I wonder which is worse being uninformed or misinformed. I feel like both are pretty bad, but somehow the misinformed seem worse because people are often unable to reject or form a new idea once they latch onto something.
I hear that said a lot, but I doubt it, at least not with those proportions. Those things offer important perspective, but to put it bluntly: George Washington isn't running for president anymore and slavery has been abolished for more than a century. The past is the past and this is the present: there are some commonalities but also a lot of important differences.
To be a "better citizen," you need pretty deep knowledge of current events. That takes a lot of time, because a lot is going on and it's often more informative to follow a story than just read a summary once it's over. Think of it this way: an investor will lose his shirt if he spends 95% of his time reading classic investment books and only 5% actually researching businesses. Being a citizen is similar.
Also, one of the nice things about the news is it exposes you more to the rough edges and uncertainty of the present, rather than smoothing that over with theory and narratives (that can be thoroughly curve-fitted to the past, so as not to jar you with their wrongness).
The modern "news" environment takes the worst of our justice system, the unethical, dishonest, manipulative lawyers who consider it their duty to use every rhetorical tool to achieve their goals, and has mainstreamed it. The news, and politics, are dominated by attorneys. But most of us aren't, and most of us don't use those same techniques in our lives, or are even familiar with the techniques, and so we're left vulnerable to them.
No, it's based on the hypothesis that sufficient up-to-date information is required.
> People's perspectives are not deepened by more information, but made more shallow. In large part this is because the information they get is mostly second order, information about other people's reactions, or even reactions to reactions. This reaction information is used to preempt and override people's own reactions, often with something extreme, which drives engagement, which represents value for the corporation.
That's a twisted cartoon of the news. If that's how you've actually experienced it, you probably need to pick better sources or get better at separating the wheat from the chaff.
> The modern "news" environment takes the worst of our justice system, the unethical, dishonest, manipulative lawyers who consider it their duty to use every rhetorical tool to achieve their goals, and has mainstreamed it. The news, and politics, are dominated by attorneys. But most of us aren't, and most of us don't use those same techniques in our lives, or are even familiar with the techniques, and so we're left vulnerable to them.
That's another twisted cartoon, but I'll say one of the best ways to avoid being manipulated is to actually be familiar with the facts.
Quite possibly. You're usage of Good News/bad news there is about the most confused thing possible. There are much clearer ways of saying what I think you might be saying.
Sure, but I doubt someone with a deep grounding in political science, economics, and history, but who'd never heard of either candidate, would need more than an hour or so on Google to decide between Trump and Biden, for instance. Our choices are, as voters, for better or worse, pretty limited.
Frankly, I often make decisions about local candidates or ballot initiatives based on like 5 minutes of research. I doubt any of those choices would change if I closely followed all those candidates and issues and spent 50x more time on them—what might change them is if I'd read fewer, or different, books. (meanwhile, if I wanted to make any actual difference in the world, I'm aware that what I ought to do is get involved with one of the big two political parties, at the local level)
That's a bad example, because Trump was such an oaf. A better recent example might have been choosing between McCain and Obama, if you're focused on presidential races.
The bigger issue isn't so much picking candidates, but understanding current situation and problems, and having opinions about those things to inform your choices.
> A better recent example might have been choosing between McCain and Obama, if you're focused on presidential races.
I'd love to see some blank-slate person try to judge them just by their own websites. God, those were so different.
I think the policies from the 60s and 70s have way more impact today than people realize and without understanding that context, "deep knowledge of current events" gets you nowhere. The seeds for an event like 9/11 were planted almost 50 years earlier and without understanding that it's easy for people to get swept up in takes like "they hate us for our freedom".
Of course, this view is shared by every fanatic everywhere, of every faith, such that the jingo "They hate us for our freedom" applies to them, too.
Osama Bin Laden's own motivations for 9/11 had more to do with American imperialism in the Middle East and less to do with "rejection of God's Law". This isn't speculation, but from the horse's mouth. The "hate us for our freedom" was propaganda by Bush, and anyone who only looks at that, without studying the history of American imperialism in the middle east, starting from the coup of Iran, ends up in the backwards conclusion that Islam is a violent religion (or at least any more violent than any other Abrahamic religion).
Please bear in mind that "rejection of God's law, the soul of heresy, for which the punishment is death" is also a major tenet in all Abrahamic religions. Secondly, there are plenty of Americans who are pining for nuclear war with Russia over Ukrainians; but somehow the blowback of nearly 50 years of foreign intervention by the CIA wouldn't be a motivation for anti-American sentiment in the middle east and instead "they just hate us for our freedom".
I'm not saying religion isn't a tool for executing these goals, but the orchestrators have always been acting under geopolitical goals.
What motivates you to resist the simple truth that Islamists hate and wish to kill Westerners for breaking their holy law (the same behaviors we call "freedom"), admire martyrs who suicide themselves into civilians for this purpose? Do you think an Islamist would disagree with any of that? If so, why?
The soldier does not have a larger strategy in mind; he kills for simple and extreme reasons. The government however is rarely so naive, and initiates their wars with much larger goals in mind. Even with a dictator, they represent the filtered understanding of many advisors, and balance the many goals of the group (so almost by definition, they cannot sustain a singular goal with singular purpose for long). The individual just needs one reason to do what he does, which might be as simple as “his boss told him to”.
Because it's a ridiculous premise that you would not apply to any other religion. It's not even a consistent view of Islam; you don't have Islamists in Malaysia (60% islamic) or Turkey (99% Islam) holding the same sort of contempt with to West.
Consider it this way, if a Russian came to you and said "the Ukrainians hate Russians because they are full of Nazis and they hate how Stalin purged Germany of Nazis" you would quickly realize that is ridiculous notion - Ukrainians are currently being bombed by Russian soldiers which fuels their animosity.
The West has largely done the same in the middle east, and not understanding this history leads you down to conclusion that they must hate the West because of Islam. I don't know how you could look at an entire group of people who have been practically waging a war for sovereignty against a incredibly more powerful adversary for almost _60 years_ and come away that their wish to kill westerners comes from breaking their holy law. Yeah, you can pretend Islam is a tiny part of it, but I think a larger part of that hate is having their government overthrown and then having their children blown up in an air strike.
I explicitly said in my initial comment that the slogan "They hate us for our freedom" applies to any fanatic of any religion. You are misrepresenting me, and are drifting further away from a specific point around what motivated the 9/11 attackers. Perhaps you are confused by the difference between Islam[0] and Islamism[1]?
People today are vehemently anti-China because of censorship in video games, but somehow it’s a leap of faith that people can be anti-West after their home is targeted in an air raid and we must turn to “religious fanatics”. If China dropped a bomb on your parents home over some mineral rights, don’t you think you would become a little anti-Chinese? What would you think if those Chinese turned around and called you fundamentalist Christian when you voiced those complaints?
If you buy that fact that the Middle East sustained aggression for over 50 years because of “religious fanactism” then you must also believe Putin’s line of reasoning that Zelensky is a nazi because it’s the same kind of propaganda
I believe all of that, yet "they hate us for our freedom" remains an accurate description of the fanatic. It is, essentially, definitional.
>If China dropped a bomb on your parents home over some mineral rights, don’t you think you would become a little anti-Chinese?
You seem to interpret what I'm saying as bigoted against Muslims (it's not, BTW), so I'm surprised you'd make this argument. Furthermore, it's ambiguous what you mean: do you mean anti-China, or anti-Chinese? Yes, I would certainly feel the former, but not the latter. Individuals aren't nations, never were, never will be.
The reality is that post world war 2 soviet containment is the most relevant starting point for explaining Islamic terrorism in the west. Yes, religious rhetoric was used by bin Laden and al-Qaeda to justify their actions, but they only took these actions because western powers (US, Soviets) were playing proxy war in the region for decades.
> I think the policies from the 60s and 70s have way more impact today than people realize and without understanding that context, "deep knowledge of current events" gets you nowhere.
I'm not arguing for an extreme opposite position (e.g. all current events, no history). If you thought I was, you misunderstood me. I'm just saying it's not being a "good citizen" to bury yourself in the past and neglect the present day.
However, I will say understanding current events probably takes more effort, because history can be digested and presented more efficiently (e.g. for the Civil War: 4+ years of 19th century newspapers vs. a 500 page history).
The vestiges of the later slavery are still around too, well, I guess the slavery is too, but now you have to buy their labour from the government, and the government keeps ownership of the slave. Actually, I don't know how that goes for private prisons?
But pressuring people to plea guilty to crime, perceptions of black people as violent criminals, the large US prison population, the police, etc. Those are legacies and continuations of practices from slavery.
A but more reading on history puts today's problems in better context
[0]: https://weeklysift.com/2014/03/31/slavery-lasted-until-pearl...
https://www.businessinsider.com/study-watching-fox-news-make...
I was actually referring to exactly this.
Everyone has a bias and skews stories, also, creating fear probably increases viewership. If the media always said everything is fine, less people would watch IMO.
I understand the sentiment, and I'm also careful about how much news I consume, but there's a fine line between this and being privileged to be able to afford to skip news because those suffering aren't your family.
In a less extreme example, if a big project came into your neighborhood to destroy all the houses on your street to build a highway, I'm sure that suddenly this news would make you want to get involved politically to advocate against the destruction of it. But when that happened in the other neighborhood and you didn't care to even write an email to your local politician to oppose it because you didn't know about it, other families suffered.
It's a fine line.. I've seen my parents watch news 3 times a day (lunch, dinner, and late-evening news) and it was definitely not healthy and did not make them better citizen either. I don't have a perfect answer.
I don't think there's any obligation to keep up with events on the other side of the world (or the other side of your country) if you're not also able and willing to do something about it. I dunno about applying the "privilege" label to that—in fact, the fewer resources you have, the less point there is in it.
Things that happen across the world affect us here too. Maybe your friends have family in Ukraine or are from there. I have students who are Ukrainian. Currently Ukrainians are leaving their homeland as refugees and resettling all around the world. They could be moving in down the street and will be your neighbors! Knowing what's happening around the world allows one to be empathetic to the situations of others.
Being an American is like being a Roman citizen; you have to run the whole empire.
Again, I think that end would also be better served if a high proportion of news media consumption were shifted to citizenship-relevant books (and maybe very high-quality, low-frequency periodicals), probably starting with textbooks and classics in political science, history, and economics (I doubt anyone who's mined those well already, needs any help picking their next high-value read).
Nope, not my duty. My duty is to elect politicians who enact policy affecting me. If a politician enriches my country at the expense of another, it is my duty to vote for him, for the sake of myself and my family. No one is a citizen of the world.
Watching the news is not helping these people.
Hence why I said most. I definitely agree that being exposed to outside events can be important for sympathizing with those affected (and possible helping them), but at the same time, one does not need to be aware of everything going on in the world.
Neither do I.
If you think you're learning about social, political, and economic mechanics on a global scale from the news, then I implore you to keep consuming. I've never learned anything from the news that I couldn't have learned talking to someone else who watched it instead.
But if you live in a democracy, you have to spend some of your time being informed about things so you know how to vote. Think of it as a democracy tax. If you didn't live in a democracy, you wouldn't have this tax on your time. Freedom isn't free, eh?
Of course, this democracy tax is totally voluntary. You're only obligated by your own morality. You may choose to opt out of democracy entirely. Not voting or being informed is your choice, if you wish to live your life off the backs of others. No one will make you feel guilty about it at all. Right? ;)
I don’t think you fairly addressed his question at all in this comment, and the reason lies right in that vague word: “things”.
People who live anywhere will always take an interest in information which directly affects them, or that they can profit off of, or which might cause them to incur losses. Generally there are multiple means of attaining this information and the “news” in the mass media sense is just one of them. I don’t for example pay close attention to all legal news, so when I need legal advice which tends to be situational in nature I hire people who do rather than proceeding on my own partially-informed opinions from what I gleaned out of a newspaper which probably missed important details and which is usually written from a biased perspective. This is true for any number of domains I don’t specialize in (almost all of them), and in seeking counsel I gain information along the way that can shape my future actions.
So lets come back to that word, “things”, which things should people be informed of that you get from the news media but are unlikely to receive from anywhere else?
Added to which, the news is a business model which increasingly earns its living off manufacturing outrage (not by making its viewers more informed and worldly). The same can’t be said of history books, which is why I agree with one of my sibling commenters here, who recommends swapping most news with reading history.
The purported Twain quote, "If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed; if you do, you're misinformed," applies here.
People love to do comparisons to this or that news organization, "Fox News viewers are most likely to have a Beanie Baby collection," or "MSNBC viewers are most likely to believe that Elvis was an alien," or whatever. It doesn't mean much. They are all entertainment platforms that sell ads.
There is still bias, of course - The Economist makes it clear they are pro-free market, for example - but they tend to give a decent overview of the most salient facts and they write for a global audience.
uninformed is passively annoying, misinformed is aggressively annoying.