason people usually want to know someone's personal opinion is simply to further their own fallacious, ad hominem arguments. I hope you had something more noble in mind.

I think it's sad that you've been conditioned to assume that, but I agree it does happen a lot. But in this case I am literally curious what parent thinks about this argument, because they seem to have a good grasp on the POV of many of my friends, and I want to understand better ways of engaging in dialogue.

You're right. It does happen a lot. Far too often, in fact. Not only is it as annoying as hell, I think it also hinders progress. Glad to hear you're above it.

Not above it or any of the traps we all fall into as humans, but try to keep an eye out and recognize when I'm doing it.

My apologies for leaping to conclusions. As you said, it does happen all too often though. I'll try not to let that taint my judgements in the future.

Hello, anderspitman. Thank you for attempting to have an honest and intellectual discussion. I'm not sure my answer will help, but I'll give you what I can.

I typically don't take sides on issues, because I feel very few issues are defined well enough to do so without blinding myself to other information and possibilities. I find no intelligence in rejecting information, simply because it does not fit into my world-view, so I choose not to do so. I also like to reevaluate information frequently, since things are rarely, if ever, static. This may not be for everyone, but I like living in an ever-changing world of uncertainty, discovery, and reevaluation. It works for me.

Therefore, rather than take sides, I act. I do what seems right for me, given my current understanding. With regards to pollution, and its effects on our climate, I drive an electric car, ride public transportation or walk when I can, use renewable sources to heat my home (solar, Trombe wall), insulate my home beyond spec, do not use air conditioning, have replaced all my lights with LEDs and skylights, etc. I live in a fairly large home, but I consume less than half the energy of my neighbors, who live in homes half the size. That's what I chose to do about pollution. It seems to be a lot more effective than getting worked up over nothing and down-voting people online, but to each their own.

Maybe you can understand now why I said my opinions on the matter are irrelevant. They don't fit into the polarized, team-sport camps of believers vs. non-believers. Yes, I can read and understand scientific papers, charts, and other data. I can even act upon them, as I've explained. What I won't do, however, is marginalize people and blind myself to the legitimate concerns of others. For example, the federal government has been a huge propagator of lies, fraud, and other evils around the world throughout my lifetime, so when someone runs from climate change based solely on the federal government's involvement, I can only agree that they have a legitimate concern. I believe it would be intellectually dishonest to do otherwise.

I doubt that has been of much help, but that is the way I approach most things.

Thanks for the reply. Definitely an interesting approach, and I appreciate your efforts to play it safe with respect to the environment. But you're correct that this didn't really address my question. Maybe I can ask another way. If someone used the ice age argument, how do you think a well educated and articulated person who disagreed with them would open up a meaningful dialogue?

Regardless of what the argument is. If you disagree with someone, and want to persuade them to your way of thinking, you CANNOT make the conversation a you're-wrong-and-I'm-right discussion or you'll lose every time. Facts are going to be of little use as well. The only way to convince someone of something is to figure out how to present it in a way that benefits them.

I think this will be quite hard with climate change, considering the myriad other issues in life that are much more immediate concerns for people.

Interesting and provocative. That may be difficult for folks today.

> 1. Many of us lived through the 1960s and 1970s, when the government and scientists claimed we were heading into an ice age. Didn't happen.

I lived through the 60's and 70's and I do not recall ever hearing this. You're going to have to provide examples of this to bring me into this tent.

> 2. Many of us lived through the late 1970s and 1980s when the media and environmentalists claimed that Earth would be a lifeless rock by the end of the century due to deforestation. Didn't happen.

Again, I just don't recall ever hearing this.

I find 'many of us' to be a problematic phrase. You're making a claim beyond your personal experience using this phrase and it sure doesn't apply to me.

It may be your experience, and that's fine. But I'm not giving you a pass on claiming it was anyone's experience beyond your own.

I am interested in where you encountered these perspectives; I am aware I may be retro-fitting my own memories.

[edit: as per usual fixing mobile autocorrect and formating ]

> I lived through the 60's and 70's and I do not recall ever hearing this.

Really? I do: https://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970...

> Again, I just don't recall ever hearing this.

I think he's referring to either the "acid rain/forest die-off: http://notrickszone.com/2014/08/05/1980s-dire-warnings-of-ac...

or the rainforest (this article contains a bunch of environmental scares that didn't happen): http://notrickszone.com/2014/08/05/1980s-dire-warnings-of-ac...

Or maybe the forest fire commercials: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH_MW0Bi7L4

Or maybe conflating them to make a point.

The first article you linked seems to indicate that most scientists in peer reviewed papers were actually predicting warming, not cooling (42 papers vs 7 papers). Also, I didn't read it carefully but I did not see anything mentioning the government claiming these things.

However, I think it's still an important point that climate change skeptics CLAIM to have been told these these in the 70s, and use it as an important part of their argument.

> > 1. Many of us lived through the 1960s and 1970s, when the government and scientists claimed we were heading into an ice age. Didn't happen.

> I lived through the 60's and 70's and I do not recall ever hearing this. You're going to have to provide examples of this to bring me into this tent.

(I believe climate change is real, is happening, and is caused by human activity).

It's weird that people say warnings about ice ages were non existent, because they really weren't.

We can talk about whether they were taken seriously by relevant scientists, or if they were just pop-sci nonsense, but we can't say they didn't exist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

I guess I'm responding in particular to your words:

> and I do not recall ever hearing this.

when perhaps I should be reading

> and I do not recall ever hearing this from scientists.

Scott Adams has an excellent explanation of this today in his blog "The Illusion of Knowledge" http://blog.dilbert.com/post/155121836641/the-illusion-of-kn...

A snippet: "no non-scientist can evaluate the claims of climate science because BOTH sides look 100% convincing to the under-informed.

So how did the public respond to my claim that BOTH sides of the debate look convincing? They berated me for not sufficiently researching materials from ONE side of the debate that happens to be their side. Many people suggested that I could simply do some homework, on my own, and get to the bottom of climate science.

That is a massive public illusion."

There are plenty of debates in science. The debate over gravity would have been a good example because you had serious people in both sides of the debate and something approaching the truth came to be the consensus.

There is not a similar debate about climate change.

The debates on gravity didn't involve non-scientists most likely because the results of the debate wouldn't have public policy implications and so there was no incentive to choose a side besides personal ego.

I would assume that any scientific claim which results in a public policy change that creates losers and winners would create a very different kind of debate where scientists are subject to external influences and non-scientists feel the need weigh in in order to avoid being the loser.

> no non-scientist can evaluate the claims of [...]

To be more precise:

No non-expert in field X can evaluate claims with respect to field X.

The phenomenon you're talking about is with respect to lay people. But there is a parallel phenomenon that happens with intelligent people with expertise in unrelated fields. It's relatively easy to read a handful of papers in a field other than your own and convince yourself that you are qualified to pass judgement. But how can you be sure you'd see a problem in the methodology of a paper, even if it existed? And the larger problem: how do you know the set of papers you read is representative?

In the worst case, there could have been a shift in the field that no one bothered to document (perhaps because the shift was due to a lack of publishable results). This is my number one gripe reading old papers in computer science: sometimes an idea just disappears from the literature because frankly it didn't work, but you can't cite a paper that just says that outright, even though everyone (who works closely in the field) knows it to be true.

In my experience, both problems take time and experience to solve. Which means that if you don't have those, you're better off finding an expert you trust and asking them---in person---what papers are worth reading.

"I could be wrong about everything I’ve said about climate science and credibility. But would you feel confident betting against me?"

What kind of egomania is that? How is the prevention of a possible global catastrophe a question of "betting against" a cartoonist?

If the scientific consensus is right, we should do everything to avoid the disaster. And if it's not, we've invested in renewables and saved some single-use fossil fuels for a "rainy day". (These are the only fossil deposits for the lifetime of the planet -- does it make sense to spend them all within 200 years?)

There are no downsides to taking action here. But Adams thinks we should first engage in meta-discussion about "persuasion", so it's not time to do anything yet...? Sigh.

Scott Adams likes to describe himself as smart (as he does in the linked post), and I wouldn't argue with that. But his is the kind of non-constructive smartness that works to find flaws in everything and everybody without actually forming a rigorous holistic view of anything. It's an excellent basis for a three-panel daily comic, but not for global policy.

“The Illusion of Knowledge” is a very interesting post. The comments there are exhibit A of the exact fallacy Scott Adams describes in his article. One side of the debate celebrating as though they were finally proven right over their opponents.

The article is mostly BS.

And it is a strawman attack

"Many people suggested that I could simply do some homework, on my own, and get to the bottom of climate science."

Obviously you can't get down to climate science, no serious person is suggesting it. The same as with LIGO, you can't get down to gravitational waves and understand them. The reason is that these people have decades of experience and studied some really hard topics - not liberal arts. To get to the bottom you need to take the same route into the topic.

I might be the last person believing in the usefulness of experts in these days - real experts on a topic not those "experts" on CNN and Fox. I know this is unpopular.

It's also funny that people want to understand climate change when from my experience with people many can't even add simple numbers or correctly work with percentages, e.g. calculating VAT. This is the illusion of I-can-do-everything-if-I-want-something. No you can't. Sometimes it takes decades of training, say piano, to do something. Everyone thinks today he is entitled to understand this and entitled to have an opinion that is as valuable as the opinion of someone who did something for years. THIS is the illusion.

Site note to Scott Adams: Reality - climate in this case - does not care the least what you think of it.

[Edit] In short: I don't care about the opnion of a comic writer about climate science.

Sorry but that's ridiculous. Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" laid out the facts in an easily consumable way for the public over 10 years ago. We have photography showing massive ice loss over the poles. We have solid data on average temperatures and CO2. How much clearer could it be exactly?

There aren't any "sides". There's the science, and there's a propaganda campaign that's driven by energy corporations, and to a smaller extent deluded conspiracy theorists like Adams. Framing it as a debate at all is intellectually dishonest and just makes public confusion worse.

> I don't think the average person actually likes exploring topics in extreme depth to figure out "the truth"

That is because the average person believes they are playing a zero-sum game, in which competition is inescapable

And because each side has a set of values that must be protected, anything that threatens those values needs to be defeated.

Whether the thing threatening the values has an underlying "truth" that matches up with the surface is less relevant.

* EDIT - also, enlightenment-rationalism is a liberal value; just present people the facts, they will reason to the right conclusion (science!)... false — people don't think so literally about things (they think metaphorically); they think inside a frame shaped by the value framework.

I totally agree with you on the complexity of the issues. The news won't help much with that. News are mostly about sentiment.

I don't want to hear all those people trumpeting their simple "truths" on all news channels ever more aggressively.

But I fear if I stop listening to those sentiments I could miss the moment when it's time for me to leave or warn others.

I have often wondered how my ancestors could have missed what was going on and end up in a nazi death camp.

Did they not get the news? Did they not believe it? Did it all sound too similar to what had come before until it was too late? Was it too complex to predict?

I don't know, but I can't take my eyes off the ball now even though my eyes hurt.

> and I find that ruminating over news or politics drains my energy.

To many people it's entertainment. Just like watching football or any sport. Political drama is interesting and lends itself to speculation and monday morning quarterbacking and plenty of drama and personalities.

You don't have to make up all your opinions from scratch. Pick a person who you trust and who you think shares your values. For me, that could be President Obama. Whatever position Obama has on a given issue, I will find that position reasonable virtually 10 out of 10 times. If I happen to be expert in some issue, I might presume to disagree. Outsourcing the problem to someone who does think about policy all day is a big time saver.

This also results in people thinking Obama is a good president and electing characters like Donald Trump. Not everyone has time to educate themselves about something that will provide very little personal return (rational ignorance), but it would be great if people at least put in more initial research to find their initial "intellectual champion," and then trusted them from there, with perhaps an annual update to make sure your values still align. Then you might come up with someone like Glenn Greenwald, instead. Granted, Obama sounded a lot more promising in 2008.

It is a good idea to choose the person carefully. Think of it like choosing a lawyer or a doctor.

The thing is, it doesn't have to be Obama. It could be almost any Democrat, like the Clintons, Biden, Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi. They all agree on 99.9% of issues, because they have a common set of values.

Theoretically, that sounds reasonable, but in reality, they tend to agree on issues due to political alliance, not values. Politicians in both the Republican and Democratic parties have almost unanimously been on both sides of issues depending on who put it forward/who was in power.

> Thinking about math or science for a few hours energizes me, but doing the same for social issues wears me out.

I think your exhaustion comes from the moral labeling always connected to social issues. Strip out the morality and social issues really are just math and science.

I stopped watching TV and reading news 5+ years ago. I don't have cable, Netflix subscription or anything like that. Most interestingly, I worked for The Huffington Post for 6 years. During this whole period, I probably read maybe 4-5 articles in total. For me, such attitude results to care about things that concern me or my family only. Sometimes people tell me the latest crazy news, like the airplane crash. Of course, most of the time they are surprised of my unawareness. I believe, there are pros and cons to this behavior. I'm less stressed for sure. I remember someone once told me that I live in my own world where there are no wars and everything is great. I personally consider it as a good thing. As for the cons, – I'm less awared of the latest world news and when my colleagues discuss yet another tragedy, I'm the worst interlocutor. But, that gives me a chance to ask questions. People like questions. At that point, it always helps to view any situation from the side, more objectively I would say.

I do read a lot of Hacker News, paper(!) books and a little bit of reddit.

Do you vote in elections and the like? If so, how do you choose a candidate/party to vote for?

I never voted in my life. I live in US for 4 years now, but not allowed to vote _yet_. I do not believe in the voting system. In my opinion, people's choice for one or another candidate/party is directly dependent on this candidate's marketing efforts. It doesn't make any sense, since one can be a "bad" guy by nature, but then good marketing does the trick and afterwards people vote for him/her. Some sort of a karma/rating system would probably work better, i.e. you are not allowed to run your campaign, until you collect 500 points. This approach would require candidates to merit the campaign first and require them to be "good" guys during their entire career.

Hasn't Trump turned this completely upside down?

He used his experience in media/showbiz to exploit the media to give him free PR all the time, whereas the other politicians had to 'work for it'.

It's like the Kardashians, they actively make an effort to be in the news for something, to maintain top of mind awareness...of their degeneracy.

He also said things that were plain interesting and outrageous to hear and see. Similar to slowing down for a train crash. No secret about that and really anyone could have quite easily reverse engineered and done the same. His big skill is more having, for lack of a better way to put it, 'balls' as well as no problem with the blowback or downside of his actions. That is the secret sauce with Trump. In a nutshell the other candidates, by comparison, were boring.

i think trump's win had a lot less to do with trump himself than other factors.

It's impossible to prove a contra positive so we'll never know if it was Comey, or the Russians or what that put him over the top. But, Trump did get himself within striking distance. So, I give him credit(?) for the birther movement, and Mexican rapists, and no puppet. Because those are the things that energized his base to the point where he could win with a little help from his friends.

>I do not believe in the voting system. In my opinion, people's choice for one or another candidate/party is directly dependent on this candidate's marketing efforts.

It's easy to say that when you know your President will kill you for being too involved in politics, as happens in Russia.

Wow, everybody is super sensitive about women in tech, but it's ok to make comments like this? Talk about multicultural respect.

Or maybe I am reading it wrong? Anyway, please be careful with this tone, it's very bad (as Italian, I know very well since 80% of the people I meet ask me "hey, what's up with mafia?").

How often do people change who the vote for based on news?

People make their decisions about voting and stick to them. 99.99% of the news that could change their vote is then rationalized away.

Is there any evidence to think that paying attention to news improves voting decisions? Indeed, how do you even grade things like presidents to know if you made the right decision in retrospect?

Even the concept of "improved voting decision" is all but impossible to evaluate. But on the other hand, studies have shown that people vote according to things like the state of the economy, I'd be interested to know how someone evaluated that (or if they care) without ever seeing/reading any news about it. Presumably just by looking at their own experience only.

The economist had an interesting write up of this past election. The found the single biggest determinant for how a county would vote was how sick that county was.

I can't even see how that would be correlated with the news.

I don't read the news to, as the author suggested we should, _feel better_ or get some warm cozy feeling. I read it to stay informed and cognizant about what is going on around me, the impact of the actions (or lack) of my community/state/nation, and to keep aware of trends, so that I can make better decisions that affect me _and others_.

The news is not entrainment, it's _news_. Yes it can be exhausting sometimes, and yes it can be hard to get out of an echo chamber, and yes some news is just ad-driven BS, but that is part of life. Sticking your head in the sand is not life.

And BTW, I'm not advocating 24/7 immersion. Short breaks are fine, just don't go shunning the world... you do live there after all.

And if you're getting sick of the same stories, read another source! There's only about a zillion newspapers, journals, letters, etc out there. There's more than enough to keep your interest if you don't glob into cable news all day.

Yes. There _is_ a duty to be informed, but it's not important how. You don't need twitter or cable news--you may be better informed without both, honestly.

And there's definitely a value is slowing down and avoiding the bottomless pit.

>so that I can make better decisions that affect me _and others_.

Name three? I suspect it feels more like it's useful than it actually is, and you'd get much of the same information second-hand anyways.

One of the issues I care about is net neutrality and I'm very worried that Trump will repeal it next year. I plan on reading all related read news and to help mobilize the tech community against a repeal. There are many other similar issues that people are gearing up for a fight.

Honestly, I think the people that have the luxury of ignoring all news are the privileged and selfish. We have a duty in a democracy to stay informed and join the fray. That's the price of living in a free society. If there is no grassroots involvement then the government ends up being run by the moneyed interests.

I've found that the solution is somewhat in middle. Burying your head in the sand and pretending everything is grand just makes you ignorant. On the other hand, consuming news everyday is a depressing affair that can warp your worldview in the opposite direction. Personally, I just consume national and international news once a week through more traditional magazines and journals. This usually means I get full reporting on events after they have unfolded and I avoid the hearsay and rumours that cable news loves. The analysis is usually top notch as well.

I consume local news daily as local issues tend to affect me more directly, but I don't find it nearly as bad as the internet's daily quest to find the most gruesome national or international news story to spew everywhere. Also avoiding news subreddits and comments sections is key. I like Hacker News because the dialogue is usually pretty good and it's mostly about industry news.

I concur with the author. I've also found that turning off any notifications on popular apps and putting them "out of reach" has also helped tremendously. I removed Instagram from my sorted folders on the front screen of my phone - and I find that I open it much less now - and its for the better. I can only deal with so many stupid memes and mindless rantings and ravings about banal and mediocre things around us.

The key question to ask yourself is "Does this improve my life at all?" The answer is mostly no. Maybe one could argue there is some small "entertainment" value. In this case, I would opt for quality over quantity. For example, watching a quality movie for 2 hours rather than spending 2 hours clicking through useless articles and videos.

I really wish I could vanish back into my tradecraft. I'm am quite jealous of people who can do this.

But the year I came out as non-binary is the same year my country elected a President with a VP candidate that wants to make discrimination against me not only legal but protected. E.g., under Pence's prior proposals someone could fire me because I am NB to "protect their moral conviction" and even if that firing was against corporate policy it could not be punished or easily recanted. His prior two attempts at the law also were written in a way where local and state laws could not override the federal law, which makes it even scarier.

So I actually need to watch the news and remain "plugged in" because it's very much a situation for me where I am now exposed to a lot of potential damage.

As such I do not feel that burying my head in the proverbial sand is a luxury I can't afford. For those who can, enjoy it.

What's the point of being informed if you don't have influence? It's like watching a train wreck while you're tied to the tracks. Knowing the play by play really doesn't matter.

It's so progressive to want the government involved in every facet of our lives under the guise of "effective regulation". That is, until, you disagree with the tyrant in charge. Whatever happened to life liberty and the pursuits of happiness? Seems to be pushed aside as libertarian mumbo jumbo.

> His prior two attempts at the law also were written in a way where local and state laws could not override

Careful now. Supporting states rights will firmly label you as a racist.

I'm concerned about my civil rights and not your tedious verbal fencing.

Every American should be concerned about the idea of making it legal for police to selectively enforce law based on "moral convictions" about marriage and lifestyle. If you're not concerned about that kind of legislation then I'm not prepared to debate you on such a fundamental tenant on a mobile keyboard. Suffice to say: I'm opposed fundamentally.

As for why know about it: be real. We've got a lot more influence than you imply we do. I've got comparatively enormous financial resources to back certain people, along with the ability to finance a defensive emigration attempt.

My point is that watching the news does nothing to limit the governments encroachment on your civil liberties. If you've been a cognizant adult since the "post 9/11" era you'd realize the government set on eroding any semblance of your rights as an individual. Turn off the news. It's pure garbage. If the government isn't actively trying to kill your source of information it isn't that good.

It's interesting you say that.

From the perspective of the LGBT community it's never been a safer time to be open (which in no way implies it's not full of challenges and danger). But significant progress has been made.

And while America is still deeply structured around racism, the dialogue has never been more open and the problems have never been made more clear to a broad swath of the population, which when polled generally agrees that core problems like income inequality and unfair police enforcement / incarceration need to end now.

That is not to paint a rosy picture of the entire affair. It's a mixed bag. America's foreign policies have been troublesome in many ways. And yeah, surveillance and speech rights are a sore spot for some people. I don't disagree there are issues.

But sitting here telling me I've never had it worse won't work. I assure you 5 years ago it was substantially worse for me.

I need to keep an eye out so if nothing else, I know when I need to leave the country.

> I need to keep an eye out so if nothing else, I know when I need to leave the country

Perhaps, but I'm sure there's a better way than sifting through piles of BS that is news. (If you can't tell, I hate the "news"). Maybe the ACLU should set up a monthly email alert with a barometer reading. But I agree with OP. Avoiding the news will make you a more sane person.

You do you. For me, I've always considered news to be a thing to consume responsibly with the full knowledge it is a profession as well as a service.

I see no reason to retreat into a bubble because the news isn't happy. The things that nearly drove me to self-harm were real people, not an overcooked headline.

News companies profiteer on polarizing the population by inciting hate and fear. It's advertisement based entertainment like Jerry Springer. As long as you realize that's what "news" is for 90% of the population then indulge away.

As someone living in the USA, I understand the temptation to do this - but now really isn't the right time to turn ostrich.

Staying educated on what's going on feels very important to me right now - especially in order to keep an eye out for opportunities to make a positive impact.

Classic quote comes to mind: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."

What are some of these opportunities?

I'm getting more involved with local policy and an environmental groups, and hosting events for similarly motivated people.

Can you not do that without watching the news, though?

Do you have plans to actually respond with some kind of positive action? Just reading the news is akin to doing nothing.

To be clear this is not a jab, rather the observation that this is how most of us will respond.

I read the news then I think, "How awful and depressing." Then I go back to my normal day only slightly more down.

I doubled my monthly donation to the ACLU and will now go back to ostriching.

Democracy kind of depends on people knowing what's going on. If people just show up on election day and choose the prettiest name there's absolutely no incentive to do anything as a politician.

Personally, I keep up with the news, but I understand the author's position. The news is mostly depressing stuff I can't do anything about or it reads like an editorial piece that I'm left wondering what the truth is.

Playing Devil's advocate, what if one simply votes based on what's going on around them? Not reading the news doesn't imply you're secluded from the rest of society, especially if one uses the free time to make an effort to take a more active interest outside of one's bubble.

Takes 5 minutes of skimming campaign sites and the first page of google results, tops, to pick the least-horrible candidate among the (if you're lucky) two viable ones for a given election at the state or national level in the US, assuming you haven't picked up enough by cultural osmosis to make the decision with no further effort.

Local elections are a different matter, but closely following state and national policy and politics is a fairly useless hobby (so it's fine to do so if you enjoy it!) for most people, unless they plan to get much more seriously involved in the process than voting and maybe stuffing envelopes for someone. Or if they have some kind of need for deep knowledge of that stuff for business reasons, I guess, but few have such a need.

I agree that this is a problem. I have been paying attention to the news on executive appointments that require confirmation, because I have a Republican senator I can call to encourage him to brave the populist backlash and stand up for his values in those votes.

I'm looking out for potentially helpful side projects - for example, I built https://dcinbox.herokuapp.com a few weeks ago to help out a transparency project. I've been making increased charitable donations to relevant orgs as well.

Even just talking to people about the issues can make a difference. We live in a society - engage your friends and family in rational and respectful conversation about the issues of the day. Show them that the "other" side are not the rabid fanatics that the partisan media portrays. Talk about real world examples - "my health insurance went up x% this year, why does it cost $y just for insurance and other countries get it for much cheaper?", " My commute takes x minutes to travel a few miles. Why aren't our politicians trying to reduce congestion?", "Flint has lead in the water, how do can we pay to replace aging infrastructure across the country?"

I find it terrifying that people are responding to the world by just turning off the news. I get why they want to do it but it's not a pathway to a healthy society if we all bury our heads in the ground.

> Do you have plans to actually respond with some kind of positive action?

Spot on. Activism changes the world. Watching "awful and depressing" news kills your motivation and makes you cynical.

If you want to learn about a political topic read big books. The ones written by experts, well known writers, academics, not journalists.

I stopped watching the MSM news propaganda years ago along with websites that don't allow direct comments to the stories. I would say the MSM is the worst way to stay educated.

I find that some of the alternative sites where everyone beats themselves over the topic with opposing views far better method to dissect the truth (middle-ground) than from a MSM news source.

Also helps that I don't constraint my thinking and views by boxing myself into one political ideology over another. I also don't do social media news and couldn't be happier.

Dropping cable and not watching CNN, Fox, or what ever your preference would be hardly counts as 'turning ostrich'. That would imply that cable news actually had some value beyond entertainment. Which, I think can be argued it hasn't. And in fact staying 'educated on what's going on' should probably be achieved some other ways and medias - especially if being 'educated' is the keyword here.

Completely agree, cable news is mostly worthless. The headline of the linked article uses the word "watch" but the actual article talks about avoiding other sources as well.

That line was quoted in one of the more recent Batman movies. Takeaway: be more like Batman.

> Staying educated on what's going on feels very important to me

When people randomly talk about random news that they don't even remember the next day or some celebrity news that have no impact on him/her whatsoever, I'd feel that the person isn't really focused on his/her life.

I've ditched TV for 10 years but do read headlines on national news site daily at least to catch what's going on generally but otherwise spending time for myself that's supposed to matter more than "following" the world which is very unproductive.

While reducing one's media consumption is a healthy goal, the author has a very odd conception of "making a meaningful difference." Does donating $50 to Red Cross not make a difference? Sure it does- that's $50 that, minus overhead or whatever, can be spent on something like medical care for those who wouldn't otherwise receive it. Its just the same as $50 to your local medical charity, in that respect; for that matter, with Red Cross, the overheads are likely lower (economy of scale and all) so it makes more of a difference. Only you don't get a thank-you card from the kid the next town over whose antibiotics you paid for; if that card is the "meaningful difference" you crave, okay, but otherwise...?

Same in other respects, of course. You can make a meaningful difference to things like the Syrian conflict or what-have-you, the issue is that these issues are just so huge that a meaningful difference isn't likely going to be visible. The question is, do you want to make a difference in the world to see yourself being powerful and nice, or for an objective desire to have good effects in the world?

> economy of scale and all

As charities get larger, they get more effective at receiving donations. There is no market pressure to make them more effective at utilising donations for their presumed purpose, only the extent to which they can leverage those donations to receive even more donations.

Some years ago people started saying "the only thing constant is change". I think it's not true anymore. The "change" seems to be advancing as well. There's so much information coming in - and it's getting faster. In reality like this, once pejorative "ignorance" becomes unavoidable description of every person. There's no way of not being ignorant on most things novadays. Even in narrow specialisations like web dev for example - each developer is ignorant of majority of web dev projects out there. And you can't blame anybody, there's just too much stuff out there. And that's only their narrow specialisation. There's also the rest of the world with billions of ideas and problems to be solved.

But you know, "the show must go on", we can focus on interesting things for us (ourselves), "keep calm and carry on" in sustainable-happiness we create (ourselves). Switching off news is probably one of the first steps. There are more, but let's just ignore them for now...

One minor goal for me this year is to ignore most of the news and focus mainly on one specific topic that I can learn to a useful level. I think I'm going to choose the US veterans administration. Why?

1) Having moved US -> UK, I wish the US had something like the NHS.

2) I've heard multiple veterans decry the quality and responsiveness of the VA healthcare is some pretty drastic terms.

3) I know from Rep. Capuano's mailing list the GOP has been trying for years to reform Ye VA in some way.

I suspect that until people stop being unhappy with the VA, that a large chunk of Americans will associate government-run healthcare with incompetence and inefficiency. This stands in stark contrast to the British perception of the NHS, so I want to know what's up.

The National Health Service? That's communism, silly. And communism is bad.

More seriously, the American people just don't trust their government to be competent or efficient. Only about 20% describe government programs as "well-run."[0] Although more than 50% seem to think that it's doing an okay job on health care at the moment.

It would be an incredible undertaking to establish something like the NHS in the US, and the political will just isn't there.

[0] http://www.people-press.org/2015/11/23/beyond-distrust-how-a...

The NHS is actually organised as a large number of locally managed nodes. Doctor's practices (GPs) are self-governing to some extent, and hospitals are managed by trusts. There has been a lot of reorganisation recently (the Tories always reorganise the NHS, it is a thing they do).

My knowledge of the US is limited but I imagine that a US version of the NHS would be organised by state and then by district hospitals. Plenty of moving parts at the back end but at least the patient just sees the single payer front end.

Also there are commissioning groups?

I also want to look into how the NHS works in more detail.

There are and I'm hazy about how it all fits together.

Might do some googling once I've rested up today (we saw the New Year in last night)

Right, my feeling is that democrats, by failing to pay attention to the effectiveness of the VA, are shooting themselves in the foot.

But maybe I'm wrong and the issue has complexities I'm not yet aware of.

I made this commitment in 2016 and don't much tune in. Important events seem to eventually percolate up into my other social discussions and places like here on HN or Facebook and I've found I've missed very few of the broad strokes -- but lots of the details.

On the other hand I've also noticed that I seem to be able to approach topics more objectively and less "inflamed" with presupposed positions than before.

This all has lowered my stress levels immeasurably and given me much more of a "we'll be fine" attitude about major events.

The real problem is that most of the major media sources are terrible, absolute amateur hour bottom of the barrel lowest common denominator garbage. The quality of what passes for journalism these days would get a person fired from almost any other profession.

When you find good journalism, it's almost like coming out a coal mine into the fresh air, but it's so hard to find it almost isn't even worth it.

I spent the last year getting 95% of my news from The Economist's leaders and the world this week. Did I know about every mass shooting soon after it happened? No. But I spent a half hour a week and could speak reasonably competently about the election.

More importantly: the news didn't consume me like it swallowed some of my friends

Yeah, and you also got all your information about the world filtered through the Economist's extremely ideological lens.

Once you know their agenda, you can filter. At least they're not hysterical. Part of the problem is the very different meaning that the word 'liberal' has in the UK.

Filtering can't tell you what they leave out.

News is fine.

The problem is that most news business models compete for attention via:

  1. alarmist content  
  2. clickbait headlines  
  3. polarizing viewpoints

There aren't as many entities who simply try to deliver balanced news and perspectives. Try reading the Economist, apnews.com, wikinews.org.

Exactly. I realized during the run-up to the election that CNN and the other major news networks don't really report news anymore - they exploit it.

I get most of my news through social media. I find social media to be even worse than just news in terms of polluting my brain, shortening my attention span and wasting my time. I now try to stay off social media until noon every day, which was a suggestion from someone on this forum. The peace it brings to my mornings is fantastic. And once I do get on social media, I'm much less likely to binge.

From observation, it also seems that people feel great about themselves and have done their part as a citizen of humanity after reading news, "being informed" (and maybe a share on FB).

I don't have data to prove it, but it seems intuitive that this results in them taking less real action?

I think the opposite is true. You'd feel better if you stop watching news of far away consequences (national/world) and stop sharing what you think you want to share. You'll feel better eventually.

The OP is absolutely correct on all the observations.

I have been doing the same for a while: only monitor local news; don't bother sharing. And since most people on social media do not follow the same, I have stopped following social media.

The difficult part initially is when you stop sharing (because you're fighting your ego) but eventually you'll see how it makes you even more productive than you are.

How are you supposed to "take action" if you aren't even aware of what's happening?

Rolf Dobelli's "Avoid News" articles are very relevant here.

http://dobelli.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par...

agree. the news is a waste of time http://greyenlightenment.com/why-the-news-is-still-mostly-po...

Some say the 'only constant is change'. It's actually the opposite: things seldom change, with the exception of a few blips here and there(such as 911 and the 2008 financial crisis).

As further evidence of how things tend to remain constant more often than not, the post-2009 bull market and economic expansion is the longest ever despite the endless predictions of recession and crisis. Same for failed predictions of hyperinflation and dollar collapse. Web 2.0 valuations still keep rising long after pundits in 2012 said it was a bubble.

There's still war and terror in the Middle East despite trillion of dollars thrown at the problem

Self-improvement is more important than worrying about things outside of your control or that have little impact on your life. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are going to throw you a lifeline. That you have to do on your own, such as by investing your income in stocks or real estate and being frugal.

> Self-improvement is more important than worrying about things outside of your control or that have little impact on your life.

Can't be said better.

do you have a twitter account?

I went back to watching the news, but as comedy.

For a while Fox was the best for that. Really good entertainment with all the stupidity and ridiculousness so it was kind of interesting. Then during the election cycle CNN, NYT, and other major ones joined the ranks. I will always remember the "Reading these document is illegal, it is different for us, the media, so come to use for interpretation". That for me exemplified the new low the mass media has sunk to recently.

It is of course useful to re-read Manufacturing Consent by Herman and Chomsky and keep that in mind then news makes a lot more sense.

I've done something similar. I have stopped watching the mainstream national news networks, namely ABC World News and similar programs. I watched these for a little over a year and after awhile you realize just how little informative news they have to offer.

Take ABC World News for instance, they throw the big headlines in the beginning, which you already know if you've checked any other news site/app. Then, they have these stories on a major car accident or one house somewhere catching on fire and somehow that merits it being on the national news. I obviously have some amount of sympathy for what these people go through, but the name of the program is ABC World News, and yet, there are never any stories about anything outside the US. And don't even get me started about the amount of commercials they throw in.

For sometime I was contemplating about not keeping up with the news for similar reasons that the author stated; certain stories may not interest me and the inevitable realization that there isn't anything I can do about it and making you feel depressed. I found, however, that I like staying informed on what is going on, not only in my local area and the US, but also international affairs. I try to limit my intake of mainstream news through my local paper, BBC World news, and their app; that's it. It doesn't take a lot of my time (maybe 45 minutes in total), I get to be informed on important topics, and see it as a productive way to take a break from school/work.

After 2008 I dropped cable. This is sometimes a hassle for sports, but otherwise it has been a boon. No more MSNBC, FOX, CNN talking head non-sense 24/7. That stuff just sucks you in and pounds you into submission, whether on political topics or "omg the world is gonna end!" type stuff.

I do still scan the headlines from news.google.com once or twice a day and only read a story if the topic is truly compelling/news worthy. This allows me to still have some clue about whats going on without the agita and time sink.

Agreed. I stopped reading the general news this year too. I feel better.

Mattias nails it - I've been doing this for about 3 years now and everytime I'm in public and see CNN or Fox News on TV, I cringe and reinforce my belief. On top of Hackers News, Facebook, Twitter and the Daily Show, I still tune into Bloomberg sometimes which is the closest I get to traditional News.

I do have to give them props for taking a good spin on real world events (like major natural disasters) and talking about them about the impact they have on the world after they occur vs just non-stop clips of people suffering. This might seem harsh but a few people being killed by a terrorist makes no difference in the grand scheme of things - 4 days on non-stop talk about it on the News just increases paranoia and concern.

Always had the idea that the 24 hour news cycle would be a lot better if they just balanced it out with puppy videos to restore our faith in humanity.

Funny story - Opened the CNN app the other day to read about the Christmas incident in Germany - 17 links that basically ruin all faith in humanity - The last one (18th) was extremely clickbaity but the only one that was positive. The headline: "Bill Gates was her Secret Santa" - It's like you can't get good news without Tech being involved somehow.

I understand the sentiment that news is often very depressing but I strongly disagree with the suggestion we should stop reading it.

Don't rely on social media for your news. Pick your news sources carefully, read more than one source too. Consider listening to radio if you want to avoid emotive images or screaming headlines. But don't stop reading (or listening to) the news. The Internet makes it possible to read or listen to English language news from sources from around the world. If you are dissatisfied with news in your region or country, go and explore those other sources.

And I disagree that you can't do anything about events in the news. Millions of people donate or give money to charity or fundraising campaigns as a result of events in the news. Life isn't comfortable for millions of people around the world, but why insulate yourself from what's happening around you? I can't even begin to imagine what the world would be like if we all stopped reading the news. Knowing what's happening around the world (and your own back yard) has spurred so many people to take action big and small.

And even if you think "I'm never going to take action, there's nothing I can do", you can still form an opinion - that might be an important thing when it comes to election day and you have to decide who you vote for. Not being interested in the news is exactly how politicians slip legislation under the nose of the electorate.

If you find reading the news depressing, read this for an inspiring story of how a Design & Technology student was spurred into action after watching a harrowing news report on Syria:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29900968

"Watching" is a very low-bandwidth way to consume news. I stopped watching about 8 years ago. I'm glad to see that the rest of the world has caught on!

FWIW, I generally know about everything a day before it hits the major news outlets. After being freed from the slow, commercial-filled news cycle of tv and radio, who would ever want to go back to such a slow delivery system?

TV news is such a joke, in 20 minutes you get to see 1 important topic of the day and a couple random things you don't even want to know about in a hope that they will tell you something interesting which will not be the case.

Using the web you can narrow that down to 5 minutes without occupying your mind memory too much to something uninteresting which I think is important to keep some room to fill in or use for your creativity.

Also for other reasons that TVs are not productive, I ditched that thing 10 years ago after getting out of college. Never missed it.

I stopped a few years ago. If its important it will find its way to you.

I'm conflicted about this.

On the one hand I have also decided to become as ignorant as possible about the news because (at the risk of overusing the phrase), I think we have firmly moved into a post-truth American society. If election outcomes aren't based on facts, what's the point of knowing them?

On the other hand, many other people in this thread are saying that there's never been a more important time to know the news. I understand the sentiment, but I would phrase it differently: there's never been a more important time for good journalists to be doing good journalism. Except for the tricky issue of how to keep good journalists employed without people reading them, I don't feel any particular obligation to be informed. I decided to donate money to ProPublica in the hope that they'll keep the government as honest as possible without me having to deal with it.

If a bunch of good journalists are cranking out great investigative reporting but nobody reads it or gives a damn then it will do nothing to "keep the government honest."

I realize this is a stupid argument, but as long as someone else is reading it, I don't feel like I have to. I'm not recommending everyone stop reading the news, just me.

I also stopped watching / reading news, on or around November 16th. I thought Apple Watch had made me use my phone less, but this change has increased the amount of attention I have by a ton.

My primary news outlets were G News and Twitter. I had to quit using twitter as well, which has been somewhat of a bummer as I've had tweet ideas. But I just let them pass now because it is more valuable to not have the distraction of reading others.

I also have been keeping up on tech news, primarily Apple rumors and here on hacker news. Also, Reddit and various subreddits offer largely 'news free' content for when I just want to consume.

If anything, these new filters have helped me see that most 'news' is really just content. And at least for now, I'm not interested in content that makes me feel bad or steals attention from my life.

So you don't have time to know even the basic outlines of current affairs or politics but you do have time to obsessively follow Apple rumors? Does it not bother you to have such narrow interests?

I don't really follow the news where I live (Estonia) but I do check the news and weather for my Australian hometown daily. Why? So I can communicate with my parents about their garden and thoughts on local (to them) matters. It really helps bridge the 14,000km between us.

I stopped being involved with social media in 2015, no news in 2017 sounds like a good next step.

Here is an interesting blog post by John D. Cook on how too much news creates an "Inverted Sense of Risk" http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2014/09/05/inverted-sense-of-r...

While I highly recommend not being too connected to the concretes and noise of the day, i.e. news, I think sticking your head in the sand is not such a great idea either. Nobody planned on or set out to design and build tanks, cars, plane, guns, bombs, ciphers or databases for the Nazis but people actually did.

Being from a country that has commercial news (clickbaity, alarmist, etc.) I'm finding it ok to watch the news from European public TV. You get to know what's going on in the world but avoid most of the emotional drain.

Is this a parody or something? I guess it'd explain a lot about HN if there are a lot of people on here who only read about start-ups and JavaScript frameworks and never look at other kinds of news.

Unless you live in a total dictatorship, it's selfish to be completely disinterested in what's going on in the world, more so if you're personally unaffected by a deluge of horrors happening to others. We don't yet live in that dictatorship here in the US, and the actions and expressed preferences of common citizens are still influential in politics, especially if you care enough to call up your legislators and write to your newspapers. We are the cast, not the audience.

It's key to differentiate between watching the news and being informed.

I haven't watched the news in over a decade (except for when I'm over at someone's house being polite) and my life has been better because of it.

Instead, I pay for NYTimes, Wall St Journal and read Hacker news which I find keeps me more informed than the average joe watching news stories on "what's trending on social media" type journalism.

In the US and Europe now is a very dangerous time to give up on news. Cables news should be dropped, but I'm seeing in the comments here a few people ardently against all news. Considering that a white nationalist backed candidate is in-office with full party support starting this year, ignoring the news is a luxury only affordable to the rich white male class. Everybody else is affected.

Unless you live in a total dictatorship, it's selfish to be completely disinterested in what's going on in the world. We don't actually live in that dictatorship yet here in the US, and the actions and expressed preferences of common citizens are still influential in politics, especially if you care enough to call up your legislators and write to your newspapers. We are the cast, not the audience.

>We don't actually live in that dictatorship yet here in the US, and the actions and expressed preferences of common citizens are still influential in politics, especially if you care enough to call up your legislators and write to your newspapers. We are the cast, not the audience.

Many people participate, and push back, but we can see which way the wind is blowing. Dictatorship? Well, maybe not outright dictatorship, but certainly heavy authoritarianism along the lines of Putin and Erdogan.

I follow the news, but I also need to get to work on efforts to move somewhere else. My wife is completely terrified of moving far-away from family, but of course, I'm rather terrified of living under a fascist state.

I don't know where you live or how hypothetically fucked you are, but it isn't too late to give a little of your time to get involved in local politics and fight back! No guilting or judgement, just trying to keep a positive mood as a lot of times these "escape plans" don't work out for various reasons

Dude, I already pay monthly dues to an activist org, attend the monthly meetings, attend demonstrations, sign petitions, talk to my local legislature, and basically the whole lot of it.

The term "card-carrying" refers to me. I have a literal membership card from said activist organization. I am fighting back.

EDIT: Actually, no, I have two membership cards. One is from my normal activist org, the other from the ACLU.

Best of luck, stay safe

My thoughts:

UK News: Getting worse each year, though usually high quality, they go so into murder details these days it makes you sick if you aren't already desensitized.

US News: these channels are all a joke, honestly Fox and CNN? I turn to these channels when I want to have a laugh.

Reddit/HN: Aggregated news, actually pretty good. Though of course very western focused, Russia is the 'bad guy' etc.

I am not sure what is the right thing to do but I feel not watching the news is not right. I too feel anxious and depressed when I follow the news and politics but I feel that I become part of the problem if I decide to live under the rock.

I think the solution should be something like being able to filter the negativity and keep the zen while watching the news, not close the eyes.

I've been doing this for a few years now, and I highly recommend. I am still subscribed to various tech news feeds, but haven't watched the TV news edition, or browsed to any news website just to check the news in a very long time. I still get the important news by hearsay, Facebook, work talk, etc. I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

I've decided to stick with "slow media". I'm not going to get my news from 24/7 news channels, or reddit, or Twitter.

I'm going to pick a news outlet I trust to give daily facts. I might even subscribe to a physical newspaper. I think a happy medium exists where you can stay informed, but avoid being consumed by bullshit.

I can totally sympathize with the feeling you are having. Mainstream news has become too celebrity oriented and sensational for my tastes.

So what I think I really want is better news. The PBS news is more suited to my tastes, but the form is too long for my available time. Some news is visual, most can be auditory. And it needs to be portable and always available.

Shit, if only someone came up with some way to get news on your phone, that would be perfect.

I stopped watching the news in the late 90's because of the sensationalization and shallow reporting. I haven't missed it, especially now with the media bias.

There are better ways of keeping up to date, especially with news feeds that you can get just the topics you want news on.

But people still think I'm nuts for not watching the news.

News disturb you and make anxious. Besides, reading news is no use https://playforitsownsake.com/articles/why-reading-political...

I'm with you, it's a mantra that takes effort to maintain, I'm easily sucked into a 'serious news' narrative, then mine for background information obsessively so as to form an 'informed opinion', then what, it's formed but neutered, extending my understanding of a topic does nothing to change the situation... my existential inclinations are not well serviced by what I see as a self-indulgent and negative voyeurism, a better reaction, to double down on local, small scale, personal improvements.

I would recommend instead of completely ignoring the news, just stick to the 30 minute national news on CBS/ABC/NBC/NPR (maybe FOX). Everything that happens in the world in a day will fit in 30 minutes. Everything else is mostly opinion and speculation which serves the writers more than you.

Scannng headlines in RSS feeds from a dozen or so sources gives me a glimpse of the state of world events in under 10 minutes. I rarely open TFAs unless it is a topic that is of particular interest to, or directly affects, me.

Then I come to HN comments for non-clickbait sources and insights into topics I do care about.

I do that too, but I have to keep in mind that most headlines are sensational. HN comments are great.

Many others have expressed similar sentiments; here’s one very good explanation:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-informatio...

Imo you need to avoid social media as well, since headlines enter your mind through your timeline as well.

When the artists and revolutionaries disconnect other forces run rampant. When everything is horrible, this is when we most need the thinkers to remain focused. You dont make the world better by ignoring its problems. If politics is depressing, get involved and make it less so.

This seems to be concentrating on devoting your time to things (be it news, donations, events, initiatives) that make YOU feel better, rather than anything else. Weigh that against your personal beliefs and ethics before you start following what this article says.

I've taken this up as well and expanded to just watching less TV in general. I find myself always saying I don't have enough time to do all the things I want to do, yet I manage to watch an astounding amount of TV. The solution is obvious.

Not watching TV since more than 5 years (also no Netflix etc.) - blocked every new source except HN at the beginning of 2016 (using leechblock in Firefox).

Much happier.

The problem with not watching the news is that when you socialise with other people, your discussions will be one long string of Aleppo moments ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOT_BoGpCn4 ) because the newspapers pick some random thing and make it super important, shaping the discourse of people while completely ignoring other events that are just as important if not more important.

i'm inclined to think there is no such thing as a "free press". i'm also of a mind that even when one presumes such a thing exists, there's no reason to believe that this leads to "truth" or "reliability" in reporting.

i hope there's a third way between corporate news and government news.

One hour per week seems like just enough time to spend on general news.

This is nothing special. We all do this already. We don't watch or read news from certain sources already, and stick to other ones we come to trust, and this is all the author is doing. I honestly don't see the big deal.

already done since 2015, I live better than ever.

I stopped years ago. Best decision ever. I also dont really use social media outside of work. My life is muuch much much better.

s/ostridge/ostrich/

Apart from that, I can only agree. I started on the same path several years ago.

Ugh, this is so short-sighted. I get that reading about some of the awful stuff that has happened in past years will make you sad and uncomfortable, but the answer is not to put your head in the sand and ignore them. If you want to feel less depressed, I propose that you stop reading news (and especially commentary) on social media, and instead subscribe to high-quality news outlets such as newspapers. A digital subscription to nytimes is actually pretty cheap.

I find NYT to be absurdly biased.

The WSJ, then? It's going to be a really dark age when nobody reads the papers that don't dabble in `Pizzagate`-style journalism anymore.

Every news outlet is biased, that's unavoidable. Subscribe to at least one whose bias you agree with, and one you don't. Something that is just as important as getting news is to try to get an understanding of how people who disagree with you think. Try to see things from their perspective and compare it with your own.

> Every news outlet is biased

...ranging from slightly to hugely.

> Subscribe to at least one whose bias you agree with, and one you don't.

Yet you'll have zero guarantee that any number of outlets you pick will cover the whole spectrum. They might very well span a very small spectrum.

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