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Comment by legerdemain | Hacker News Reader

Seriously, the best advice I've received as a Palantir employee is "stop reading the news." Suddenly all this stuff about the election, the Supreme Court, targeted drone strikes, reproductive rights, police brutality happening to people other than me, rampant disease, and riots in the streets goes away. All that's left is me enjoying a sunny September afternoon in cozy, charming Palo Alto, counting down the hours until my company IPOs!

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That's rather... convenient advice for employees of a company that is alleged to be involved in human rights violations.

Just yesterday, by means of example: https://www.forbes.com/sites/chantaldasilva/2020/09/28/palan...

If you had any doubts that privilege exists, this is what it looks like.

Bloody hell, I hope this is satire.

Actually "stop reading the news" is a good advice. Though it doesn't mean that you should stop participating in your community. There are better sources of information, I imagine, for almost any topic.

> “The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.” https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/thomas-jefferson-ha...

Nice. So how much will you be worth tomorrow?

Just make sure you vote.

so the best advice is to look the other way?

To be fair I do the same thing. It's for my mental health and focus.

i see how that came off a bit direct. i agree the 24 hour news cycle is way way too much. and one issue after another is totally depressing. but we can't ignore problems as general advice, that's not how things get solved.

Well, is it how things get fixed? The way we collectively attribute passive attention and consume information seems less and less up to us, the longer we're surrounded by the digital equivalent of slot machines. The media is more give and less take than ever; and the longer this stress goes on, the more emotionally charged the process of memetic exchange becomes.

Still, talking to people is as good as it ever was, if you're determined about it. While these days it does require significant care and patience to avoid the memes and the trigger phrases, it's still more than possible to gesture at the ideas behind the noise and get something fresh going - to get minds exchanging.

The one thing that is guaranteed is that if your M.O. is to ignore the issues that threaten to cause nationwide (or global) collapse then things will never get fixed. I am astounded to see several comments in this thread that are basically the approach the crew of sinking Titanic embraced - i.e. the ship is sinking and the people are running around like headless chickens so we better get those bands ready and playing festive music. Unbelievable!

Well, the ship was sinking either way...

I'm kidding, and I see what you mean - but I think reading more news solves big issues just as well as reading less news.

Changing the state of things now, or changing the way people approach things in the future - that's how the change thing works. Western people have had so much of the latter from the hyper-media environment that I find myself sympathising with the flouride folks - ideology may as well be in the water for how pervasive it is.

Our individual approaches toward media consumption have to be personal and pragmatic - they aren't statements of Kantian universal morals. Much like tee-totallers don't necessarily believe that everyone should give up drinking.

I know you're not quite saying this, but the idea that avoiding the news and having your head in the sand have anything to do with each other is a false equivalence. If anything, in today's world it's the other way around.

To be fair, if you think that consistently ignoring potentially civilization-ending issues is the road to mental "health" and focus...you may want to consult a doctor. Yes, THAT kind of a doctor. I am willing to bet you will get quite a lecture on "owning your issues".

I am pretty sure he/she was NOT joking or being /s, and is now downvoting my comments. To make matters worse, his comments shows up as the top comment for the thread currently, so apparently quite a few top HN contributors agree with this "approach".

I just got to 500 karma the other day, so, no, I've never downvoted any comments on this site, and I don't expect to. I think downvoting is spiteful and breeds suspicion of other contributors.

Also, I think commenting on voting activity is considered bad form here.

Whether I'm /s or not is, frankly, immaterial. My comment is true de facto. It doesn't really matter if I passively benefit from Palantir's activity while sitting pretty or while racked with moral agony. Similarly, I can't think of a life decision I've taken as a result of reading the news. Sure, I could donate my stock to charity or strive to work at the WHO, but I am almost certainly not going to.

>Also, I think commenting on voting activity is considered bad form here.

OK, sorry if it was a personal attack.

As far as the actual commenting on downvotes - well, if such downvotes are in support/defense of obvious signs of mental illness (e.g. the exact term in this case is "learned helplessness") then I will point that out even if it is against the HN culture.

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

Medical reality trumps culture any time, at least for me.

>Whether I'm /s or not is, frankly, immaterial. My comment is true de facto.

It actually matters, a lot. If a significant portion of the population acquires "learned helplessness" that will in and of itself lead to collapse. I have to ask - does this approach work for you? Namely, being disengaged from life and trying forcing yourself to enjoy it when it is quite obvious things are pretty bad right now? So bad in fact, that 1 in 4 young Americans are seriously contemplating suicide - an "unraveling" of the social fabric?

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/the-social-fabric-of-the...

One would hope being racked with moral agony would be sufficient impetus to work towards change. Unless you believe you have no influence, how do you justify closing your eyes as a solution?

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