Man, I don't get it. News is bad for you so become deliberately ignorant? Don't get distracted by the world so you can work more? It's like saying traffic lights distract you from driving.
I'm sorry but there just isn't any comparison. Have you ever read news about something you are an expert at? It's just laughable inaccurate.
News is entertainment, not information. If you want information, read a book written by an expert at the field.
I'm inclined to prefer the book-readers too, but the way this is phrased sets up a bit of a false dichotomy.
Lots of stuff that's happening now and is of interest won't make it into books for a while. And there is something moderately interesting (and educational) about following along, thinking about where the world will go and why, and seeing if you turn out to be right a few days/weeks later.
For a while, my entire daily news consumption was just listening to the FT News Briefing [1] during my commute. It's about 10 minutes, and -- most days -- it was just the right amount of news.
Can you give an example?
Like it or not, engagement with civic society requires a person to be more current on what is going on in their towns, state and country than a book publishing schedule allows.
Besides, there's a lot of room in between experts' books and passively consuming whatever the top headlines are on any given day. You don't have to choose between infotainment news & a complete vacuum of knowledge about current affairs.
In the voting booth, almost nobody will actually consider the candidates based on their individual merits or plans, regardless of team. The number of voters that dare to split the ticket is well below 10%, outright proving that there's little consideration of 'important issues' ; people pick a side and stick with it.
Complaining about needs needs to put effort into finding good sources of informations sounds about the same to me as if a colleague was complaining about having to read the documentation and latest release digests of software they use. That's the job.
I'll track headlines every few days. I listen to a few in-depth podcasts. An hour on a substantial topic is useful.
I try to be aware of weather and local elections. That last is becoming stunningly difficult, FWIW.
Otherwise, news has a useful lifetime of < 24h in most instances. Philosophy, technology, history, culture ... are far more durable. Spend your time on those instead.
The tendency for public broadcasters to replace ever more long-form content and discussion with Yet Another News Show Hyping The Cycle Yet More ... is among the reasons I've curtailed even most of my public-broadcasting diet.
For a time there was a weekly programme which would cover 3--4 stories in depth with background, and do so well. It had been on a bit of a fade for some years and began what I suspect is its final implosion about a year ago. That had been a useful option for me --- an hour a week, substance, most of the hype and uncertainty had already resolved. Unfortunately it seems I'm now shopping for a replacement, though I'm not entirely sure I want one.
Can you give an example?
>The US has an important election coming up in a few months. Regardless of which part of the political spectrum a person is on there are issues most will care about a great deal that will be extremely impacted by the outcomes of the elections.
It's going to happen anyways whether you watch TV or not.
>You don't have to choose between infotainment news & a complete vacuum of knowledge about current affairs.
Yes you do.
Fortunately news media are committed to keeping the public informed up to the minute with the latest poll results so that everyone will know who seems to be winning or losing the imaginary horse race.
Occasional updates will also be provided regarding a candidate's appearance, family, hobbies, pets, and any scandals or rumors thereof. Pundits will also be invited to comment on these topics, as well as who they are betting on.
I actively avoid news (to the point of changing channels on the TV and Radio when it comes on), and yet somehow I still managed to be kept aware of what's going on, and avoid being ignorant.
> It's like saying traffic lights distract you from driving.
It's actually more like saying every pedestrian in a city is going to jump in front of you when you're driving. You can be aware of pedestrians, cars, bikes, and be a careful considerate driver without needing to fear that every person is trying to jump in front of your car, in the same way that you can be an informed person without getting daily updates on the top 10 stories in the UK right now.
I'll now continue with my hot take: being informed, even being an expert, on anything outside your field of work is overrated, if not useless.
Say you've been following the recent war in great depth. Or the pandemic. Or US politics. You've invested hundreds of hours reading about it and have developed an understanding far above average.
Now what? What are you going to do with it? Debate online, a lost cause? What is the tangible benefit of understanding without purpose?
In general, I think reading news/forums is more for enjoyment/addiction than practicality, though.
You'll know the difference between what the history books will claim 20 years from now and the public debate shift based on that, and what you've actually witnessed.
Granted, you are (likely) not actually on the ground where the tanks and rockets and soldiers meet, but you are another layer or two closer to being a witness of history. Which you are not if you ignore it.
No, you'll know the propaganda you're being fed which often only gets revealed 20 years later. Like what happened in Iraq.
Every time you think you're being informed by the media, you should consider if you would have believed them 18 years ago when the media was full of pundits manufacturing consent for war against Iraq by claiming they had WMDs. The playbook doesn't really change, only the story being told. You only get the real story much later.
Either way, better to have had open eyes and ears than not.
And it's a good example of my point. Once thing that's for sure is that the relative importance of "western allies" vs. USSR in their role of ending WW2 does not match reality, or what you'd have perceived on the ground. USSR had over 10 million dead soldiers (and the same in addition in civilian deaths). That's about a factor of 1 compared to the western allies in the European theatre. The eastern front was huge, bloody, deadly, and USSRs role in fighting back and steamrolling over German troops into Berlin was crucial in ending all that. The popular narrative nowadays is that the US ended the war, most movies and war documentaries are about the western front, etc.
Of course Stalin was a dictator and what happened during the cold war on the eastern side of the iron curtain and what's happening now in and from Russia is terrible and unacceptable. But without having witnessed events as they unfolded, it's much easier to be buy into today's narrative of the situation back then, which is heavily skewed.
My iPhone works anyway, the grocery store sells chicken anyway, and the latte at Starbucks won't taste any different.
None of that directly changes by you learning more things. But it makes you a more well-rounded educated person, equipped to make better decisions impacting your own life and possibly society as a whole. And, frankly, to make sth out of you that's more than a monkey living merely to survive and procreate.
'Deliberately ignorant' is your value judgment. Spend some time in rural eastern Europe, and the perspective changes for the better. Media propaganda is simply unimportant.
If the news causes no change in your actions, you might as well have put a small pebble in front of the phone and had it, instead of your eyes, absorb the photons emitted by the screen.
Why the hell would Ukraine join NATO? I thought Russia was their brother? Any idea why they would want to join NATO? Ah! Maybe it's because they don't want to be invaded by the brother neighbour that likes to invade little countries around them.
NATO expansion is Russia's fault, don't be stupid and claim otherwise. Look at how this war already quickly expanded NATO.
Keep listening to your Russian propaganda.
https://treaties.un.org/Pages/showDetails.aspx?objid=0800000...
Donbas vote on self-autonomy has curiously not been allowed. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49903996
"Proposed in 2016 by Germany's then-foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the plan details free and fair elections in the east under Ukrainian law, verification by the OSCE international security organisation, and then self-governing status in return."
'Ukraine has every right join NATO ...'
Maybe. Just as Cuba had every right to host USSR nuclear missiles in 1962?
'Why the hell would Ukraine join NATO? I thought Russia was their brother?'
Yes, eastern Ukraine aligns with R. Western Ukraine hates R. The movie 'Mr. Jones' may enlighten you about the starvation, and the NYT propaganda at the time.
Russia failed their obligations under the agreement that they willing gave up their nukes under, so Ukraine is within their right to seek to acquire nuclear weapons to protect themselves from Russia.
> Yes, eastern Ukraine aligns with R. Western Ukraine hates R. The movie 'Mr. Jones' may enlighten you about the starvation, and the NYT propaganda at the time.
Eastern Ukraine aligned with Russia before the invasion I’m not sure how much eastern Ukraine aligns with Russia now expect for maybe bullets into their soldiers
I've personally come to the conclusion that us humans aren't designed to take on the misery of the entire human population, and that we should stop projecting this assumption.
If there's no difference between caring and not caring, we should be quite a lot more humble in virtue signaling, or best just shut up.
"Believe me it is better to understand the balance-sheet of one's own life than of the corn trade." - Seneca
In the actual argument they claimed that news wasn't the best information source in an argmax over sources on the basis that other mediums have selective pressures which more strongly correlate with utility generation - partly because of medium influences and partly because things which aren't new are subject to selective pressures for longer and thus the filtering mechanism of that selective pressure is more discriminating.
You aren't engaging with that argument, but you act like you are. So when you claim that no information is the alternative proposition you've actually made a mathematical claim: that the count(set{news, **other_sources}) == 0. This is clearly nonsensical because the minimum size of the argmax over information sources necessarily included news and so was obviously at least one, but often more. So your basically asking people who would agree with you on the basis of your argument to take on the claim that 0=N. Yet if it does then it follows that news doesn't exist in the set where you only get to choose news. So they have to not only believe that you are right, but also that news is not a source that they can choose, but this contradicts your premise.
Some questions to ponder to help you get it:
1. Why aren't you trying to refute the existence of evolution and natural selection?
2. Why aren't you trying to disprove that approximation accuracy is a function of the computation that goes into the approximation?
If you really thought you were right you would be trying to tear down the works of Charles Darwin and would be laughing at Donald Knuth for the stupidity of classifying things by computational complexity. Yet you aren't.
I'm surprised Aaron Swartz, of all people, had this view.
I don't think the human mind is designed to absorb all the worlds ills and misery, the news amplifies the worst of what's going on in the world and delivers it to you minute by minute, the only rational way of dealing with it is to either cut it out or become unspeakably cynical about it all.
I mostly try to cut out the news, but the options are not limited to just cutting it out or becoming cynical: an ex went into politics with a genuine desire to make the world right. She is (or was) Green Party (US), so not making much progress, but it is at least a different path.
I definitely agree our minds aren't fit for this world: more people online than heartbeats in our lifetimes, combined with a psychology that treats a list of more than 7-ish items as infinite.
It's more like saying that a mindset primed on "The Fast and The Furious" is not suitable for good driving.
I recognized that I was over consuming the news during the Trump presidency and needed a reset, and decided to not spend any more time reading the news than the short summaries that Axios posts and ignore all other forms (including John Oliver, although I do still watch Closer Look).
It appears that my actions and aspirations don't seem to be making the world a better place, but it is too depressing a thought to think that the best thing for me to do is be ignorant to the bad things in the world.
I plan on trying out subscribing to Delayed Gratification to see if that is a better path. https://www.slow-journalism.com/