Comment by bitexploder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitexploder | Hacker News Reader

On the one hand, I will compliment this and say what a good idea is this is. The world is becoming, on average, a less violent, more prosperous place since the industrial revolution. Fewer people starve and there is much less armed conflict. People need to be reminded of this. But it can be a really dangerous game to live in an bubble and turn blinders on to reality. I hope everyone can take this "not depressing" news dose and also keep an eye on reality. Final thought: Being depressed by the news, any news, is a choice. Depression from the news is often from a feeling of powerlessness over the situation. But what you can control are your emotions and your decision to be depressed by the news. Channeling Epictetus here. He would just tell us to decide not to be depressed and focus on what you can control. Politics got you down? Vote. Get others to vote. Become involved. Local politics are important, etc. That is my thoughts, hopefully that seems balanced. That said, bookmarking this site and I will see how it evolves.

Reality is not simple to decipher in an environment of info overload.

Imagine walking into a huge library. Every book has descriptions of complex problems. Some books have solutions. Some books don't. But you can only read one book at a time. In that library you can focus on the book that matches your needs and skills. And the world doesn't seem too crazy.

Now imagine the same library, but with a thousand different people shouting at you to come look at the problem in some book they picked just up. What kind of reality are you going to experience in that library?

I would argue experiencing that reality is also a choice. Unless I am doing research or actively in search of information, I read one of a very few web sites. HN, NY Times, WaPo, and Electoral Vote. I don't feel under-informed. I deleted Facebook and only use things like Twitter/LinkedIn/Instagram to keep in touch with an extremely small circle of people, mostly I just email and call folks. That is just how it is. I don't think our brains are meant to drink from the firehouse that is the Internet. It is addicting and counter to what most on HN want in terms of deep work and productivity.

I think the intent is solid.

But using curation by someone else in an attempt to solve the problem of overwhelming malaise in one's news feed just won't "scale" (sorry for using that valley buzzword). How much can any entity curate on a day-to-day basis? How does one decide what's actually worthy? Didn't we see this before in the early web when Yahoo thought it could categorize everything? Can we trust _anybody_ (other than ourselves) to white-list what we see?

As a twitter user, I've found using the "muted words" feature to be somewhat helpful, my list is _very_ long and includes not only the people and issues I despise (president cheeto-satan, etc), but also their opposition which I generally agree with. Yeah, it's "leaky", every once in a while I get mug shot of somebody I'd rather not see, but it does mitigate the never ending stream of despair.

In general, I think individuals would do better to limit their news feeds by themselves, either through the discipline of sticking to trusted sources, or by more draconian measures of filters. Cable news, of course, is a no-go dumpster-fire.

Do things that don't scale.

Back before the rise of our newer technology, curation seemed to work pretty well. Most folks in the US had access to three or four TV channels, one or two local papers, and a handful of national newspapers and general interest magazines.

I'm not sure that particular genie is going back in the bottle, though.

Prosperous for whom? There are people who are struggling to make ends meet, have their houses dispossessed, can't get steady jobs or afford housing, in student debt they can't pay, facing racism and violence from the state now and segregation in the recent past so its a matter of individual experiences and perspectives.

There are entire countries in the middle east that have been destroyed with millions dead, millions of refugees, families and infrastructure destroyed and set back a hundred years without consequences. And more are threatened as we embrace this new 'violence free' world.

On one side there are sweeping claims without evidence of the world getting 'better'. These kind of wide assertions would need a lot more data points and discussion by historians, economists and sociologists to get to some kind of 'truth' that is not propaganda.

Fortunately there are detailed works by academics like Piketty, Stiglitz and others with real data on stagnant wages and inequality over 40 years, on how gains are going to a small minority worldwide for those who are interested. Some may want to feel better because the current system favours them and that's perfectly valid. But sweeping claims about improvements sound as credible as the trillion dollar sv elite wanting to solve the worlds problems while failing to address the homelessness in their backyard.

I guess you missed the part about on average?

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