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My friend was mentioning exactly this. Does a child murder somewhere in the country affect his life? No. Keeping it all in and being angry all the time with no recourse was affecting him.

I think it’s still important to be informed, so there’s a middle ground.

It seems to me who is president does affect a lot of my life, from abortion, to Supreme Court rules that have majorly affected my life, to war, trade and the economy.

> It seems to me who is president does affect a lot of my life, from abortion, to Supreme Court rules that have majorly affected my life, to war, trade and the economy.

It does—the problem is the value of a single vote.

Odds are very poor—like, single-powerball-ticket-poor—that if you cast a vote for every single presidential election you can in your lifetime, anything about your life or anyone else's will be even slightly different. It's the least effective vote you can cast—yet seems like the only one people go out of their way to shame people over, if they don't vote.

The smaller the vote (and, in the special case of presidential elections in the US, the less stupid and disenfranchising the rules) the greater the effect. Even narrowing a close vote by one, if you don't quite put it over the top, can make a difference at the very-local level.

If you don't vote for yourself, somebody else will.

Your idea of "value of a single vote" is grotesquely misinformed. You do not vote to "sway the election" with your grandiose opinion. You do so in order to inform society of your position.

It's not about "winning over the other side". That's already a ridiculous misrepresentation of society. There is no "other side" to begin with.

Yes, the current incarnation of "democracy" is wildly lacking. But the point is to improve on it, not to throw away what countless generations strived to achieve just because it's not perfect yet.

> You [vote] in order to inform society of your position.

Except my position isn't well captured by the available candidates most of the time. Sure, I can write in a candidate, but how do I signal why that candidate is acceptable when the other options aren't?

> Your idea of "value of a single vote" is grotesquely misinformed.

Most of my positions on the relative efficacy of various voter behaviors in the US system of government are heavily informed by my having been a poli-sci major in the US, and spending a fair amount of time studying those directly and absorbing expert analyses of them.

Admittedly, some of those are unpopular—people love voting for the President (and then ignoring school board, city, and county elections, and not participating in any political parties).

shrug

Your idea of being an expert because you majored in a related topic is amusingly misinformed as well. You are kidding yourself.

You need to critically look at how politics in real life works. On the level of presidential elections, the US is no "democracy" in any sensible meaning of the word to begin with. But that doesn't mean, votes there would be unimportant. The last few elections should make that exceedingly obvious.

In small, local elections, your vote has a more transparent relationship to outcomes. But those outcomes tend to be inconsequential. Presidential elections are quite the opposite really.

> Your idea of being an expert because you majored in a related topic is amusingly misinformed as well. You are kidding yourself.

Never claimed to be an expert. I'm also not "grotesquely misinformed", unless the bar for "merely misinformed, but not grotesquely" is so high that at least 99% of people are "grotesquely misinformed" (which... IDK, maybe, in that case, I guess?). Not an expert, though, and, didn't claim to be.

I have no idea why people are taking any of what I've written as "voting for President is bad and you shouldn't do it". I must not have written clearly, yet cannot find what's drawing that reaction anywhere in my posts (but maybe it's there and I'm just not seeing it!). I think I've just written about the best use of limited time & attention: smaller, and earlier in the process, is most effective; and how voter behavior instead reflects polar opposite priorities. Everyone voting in every election would, of course, be ideal (I mean, for me, just certain folks voting in every election would be ideal, but you get what I mean).

> In small, local elections, your vote has a more transparent relationship to outcomes. But those outcomes tend to be inconsequential.

I'm going to be blunter than I usually am on HN, because you're in dangerously-wrong territory and I'd hate for anyone to run with this outside of HN, for making decisions about voting or political participation: this is super fucking wrong. Local election & initiative outcomes matter a ton.

I would encourage anyone who doesn't find themselves seeing, very clearly, why, after a few moments' though, to spend some time over a few days looking at national headlines—not just the one or two top ones, but a bunch each day—and marking down which levels of government are active in or generating each story (yeah, I know, I advised mostly avoiding the news in favor of books, but this is a decent way to do some informal statistical analysis). And that's just what makes national news! Consider which levels of government you interact with most. Which police patrol cruisers do you see most—the FBI? State bureau? Highway patrol? Probably not any of those, and I bet that was an ascending list least- to most-seen (while omitting the ones probably see more than any of those, by a large margin—city & sheriff, say?). School budgets and hiring administrators. Which levels of government are banning books? Very-local, or sometimes state. Who's setting library funding, running the closest 20 parks to where you live, hiring the government officials and setting their policies? Zoning rules? Who's running your utilities, or responsible for collecting your trash? There's so much and it very much matters.

Anyone who really wants to stay informed need only to glance at the Wikipedia current events portal [1] once a week. Any global event of any note will show up there with very little sensationalism.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

Thanks - this is a great suggestion

Great suggestion. I use this as my default news page.

After doom-scrolling Covid through all of 2020, I decided to quit the news.

As of 1 Jan 2021 I haven’t visited a news website. I never watched TV news anyway (I don’t have broadcast/cable). Sometimes the news drifts through from the radio, and if someone sends me a thing I’m not religious about not opening it. But, basically, no news.

I haven’t missed it at all, and I do feel better. I have little clue what’s going on in the world and I don’t really care. What was I going to do about it anyway?

I still browse social media. I’ve 90% switched to Mastodon from Twitter, which is just nicer. Simpler. More personal. HN is my main ‘browsing to kill time’ site, and I’m looking forward to an upcoming holiday so I can break this habit a little.

Though I do now realise it’s all or nothing. You’re either in, in which case you are in, or you’re out. That’s why making it a resolution-style quitting — I remember the date — really helps. I’m on a run now, and I’d ruin that by visiting one news site even once. All temptation has now gone, thanks to time.

The news cycle is relentless and mostly pointless. Ditching it has absolutely been a benefit to my mental state.

You're presently on a run and pinged HN? No judgment, but that strikes me as notable.

On a run as in an unbroken streak. Of not visiting news sites.

I am not jogging, no. That would be weird.

Any authoritarian regime would love a populace with such self-absorbed opinions devoid of any regard for consequences in the long run.

Awareness of events with geopolitical consequences might not immediately affect your diet or whatever you "truly" care about. It sure as hell is a world of difference when it comes to making judgements that span more than a couple weeks.

Living in a state of relative decadence, when circumstances allow for life to become seemingy routine and change a scarcity precipitates times when that is very different.

If the news presented me the “events with geopolitical consequences” it might be a different story.

Let’s visit my reputable local paper’s home page. I live in the capital of Australia so this should be fairly geopolitical.

- New economic partnership between my country and my territory. Fine.

- ‘Party bonfire explosion lucky not to kill someone.’

- 200 new homes planned for a suburb up the road.

- Gossip on some agency moving to some other place.

- Commentary on an upcoming vote. I know how I’ll vote, I’ll vote ‘yes’ because I’m not a racist. I don’t need the news for that.

- A pub changes ownership after 38 years. I’ll remind you that I’m on the front page of the Canberra Times.

- Rugby news.

I feel geopolitically informed and much calmer. Thank you.

>I’m looking forward to an upcoming holiday so I can break this habit a little.

Please share your method.

I’m only taking my phone, no iPad or laptop, and it’s an iPhone Mini, so it’s not that comfortable to read on. So that’s a statement of intent up front: I will not be ‘reading the internet’ on this holiday.

Also we’ll be taking trains through Malaysia and Thailand so that will occupy the parts of my brain that usually want a little ‘hit’ from the internet.

The path to long-term success involves replacing the habit with another. Because you’ll always have those interstitial moments when the urge to check HN comes up. If you leave them empty, you’ll want to fill them eventually.

So, have a good book on hand. Or learn to take walks round the block. Or something else.

I personally find that I’m all-or-nothing. I can’t just ‘check HN twice a day’. That doesn’t work for me. And ‘checking HN’ soon devolves to ‘also checking Reddit’ because, screw it, while I’m here… and so they all have to go.

I’ve had success in the past, yet here I am again. If at first you don’t succeed…

I wonder... would it matter if I didn't know who the president of the United States was? Would that affect my life in any way?

I watched a YT video [0] where a man gets to record his time in a Swartzentruber Amish home and they didn't know who the president was. It didn't seem to impact their lives at all.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JJKKkETuI4

Maybe you are just reading garbage sources. News I read, are somehow magically able to predict future 4 years ahead. Predicting future has a huge value.

> > for most people

If you're able to e.g. turn the news into money or other real advantages, or desirable (to you, at least) outcomes that wouldn't have been possible otherwise, you're one of ones who aren't covered by "most".

Can you recommend some sources?

A crystal ball?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that you're not a woman.

It's not about the scope of the power of the elected official, it's that the effect of a presidential vote may as well be zero—it's about the power of the vote. A vote for, say, school board may also have near-zero power, but is nonetheless thousands of times greater. A vote in a presidential primary is also far more likely to have any effect whatsoever, than a vote in the general, both because it's smaller and because decisions there determine the entire course of the rest of the campaign, and of the general election.

I care plenty about reproductive rights, FWIW, if that's what you're getting at. It's nonetheless the case that a person who votes (only) in one local or state election every four years is doing their civic duty better than someone who votes (only) in every presidential election—but voter participation patterns treat the presidential vote like it's the very most important one to get to. Most people stay home for some elections, and from a how-best-to-spend-my-limited-time-and-effort perspective, most of them are getting it wrong (unless you factor in other things, like how much social pressure there is to go to vote for president vs. how much there is to get to the polls for other elections).

You present voting in federal/local elections as one or the other — why not seek to participate in both as an informed citizen? I’m confused why one seems to preclude the other in your statement.

A whole lot of people in-fact only turn out for the "big" votes, is the problem.

I get that, but a solution to that problem — on my mind — doesn’t involve people voting less regularly in Federal elections, but rather getting folks to vote more regularly in local elections. Separating the two seems arbitrary — federal elections have more money behind them than local, so awareness is greater. That’s a solvable problem, and one we’ve seen tremendous gains on in the last 15 years.

Which is to say, I think the “pay less attention” advice, while popular and relaxing a decade ago for certain demographics, inexorably led us to a place where vast segments of the populace haven’t been paying attention, and assumed “both sides are the same”, and now we’re in a real pickle, Federal policy-wise.

> I get that, but a solution to that problem — on my mind — doesn’t involve people voting less regularly in Federal elections, but rather getting folks to vote more regularly in local elections. Separating the two seems arbitrary — federal elections have more money behind them than local, so awareness is greater. That’s a solvable problem, and one we’ve seen tremendous gains on in the last 15 years.

I'm not saying "avoid voting in some elections", I'm saying the voters who only turn out for the big ones probably have some wrong ideas about where their time and attention is most-effectively spent, and which bubbles they fill out on the ballot or taps they make on the screen are most important. How many can tell you one thing about any state judge, say, (for states that elect judges) on that presidential ballot, but can rattle off all kinds of crap about both major presidential candidates? Priorities are skewed the wrong way. It's just an observation about how voter attention tends to be focused on the wrong things. That top-line vote every four years matters more for getting people out for the down-ballot, than it does per se.

> inexorably led us to a place where vast segments of the populace haven’t been paying attention, and assumed “both sides are the same”, and now we’re in a real pickle, Federal policy-wise.

I don't think paying less attention to the news gets us there. Plenty of folks I know who hold that (deeply silly) "both sides" opinion pay a lot more attention to the news than I ever have, certainly.

Again, I think we'd be better-served, and have a better electorate, if those folks mostly stopped watching the news and started reading more books. However, I admit that this is impractical to apply broadly, as a huge proportion of US adults can't profitably read even slightly-complex non-fiction texts and get much out of them—but for an individual not in that cohort of barely-readers, it might be a good change to make, if one of their reasons for following the news so much is to "be a better voter & citizen". More books, less news (very little, infrequently, possibly except local news).

If I'm understanding you, you are saying that who becomes the president does actually matter alot.

Every four years, the presidential election is on the same ballot as all the other local elections. You are advocating for voting, and you're not advocating for leaving the presidential vote blank on the ballot. If you're frustrated with having little power to make very important decisions, that is more than understandable.

However, you can only consider the effect of a presidential vote to be zero if you also consider the derivative in calculus to be zero. In terms of the presidential eletion, we aren't voting as individuals, we're voting as a state. Your vote matters.

> Every four years, the presidential election is on the same ballot as all the other local elections.

Yes—but a lot of people skip most or all other votes, including some more-local ones that usually aren't part of that vote. I'm saying placing so much importance on voting for president is misguided.

> However, you can only consider the effect of a presidential vote to be zero if you also consider the derivative in calculus to be zero. In terms of the presidential eletion, we aren't voting as individuals, we're voting as a state. Your vote matters.

I'm... gonna stop addressing this point in public here, for reasons unrelated to what's correct. It's one of those topics probably better avoided outside small circles due to what amount to, I suppose, marketing reasons, if you will. Probably shouldn't have brought it up.

Let it be known that I never claimed it's bad to vote in a presidential election. Everyone should definitely go vote any time they can, especially those in a forum where they're statistically more likely than average to vote the way I would. Every vote is extremely important.