I think more people should have this attitude (that you should not consume news):
https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/03/the_case_agains_6.html
I have talked to people who are genuinely distressed by things happening in the news and are afraid to miss something if they cut it out. But usually information in the news isn’t actionable even if it’s important.
@pganssle I disagree with you but the reasons are not particularly amenable to a written social media conversation; I do want to, in general, point out that paying little attention to current events works better the more you are buffered from vicissitudes.
@brainwane I appreciate your perspective on this.
I think that the position that people who have less table living situations need the news more is not incompatible with my thesis that fewer people should read the news — I would guess that the median news consumer is well-off and in a stable situation.
That said, I think that the vast majority of news is not actionable, and even for people who would take action it doesn’t make sense to drink from the news firehose.
@brainwane At the end of the day, most world events are not something you can personally affect or which should change your behavior in any way.
In the very rare situations where this is the case, you’d be better off cultivating networks of people you trust to deliver you actual actionable information, since that automatically filters the signal from the noise for you.
@brainwane And as I mentioned in one of the posts in the thread, I’m mainly talking about the current state of things, on the margin. I’m not advocating a situation where no news is produced and no one learns about the wider world, just that there’s an immense over-production and over-consumption of news at the moment.
Interestingly, I could see a world where my view is “no one should read ‘the news’” rather than “fewer people should read ‘the news’’” — one where there is no generalized news, and people tend to follow specialized news (e.g. I follow Python news and I could follow news about my neighborhood or my town). If we did this and cultivated networks of people we trusted to show us interesting things that are timely and actionable, we’d probably get a much better experience (chances are you are 1-2 degrees of freedom away from someone who could tell you about a deadly disease coming or something).
@pganssle Paul, I like you and I care about your thoughts, and I'm not blocking you, but I'm not going to be reading further in this thread because it's personally distressing to me and I'd prefer not to have further conversation about it in written form.