Hacker News Reader

Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

I find that the times it is exhausting is when I've been overly attached to my own beliefs such that there's an emotional response to being exposed to claims in conflict to them. The best way to overcome this inhibitor to open mindedness in my opinion is to just ensure you have a broad exposure such that it becomes normal and unimpactful to read many things you strongly disagree with regularly.

View on HN

While I agree that it's healthy to keep a broad set of sources, I find that once a source has shown to be untrustworthy on some topic, I discount them on other topics too. There is a difference between having a certain worldview and twisting facts to your narrative.

Unfortunately, a good chunk of the Republican party in the U.S. is happily ignoring facts around the last presidential election. There is little use in exposing yourself to their faux complaints. Much like it was not useful to read up on the "Russian connection" that was invented to attack Trump. So when people fall prey to these ideas, I discount their opinion. I stop reading them. No reason to willingly absorb noise.

These people you mention aren’t generating these theories nor am I suggesting we take their conclusions into consideration - my point is they have value as relays which are connected to networks you otherwise would not have access to, and as alternative relevancy ranking algorithms over the set of published information. For example, this WSJ article gets an increased weight in being exposed to me as a side effect of not masking out this person who is promoting it based upon their own, more widely scoped, conspiracy theory.

I don't know if reading about how someone is the devil or how vaccines put 5G computer chips in my arm will ever not be draining.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com