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Comment by pard68 | Hacker News Reader

I have been in "no politics, no news" mode for over a month. I try to do this about once a year. I have yet to tell my wife I do it, but when I am on this limited media consumption she always comments how pleasant I am to be around. I think it is a good thing for all of us to do once in a while, until 80 years ago most news was at best three or four days old, go back 120 years and you're getting only last weeks top ten stories.

All that to say, I could not avoid this. Everyone has told me about this and the whole thing is just silly.

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Sputnik 2.0

It's a serious warning that the U.S. is dangerously behind China when it comes to balloon technology. Note also, balloons are one way of colonizing Venus (floating high in the atmosphere without having to approach the dangerously hot surface).

Clearly we need a Venus Balloon Program to show who's the technological leader on this planet, just like with the Apollo Mission. Mars is for wimps, real explorers go to Venus! Now's let's put $50 billion into it. The prototype is already here (2022):

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/jpls-venus-aerial-robotic-ball...

[edit: to be clear I am absolutely not joking. Spending huge sums of money on space exploration is a much better use of government funds than getting involved in ground wars in Asia]

Sorry but I find “ that the U.S. is dangerously behind” laughable. A ballon around so your conclusion is to draw conclusions on the advances of nation states.

The Venusian zeppelin mission is awesome; the upper atmosphere there is probably the most earthlike environment in the Solar System. Only the acid clouds prevent the crew from just being able to open the windows and sit around drinking beer in a medical oxygen mask and swimsuit.

> Only the acid clouds prevent the crew from just being able to open the windows and sit around drinking beer in a medical oxygen mask and swimsuit.

You just ruined Venus for me. Thanks.

The US has much better spy tech than balloons, which are really obvious and easily shot down as demonstrated today.

Not being a leader in this tech is not a bad thing IMO. And earth balloons don't translate to venusian ones.

Ps would you really be happy living in zeppelin city knowing a leak would drop you into acid inferno?

"Spending huge sums of money on space exploration is a much better use of government funds than getting involved in ground wars in Asia"

What if you are able to save tens of thousands of human lives by getting involved in that ground war?

It's going to cost hundreds of thousands or millions, won't it?

> the U.S. is dangerously behind China when it comes to balloon technology.

Mr. President, we must not allow a balloon gap!

chipmunk voice

*gentlemen! You can’t fight here! This is the war room!

I ignore the majority of it myself.

Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics.

I want to spend my energy on the things I can control and little energy on anything else.

I'm much happier being completely unaware of whatever may be happening with the world.

> Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics.

I think quite the opposite — Geopolitics is impacted all the time by your actions. What you buy, what you say on forums like HN (where potentially tens of thousands read your comment), how you educate your kids, how many kids you have, how you influence co-workers.

The reality, is the world is smaller than you think. What’s the phrase, “everyone with 6 connections away from anyone else”. If you can have a major or even minor impact in your local region of the graph, it’ll expand outward.

I’m a cynical person by nature; but my cynicism comes from the lack of action / belief in action around me. You and everyone you know can really change the world in some way, if you push out your ideas and product(s) (like you are here btw, I’m not trying to claim you don’t)

That said, I always focus locally to build the community I want to see. It influences geopolitics, but that starts at the coffee shop, book store, school, home, etc.

Beyond the local level, it seems like you’re conflating the “amount of influence an individual has” with “the amount of influence individuals can have [if they act at scale]”.

Sorry for the short reply, I don’t mean to be dismissive; I hope that this makes sense.

I posit that the primary reason for this is that humans are bad at correlating cause and effect where there is a large delay between cause and effect - or the effect is not what was expected.

Depends on if that "you" is understood to be everyone, or just myself as an individual. If collectively we were to thumb our ears with the same sentiment, then agree. Disagree that an unrelated individual would have such an impact - it's a romantic thought for sure, but a drop in the ocean is still a drop.

So interesting to see this thread. I carefully curate and limit my intake and am intensely aware of the anger economy news organizations have built to drive engagement. Glad to hear others are avoiding being a product and are staying healthy.

There is a large segment of media devoted to outrage but if you only follow serious news it's hard not to be outraged at things that unequivocally outrageous. Just watch a live feed of C-SPAN without commentary and there's plenty of insanity. And it's not the media had to tell me Russia invading Ukraine should make me angry.

>> Maybe I'm a pessimist but there is little I can do to make an impact on geopolitics.

Ironically:

>> I want to spend my energy on the things I can control and little energy on anything else.

You'll make a bigger impact on geopolitics by doing this than ten people who incessantly post on social media about Ukraine, #MeToo, and spy balloons ever will.

I would like that privilege as well, but unfortunately the stock market moves based on geopolitical happenings.

I have the complete inverse experience. I rarely care much about news and politics. I maybe spend 10 minutes a week to browse headlines and keep generally aware of current events. However, about once a year I get sucked into some topic or election or whatever and my consumption goes through the roof. My wife doesn’t care for that stuff at all so we don’t even talk about politics or anything, so she’s unaware that I’ve been dialed in to media but it always happens that after a couple weeks she starts saying “everything ok? You’ve been kind of a jerk/short/angry towards everyone lately”

I highly recommend this. Just stop bothering with Twitter and the news if you suspect it affects you negatively at all.

You don’t really need to be that plugged in. The people commenting on every issue aren’t really helping anything.

I could tell this was a dumb story from the beginning. The US gov deciding to make it super-important by not sending a top official to China was a natural fire-starter for regular people, not just news junkies.

Ultimately, the only interesting conversation I got from it was why it might be hard to shoot down:

A standard 50cal as used circa WW2 to shoot down balloons would be sufficient but too short ranged

A fighter jet with an 20mm autocannon would easily deal with it but they also shoot 2000+ rounds a minute which would result in tons of dangerous rounds going right through then possibly hitting the ground near civillians.

Modern autocannon bullets that will safely auto-destruct in the air but there wasn't an US airforce craft that had them available.

etc, etc, etc.

https://twitter.com/TrentTelenko/status/1621960968375877632

So even totally wasteful stories can generate interesting thought experiments. Even when the total sum of human attention is a million times out of whack of the IRL value of caring in the first place.

>You don’t really need to be that plugged in. The people commenting on every issue aren’t really helping anything.

I agree, replace the time wasted on feeding various outrage machines with building.

Yip, I just stopped reading news for a year 2 years ago. Then I restarted again last year, and now I've stopped again. Definitely better for my mental health! (and you see enough headlines here and other places that I still feel pretty informed)

> when I am on this limited media consumption she always comments how pleasant I am to be around

IMO the news is little more than a sales pitch for antidepressants, life insurance and "retail therapy".

My favorite Russian joke of 2012 was this:

— Daddy, which camp they are taking us to? — I don't know, son, I am not interested in politics.

I can't tell if the joke is the man is foolish or wise for not being interested in politics.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

If evil has already triumphed it is better to be the last to know.

Then again, there's a million evil things in my news-feed every day about which I can do precisely nothing, usually because they're in a different country. What does me knowing (in depressing detail!) about The Evil Thing I Have No Power About improve the situation in any way?

I think it's valuable to have some baseline level of political knowledge and engagement, but there are definitely diminishing returns beyond that. Past a certain point, it seems to become a negative influence in most people's lives.

But being completely apathetic about politics is a bit like not getting vaccinated for measles. It might work out ok for you, but it gets really dangerous when a majority of the population has that mindset.

It makes you aware and prepared. Politics is not an island; tactics do not exist in isolation. As soon as one fascist proposes censoring school libraries in one state, others across the country look at the tactic and decide to stop it. It's much easier to proactively stop such things if you are aware of what to watch for.

"they say evil triumphs when good men do nothing, what they should say, is evil triumphs" --from a movie about a guy who just got released from prison im exchange for a sports celebrity.

“The only people absolutely convicted that they are the good guys are the bad guys”

It's one thing to be interested in politics, and a whole different story whether you can make a tiny bit of difference with the knowledge you get from spending time listening to all the politicians out there on a daily basis. Besides, most of the time the system is designed in a way that you have neither a say nor healthy representation of your political views in the elected government.

> the system is designed in a way that you have neither a say nor healthy representation

America is the most powerful civilisation in the history of humanity. In almost every election, nonvoters could swing the outcome. On almost every issue, practically nobody reaches out to their representatives.

Participation is hard. Many of us have more important matters to tend to. That’s fine. But don’t characterise participation as sour grapes.

I think the relevant quote is something like "people get the government they deserve" or "if you want to know who is to blame you have only to look in the mirror"

More accurate would be: "people get the government they deserve" or "if you want to know one person to blame, you can squint really really hard and try to see yourself in that mirror 1/154millionth the size of your bathroom mirror."

Democracy sure is a wonderful magic trick. None of the power but all of the blame.

Both of those quotes seem glib to me. Short of rebellion or revolution, the government we get is simply the government we were born into.

*Nonvoters in a select few swing states could swing the outcome. (At least in regard to presidential elections--for local elections you have a point!)

Edit: for downvoters, please note that I say this not to encourage apathy, but because I would like this problem to be fixed!

> for local elections you have a point

Also for most Congressional and state elections, as well as referenda.

Right, though congressional elections are also a mixed bag due to gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering relies on low turnout. Gerrymandered districts backfire when the opposition wins, because you’ve diluted your supporters in other districts. The line between unfair success and unfair failure is very thin.

It's not that participation is hard, it's that more and more see it as completely ineffective.

Every year more of my friends and family abstain from voting.

The system is broken, many choose not to play a fixed game.

> more and more see it as completely ineffective

Voter participation has almost monotonically increased over our country’s history [1], and presently stands near a historic high [2].

> many choose not to play a fixed game

The fix is how many believe this.

Which is fine. I don’t think everyone must vote, and if someone doesn’t even understand the system, I struggle to see how their vote adds information. That doesn’t change that shockingly trivial organization and deliberateness can yield results.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_United_Stat...

[2] https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2022:_Analysis_of_...

> Voter participation has almost monotonically increased over our country’s history [1], and presently stands near a historic high [2].

This is an insidious assertion, that is more about population increase than suffrage. Participation is always measured as a % by whomever is eligible, regardless of the political characterization of eligibility. The suffrage element incidental, rather than causal.

Populations have increased to historic highs, so "near historic high" participation is not interesting or relevant. As populations increase, the number of elections increase due to simple population bifurcation. eg City population grows, city splits in City and City-West and despite sharing utilities and proximity, there are now a bunch of new positions to elect for. Same thing happens when counties incorporate into formal cities due to growth. This has also added to "participation".

To limit the discussion from some of these factors, we can look solely at federal elections. That first wiki link displays incorrect totals, which can be verified multiple ways. ie Other wiki citations, the second link, etc

The increase of the total is not sloped upward, by % of the population. It's been roughly 50% with a variation of 10% regularly in the US, for all recorded data afaik.

https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_elect...

Edit: Had to edit as some of the language was inappropriate and overly broad, which did not add to the conversation.

> first assertion is incorrect (monotonic increase)

Huh, someone should fix that. Do you have a good source?

That said, I was observing over long timelines. Decade over decade, participation goes up.

> second assertion (near a historic high) can be attributed to population increase

That increases the denominator. Participation is measured as a fraction. We’re about flat for the last two decades on the tail of broad increases.

I refuse to play their fixed game by voting third party, even when the third party candidate is terrible.

> refuse to play their fixed game by voting third party

Then don’t. Vote the primaries, specials, referenda and local elections held, deliberately, on a random Tuesday in May.

> many choose not to play a fixed game

Just remember, there are those for whom this is an explicit strategy. When less people vote, they are advantaged, so they try to make you cynical, hoping you won't vote.

If you think about it, this is actually one of the few strategies that can work for a small minority to maintain power over greater numbers against their own interest. It's hard to get you to actively vote against your own interest. So the next best thing is to convince you not to vote at all - so then they still have a chance with their smaller numbers.

Yep. Same way most shareholders don’t vote in annual shareholders’ meetings.

Management has a vested interest in maintaining the illusion of inevitability.

Shareholders have a vested interest in maintaining the illusion of powerlessness.

It works in both parties’ interest, in a way, but only shareholders complain.

Don't you find it strange that nearly every country in the world is pursuing the same currency objective at the same time. You know the one, I just don't want to spell it out to trigger the filter.

How can every supposedly independent CB pursue the exact same goal if they are not under the direction of one nexus?

Elections indeed swing, but do the outcomes matter if the key national politicians are operating under duress? Food for thought.

Today's story is just another day of, "Eastasia has always been at war with Oceania."

This is not convincing because there are a variety of currency regimes in the world today and they seem to be in healthy competition

What's unconvincing is the vagueness of that statement. Lets' get more specific then.

Explain, for example, how both the Fed and ECB implemented Basel III. Why do these two "independent" organizations adhere so closely to the policy recommendations of some unelected NGO?

> Why do these two "independent" organizations adhere so closely to the policy recommendations of some unelected NGO?

Who do you think is on the committee that writes the Basel Accords [1]?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_Committee_on_Banking_Sup...

So you're telling me that a few stuffy bureaucrats earning a salary of few hundred thousand a year are the ones who decide what happens to the money of billions? Think again.

I'll give you a big hint, both the first and second presidents of the ECB previously were part of the same small and obscure NGO concerned with the history of banking.

> a few stuffy bureaucrats earning a salary of few hundred thousand a year are the ones who decide what happens to the money of billions

You’re describing the leaders of the G-10, their central banks’ governors and the world’s most powerful legislatures, who pass the Basel Accords into law, as “stuffy bureaucrats.”

If you’re looking for conspiracy theories, the FOMC is far less elected, and arguably far more powerful, than the committees passing non-binding regulations on capital requirements and leverage limits.

Didn't you see Marc Andreesen's tweet that " 'Conspiracy theory" is code for "will be obvious in a year.' "

You only need a few first principles to see absolutely everything, like seeing the matrix code: 1) The world society is entirely made up of individual people, 8B pairs of feet on the ground. Abstractions like 'the government' or "China" are red herrings. 2) Power is relational. Vito tells Tom what to do, and it behooves Tom to carefully follow orders. 3) There are no regulations and human laws in the state of nature, only in the social reality. You alone on Mars would be free to do whatever you wanted, but here on Earth you must file with the IRS, or else.

> can every supposedly independent CB pursue the exact same goal if they are not under the direction of one nexus?

They don’t. There is correlation because of interdependence; lowering rates when everyone is raising will trash your currency and juice inflation.

> On almost every issue, practically nobody reaches out to their representatives.

the handful of times i’ve been impassioned enough to write or call my rep, i’ve felt ashamed for doing so.

polling and voting is the only system we have deployed that lets near every individual exercise equal influence. to call my rep, and participate in this side channel that’s used by only 1/1000th the population — and far from a uniform sampling of it — is to demonstrate that i don’t value the egalitarian ideals that my nation and most of its citizens espouse: that i think my opinion actually is more important/valid than the other 99.9% of ordinary voters.

i don’t know how you reconcile this. i can see how sharing “unopinionated” factual information — if such a thing can really exist — with your rep could be generally good, but calling to share my opinion seems a blatant contradiction: curious if anyone has an explanation for it that doesn’t feel so icky.

> is to demonstrate that i don’t value the egalitarian ideals that my nation and most of its citizens espouse

No less than voting when not everyone votes.

More pointedly, not everyone is equally knowledgeable on every issue. And not every issue can be brought to a vote.

> No less than voting when not everyone votes.

? it absolutely is less so. roughly 1/2 of eligible citizens vote; the proportion that call their reps is 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 of […]. however you chop it, it’s significantly less.

i can’t but read you as saying that any system that fails to achieve 100% representation is equally flawed: that a system where only 1 person votes is “no less [egalitarian]” than a system where all-but-1 vote. you can’t honestly believe that.

> proportion that call their reps is 1/2 of 1/2 of 1/2 of…

Some places have a culture of civic service. Many do not. I’ve canvassed for New York City elections with single-digit turnout; the last primary barely scratched double digits [1]. Would you castigate those who exercised their right to vote? Of course not.

More pointedly: democracy doesn’t work with disengaged citizens. This is true for pure democracies; moreso for republics. Shame for civic participation is the opposite of responsible citizenship. If there are folks who lack access, help them. It takes a perverted reading of the history of democracy, of its formation and failures, to conclude engaging one’s representatives is anything but good.

[1] https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/8/24/23320921/turnout-new-york-...

Events like this are really destructive to my ability to be critically reflective of my ego.

It’ll be months before I feel normal around the populace again.

Not sure I understand: how does this news story impact your opinion of “the populace”? Also what is your personal definition of “the populace”? Is it everyone you don’t know personally?

This seems like a tough mindset to find yourself in, but I want to make sure I understand what you mean.

The Brain Washing of My Dad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8

For what it's worth, I'm not sure this is healthy; you should be able to consume news without having it effect your mood so negatively.

Might be time to talk to a therapist about it.

most news and politics are tacit exercises in emotional manipulation. i'll leave it to you to decide which emotional states are most valued.

I disagree and while I think I understand what you're saying I'm surprised by it.

News is often intentionally devicive, misleading, and salacious for a reason. Being affected by propaganda does not come anywhere near a need for therapy. In fact I'd say it is a sign someone has critical thinking and a likely a fair base of information. In the face of the facade of trust clearly lying or engaging in rhetoric, hyperbole, or passive language, the only rational response os to be bothered by it. The contrary runs the risk of being manipulated by whomever for whatever reason. I've switched to a nonpartisian news source and its had a simialar benefit for me.

I think you’re saying you don’t trust yourself to be an adult. Which is a healthy observation if you struggle with that, or an unhealthy one if you can process biased info.

I think it's a key skill for an adult to have, to be aware of one's own emotional state and be able to self regulate based on that awareness.

If someone struggles to apply that to the consumption of news media, I worry about their ability to apply this skill to events in life that are much more impactful, like a speeding ticket or the loss of a job.

I suspect we have different ideas of both consumption and "pleasant". Almost without a doubt no one but my wife would pick up on changes when I do not consume politics, news, media, etc.. I am more pleasant to be around because I listen more and pay more attention.

If, for example, I took the three hours a week I dedicate to news consumption and gave that time to my wife, and if I have fewer worries and distractions, of course I would be more pleasant to be around. You give some more of your time and attention and they'll think you're more pleasant too.

No need to call names or be rude, maybe your media consumption is detrimental to your wellbeing :)

If your mood is improved, to the degree that someone comments on it, by reducing general news media consumption, you’re not in control of your emotions to a degree an adult should be in control of their emotions, and should seek professional help to regain that control.

The fact that you believe I’ve called anyone a name or insulted anyone by saying that is a good example of what I’m talking about, as I did no such thing.

Even in this convo you’re struggling to not get emotional; that’s not great! You don’t have to live like that. Don’t avoid therapy to spite a random person on the Internet… at least consider it.

Does reading news really make you unpleasant to be around? That sounds like a fairly major red flag.

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