It should be okay to just read headlines
mukdde.substack.com
mukdde.substack.com
I did read the article though, and I found it a bit confusing. Assuming it is written in good faith by a real person, my concern is that the central analogy to open source software does not hold up.
Someone who runs OSS after gaining trust through the headline-like "shortcut" verification process that the author describes gains utility through the execution of the software, not through the shortcut verification of it.
In contrast, when reading the news, the ideal shortcut form that the author dreams of (i.e. being able to just read the headline) seems to be skipping the primary utility of the content itself.
In other words, I don't think reading the news should be about trying to consume as many factoids as possible. Better to read a few good articles than get a one-sentence-deep summary of everything that happened everywhere.
Arguing by analogy is dangerous, in this case because doing a code review of open source software is actually not like reading a news article, or being an informed citizen. The incentives are different in each case, so is the actual activity, so are the people involved, so is the level of expertise required, so is the social obligation. It's actually only really alike in a couple ways, the biggest one being: you're looking at something. Okay.
> Strong, but basic critical thinking, not among all, but spread among enough, is sufficient to collectively process information. It is the faux authority of censorship which causes such a practice to appear unreliable.
In the U.S., the first amendment exists, in part, because we need voters who engage vigorously with the world of ideas. Compulsory liberal education exists to prepare people with the skills to do so. No such obligation exists for code reviews, which is just one reason why this is a bad analogy.
And yeah, you "should" be able to get away with just reading headlines, but in practice what happens? You get an ignorant, disengaged population that sees the world through the eyes of the people who (in essence) write headlines for people who only read headlines. The solution is probably not to say "oh, we just need better headline", it's for people to increase their critical reading skills and their engagement with information that is (to step into the dangerous world of software analogies) 'closer to the metal'.
"Should information be liberated and organized, the full audit of scientific studies will only be necessary for those looking to progress from ninety-seven to ninety-nine percent certainty - and their work doing be more plainly and compactly communicated."
What does that even mean? And in full context it's not any clearer.
I got strong Stuart Pearson vibes with this one.
I guess a lot of people are voting and commenting on the headline alone, as is common. But I have no idea what point the author was trying to make.
We should probably read neither.
“And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”
Idea: ChatGPT chrome extension that replaces the headline with one generated from the actual article.
I think that bad headlines are one of the biggest problems in journalism today. I have seen articles posted on social media by people who obviously only read the headline. And when I actually read the headline, the article content is almost completely contradictory to the headline. My understanding is that editors usually write the headlines. They may be the real problem as many of the journalists are doing a pretty good job.
And if you haven't been following it, no newspaper article is going to fill you in on the background. As I said, that's books worth of material.
They often try to split the difference, with mixed results. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it just fills the space with vapid, pointless noise -- quotes from irrelevant people, oversimplifications, ludicrous extrapolations, etc. In the worst case that infects the headline, and what could have been one sentence worth of genuine knowledge becomes worse than nothing.
I’m going to go check now.
Perhaps the author's experience of the real world is based entirely on reading headlines.