
News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier - mycodebreaks
http://m.guardiannews.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli#top
======
DanielBMarkham
I've come to a similar conclusion. Because news emphasizes the dramatic over
the contextual, they're always providing me poor information in an even poorer
context. That's just the way the business works.

I've done something weird, though: I switched to plaintext commentary. So each
day I scan my personal news site, <http://newspaper23.com>. It only does
commentary.

I find that by scanning the titles I can see what news items are hot in the
world without getting so wrapped up in them. If I like, I can always read
commentaries with opposing views on a particular issue. But the kicker is,
somehow once the material is slanted, once I know it's spin, it no longer has
the high level of emotional engagement. Writing an Op-Ed along the lines of
"We must do X!" is simply a different art form than news fearmongering.

Seriously, if you haven't given up MSM news, you need to. That shit will rot
your brain. It's crisis-of-the-hour stuff over there. And the pundits just
make it worse.

~~~
oinksoft
Your argument rests on the flawed premise that the reader is a passive fool
waiting to be spoon-fed their morning panic ration. An article may be the top
story of the day, but that doesn't mean it is important or relevant to me.
Clearly there is a "news cycle" and every day there must be _some_ top story.
The reader is not compelled to pay heed. The discriminating reader does not
perceive a newspaper to be some distilled briefing of matters important to
them personally.

As with anything else, you must _research_ your news if you hope to understand
it, and you must seek out the truly pertinent things.

I truly fear that the research culture fostered by Google searches, etc. is
greatly damaging our own ability to parse sources. It is a wonderful
convenience to have indexing machines working in concert with query engines,
allowing the researcher to skip the 300pp of drivel to unearth some crucial
paragraph _by asking the question in their own words_.

It troubles me greatly that the solution always is to find a better indexing
engine or aggregator (or sharpen one's skills with the software), rather than
refining one's own ability to parse sources. Yes, these engines expose an
impossible amount of information, and this is tremendously valuable
technology. It will never be a full substitute for the pain of manual
research.

~~~
sageikosa
Citizens surrender their control of information flow when they accept
mandatory public education and learn to accept a regimented doses of
"knowledge" by schedule. The alternatives are to become "knowledge" rebels,
which often means not just bucking the establishment, but one's peer groups as
well, whom you can't escape in mandatory educational institutions.

Real education begins when mandatory learning ends.

~~~
Karunamon
>Citizens surrender their control of information flow when they accept
mandatory public education and learn to accept a regimented doses of
"knowledge" by schedule.

WTF? Did I step into an Alex Jones site by mistake here?

 _checks URL_

Guess not.

Here's the thing.. mandatory public education, for its flaws, is still better
than the alternative. Some minimum level of knowledge and socialization is all
but required in order for a child to grow into a productive member of society
(and I'd almost argue that the socialization is somewhat more important than
the knowledge), especially when you're dealing with STEM topics that directly
relate to and impact our economic and infrastructure backbone.

Complaints that education is either stunting the growth of our children or
training them to become consumers or indoctrinating them or whatever are the
marks of someone who should not be taken seriously.

~~~
sageikosa
> Complaints that education is either stunting the growth of our children or
> training them to become consumers or indoctrinating them or whatever are the
> marks of someone who should not be taken seriously.

Dropping the critical context of "mandatory" and "public"...hard to take that
seriously.

> Here's the thing.. mandatory public education, for its flaws, is still
> better than the alternative.

What is the alternative again? "Non-mandatory" education, "non-public"
education, or simply no education? Since the context was already dropped, the
uncareful reader may be lead (like a student) down the wrong track of assuming
the original poster (vis-a-vis me) doesn't like education. If you can accept
that education can be non-mandatory and/or non-public, then the educated
reader can agree that education is still a good.

> Some minimum level of knowledge and socialization is all but required in
> order for a child to grow into a productive member of society (and I'd
> almost argue that the socialization is somewhat more important than the
> knowledge), especially when you're dealing with STEM topics that directly
> relate to and impact our economic and infrastructure backbone.

I firmly believe being educated is important to each individual, which is why
leaving it to the machinations of local, state or federal political will and
self-serving bureaucracy is an uneducated leap of faith. The socialization
aspect of mandatory public education _is_ the goal of said education, it isn't
to make the individual better, it is to make a person that the rest of society
can keep in formation.

That said, since the original article was about mass media, this is precisely
what mass media's goal also is, once the pupil's graduate; provide the same
ordering of knowledge and socialization of issues, and common responses to
predetermined stories.

~~~
Karunamon
>Dropping the critical context of "mandatory" and "public"...hard to take that
seriously.

....it was implied. Add "mandatory" and "public" to the same sentence and my
views and overall point do not change. Whenever someone refers to the
education system as a whole, they are generally speaking about public
schooling, and so was I. My intent was not to mislead, here.

>What is the alternative again?

Non mandatory? Then there's no point. There is a certain section of population
that would rather see their kids doing something other than going to school
every day, probably the ones that need it most. Inner cities where education
is poor and money is tight, farms where there's more impetus to have help
doing the work rather than getting educated, single working parents, etc etc.

Non-public? We already have private schools, they're almost completely the
domain of the wealthy.

No education? .. don't think anything needs to be said here.

>leaving it to the machinations of local, state or federal political will and
self-serving bureaucracy

What is the alternative? Schooling is arguably a type of infrastructure, and
privatizing infrastructure seldom ever works out in the public's benefit. It's
one of those high cost, low margin, delayed return activities that don't look
good on a corporation's balance sheet.

>That said, since the original article was about mass media, this is precisely
what mass media's goal also is, once the pupil's graduate; provide the same
ordering of knowledge and socialization of issues, and common responses to
predetermined stories.

I guess I don't see what you mean by this. I don't recall going to an
"Everybody panic!!" class in elementary school, nor do I remember any sort of
conditioning along those lines. Heck the only thing that felt 'off' about
public school were the lockdown drills a couple times a year, and those have a
valid purpose.

Your analysis completely smacks of unjustified paranoia, at least to me. I see
no connection whatsoever between public education and the utter broken-ness of
the mainstream media. Both are broken, but for different reasons, in different
ways, in different degrees.

------
edw519
With 7 billion people in the world, it's very likely that these things will
happen today:

    
    
      - someone will get killed in a horrible car accident
      - a child will be killed in a freak accident
      - someone will die from cancer, leaving much grieving behind
      - someone will molest a child
      - someone will lose all their money in a scam
      - someone will get raped
      - someone will be killed by a never-to-be-found hit-and-run drunk driver
      - someone will beat a woman
      - someone will be murdered
      - someone will die in a disaster/fire/earthquake/storm
      - an innocent bystander will be randomly shot to death
      - someone's favorite team will lose
    

In addition, it seems like something like this (unbelievably) happens all the
time:

    
    
      - someone will murder many people
      - someone will shake a baby until it's brain dead
      - a soldier will lose vision or use of their limbs in action
      - someone will post a horrible crime on youtube
      - someone will tie a pet to railroad tracks
      - a whole family will die in an accident
    

I really do feel bad about all of these things, but frankly, I just don't want
to be reminded 40 times every day. <closing browser and going back to work>

~~~
bluedino
Think about it this way - what if someone is being raped every day in the
parking ramp at your office, or murdered on the street you ride your bike to
work each morning? If you heard about it on the news, you could change your
route to work or ride with a buddy to increase your safety.

~~~
Zelphyr
Nobody is going to be raped in the parking ramp at your office EVERY DAY. It
may happen once but statistically it'll never happen again in that location.

Someone may be murdered on the street you ride your bike to work each morning.
And, unless you live in Compton its unlikely to ever happen again. And if you
do live in Compton why the hell are you riding your bike to work through a war
zone you moron?! :)

But lets just say these things do in fact happen. Likely, you're not going to
hear about them from the news. You're going to hear about them from a friend,
family member, and/or co-worker long before seeing it on the news.

The point of this article isn't that the news is bad because its news. Its
that news is bad because all the media outlets focus on the wrong things
(rapes, murders, etc...). Things you actually don't need the news for in order
to stay informed.

Where the news can be great is keeping a populace informed of their
government. Nixon was taken down by news done well. Unfortunately, in the day
of Fox News, being an informed populace is even becoming difficult.

~~~
miked
>> Unfortunately, in the day of Fox News, being an informed populace is even
becoming difficult.

Equality doesn't just mean that everybody has the same wealth, regardless of
how hard they work. This is superficial. It means everyone has to think the
same way. That's the only way we'll ever get true equality, and we won't get
that until everyone's getting the same information. Conformity, equality,
obedience: these must be our core values. Fox News must be stopped.

------
ruswick
This article irks me. Although most "news" has regressed into banal link bait
just plain yellow journalism, and the notion of the "news organization" has
undergone an inexorable transition towards the likes of Buzzfeed the the
Huffington Post, it's absurd to assert that all news is worthless.

First, his point that no news can be of value to one's personal situation or
decision-making is false. News has impacted my life thoroughly throughout the
past year. Off the top of my head, some stories that have provoked meaningful
consideration and or action from me include: Aaron Swartz, the election,
several Supreme Court cases, the Bitcoin bubble (which inspired me to start my
first true weekend project this week, <http://twitter.com/Bitcoin_Ticker>)...
There are still valuable and significant things happening in the world every
day.

Moreover, there is something incredibly presumptuous in his assertion that "we
are not rational enough to be exposed to the press." The fact that many people
are not particularly analytical and prefer to consume simple, superficial
stories does not mean that every person is necessarily incapable of thinking
critically about events and about how we ought to consider the dangers in
society. Even if we can't help instinctive, irrational fear or bias, most
people can acknowledge the irrational nature of their opinions and still
intellectually acknowledge the true nature of the news. It's simply perverse
to state that everyone is too stupid and or manipulable to rationally
understand the news.

His other problematic assertion, that "learned helplessness" is detrimental,
is questionable. Regardless of knowledge, the world will still be filled with
misery, poverty, death, bigotry, and fear. Is it better to be knowingly
miserable or ignorantly blissful? I tend towards the former. John Mill's
famous line, "it is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool
satisfied," comes to mind. This is a question that philosophers have puzzled
over forever, and I won't get into it, but the fact that he dismisses such a
philosophically significant and contentious argument so quickly is worrisome.
Maybe it is better to know what the world is like, regardless of our ability
to change it.

~~~
vacri
I think the best counter to the faff in this article is simply: Talk to
someone who watches the news. Then talk to someone who doesn't. Even if
nothing else, watching the news is at least indicative of an interest in the
world beyond arms'-length.

Besides, there's a world of difference between "read the news being aware that
the news-maker has an agenda" and "ignore the news entirely".

~~~
juusto
I totally agree with what you said, some of my coworkers are blissfully
ignorant to anything that happens beyond their household and talking to them
feels almost like talking to a child. Sometimes it even gives me a sense of
superiority when I see I am way more "prepared" than them.

Having said that, I feel exhausted from news. Specially link bait or biased
media. Almost like I have a burnout of BS and I am becoming very skeptical
from almost all news source. Example, started watching CNN ditched in favor of
BBC then stopped BBC in favor of Al Jazeera then... You get the point.

I must say that I have an urge that I keep coming back to check the news,
every so often, to satiate this weird need to staying informed. But if I
could, talking almost like an addicted person here, I would totally stop
reading all this "crap".

~~~
neltnerb
Yeah, it's this exhaustion from reading news that I think the article is
trying to help avoid. It's great to be engaged in the world, but being engaged
by consuming news is exhausting, literally causes constant anxiety, and is bad
for you!

That's not to say you should ignore the world, you should just try getting
your information from _in-depth_ reporting, long essays on topics of interest,
from people who have actually been there, and so on. There's no freaking rush!

If it's so important that I can't wait a month to read an in depth article
with context and correct details, I will hear about it from friends.

------
Hitchhiker
I think Taleb was among the first to hit this tune.

" To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous
week’s newspapers. "

" The best test of whether someone is extremely stupid (or extremely wise) is
whether financial and political news makes sense to him. "

" There is a certain category of fool—the overeducated, the academic, the
journalist, the newspaper reader, the mechanistic "scientist", the pseudo-
empiricist, those endowed with what I call "epistemic arrogance", this
wonderful ability to discount what they did not see, the unobserved. "

" Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner. "

source : <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb>

~~~
MichaelGG
I played with options for a bit. Nearly all the "financial news" is
information free. No matter what happens, there'll be an article explaining
why. Even decent-seeming publications would join along in the "Stock X moved
<direction> because of event Y", even though you could flip the predicates
around and still have a coherent story.

As Eliezer writes, "If you are equally good at explaining any outcome, you
have zero knowledge"[1].

To be fair though, I suppose the real "news" is subtle information and isn't
likely to become a simple headline and the people able to make use of it are
unlikely to detail the causation afterwards. Although, sometimes I wonder, at
least in stocks, if the nonsense "news" ends up driving things more than any
fundamental reasons.

1: <http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/>

------
webwielder
See also "I Hate the News" by Aaron Swartz
<http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews>

~~~
greenyoda
In the article (written in 2006), Aaron Swartz wrote:

 _"This seems to be true, but the curious thing is that I’m never involved.
The government commits a crime, the New York Times prints it on the front
page, the people on the cable chat shows foam at the mouth about it, the
government apologizes and commits the crime more subtly. It’s a valuable
system — I certainly support the government being more subtle about committing
crimes (well, for the sake of argument, at least) — but you notice how it
never involves me?"_

Ironically, he did unfortunately end up as a news story in which the
government did something bad and he _was_ personally involved.

~~~
irclover
Seriously? Is that what happened? Completely unprovoked, the government did
something bad?

I kinda read that he broke the law and the government were prosecuting him for
it.

~~~
greenyoda
The sentence they gave him seemed to have been way out of proportion to the
crime he committed, and the time and taxpayer dollars that the federal
prosecutor spent on him could have been spent on more significant crimes that
actually put citizens in danger. So yes, I think the government did do
something pretty bad here.

~~~
gadders
3-6 months in a Club Fed jail?

------
TeMPOraL
There's one thing apparently missing in the article (and discussion here) that
for me is the most important reason not to read news - namely, they lie. All
the time. And when they don't, they systematically confuse stuff, ending up in
writing wrong articles anyway.

Proof? Just pretty much every article about science, technology or business
submitted here on HN gets debunked in the top comment. If they can't get
simple facts right in the matters of basic science or business, I seriously
doubt (by induction) that anything else they write is anywhere near the truth.

~~~
anigbrowl
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

~~~
VLM
Regardless of their intention, the outcome is the same.

I like the astrology analogy. They don't hate you, they're just making up
stories you like to hear, so you'll stay and listen.

------
gpcz
As the footer to the article says, this is a shortened version of a much
longer essay he wrote in 2010 (src PDF: [http://dobelli.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Par...](http://dobelli.com/wp-
content/uploads/2010/08/Avoid_News_Part1_TEXT.pdf) ) that shares a similar
layout to the article. There's some subtle irony here -- the original essay
asserted that heavy news consumption prevented most people from reading more
than 4 pages straight, while the essay was 11 pages. I guess he realized he
needed to shorten it to get the message out.

------
bambax
> _In the words of Warren Buffett: "What the human being is best at doing is
> interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain
> intact."_

That confirms what I always thought.

------
tathagatadg
I used to read HN all day and felt good, elevated, enlightened ... pretty soon
I was trying to learn every new language, trying every new framework, trying a
new todo regime - needless to say I was getting no where. Soon I was very
unhappy ... everybody was doing something cool other than me! Every Show HN:
makes me feel I'm wasting my life in school ... and should dropout and start
building what I've started sometime back ...

But then someone told me, "Believe what you are doing is cool, inundating
yourself with what others are doing won't get you anywhere other than giving
you the false sense of wisdom!"

Now I spend a lot less time on HN. And since it has the best content of the
net .. I don't need to look anywhere else.

~~~
zabramow
I had a similar experience with Twitter, especially in terms of keeping tabs
on competitors. Recently, I've stopped reading the tech blogs and I've found
it's made me a ton happier and allowed me to focus on what I'm doing and stop
looking in the rear view mirror.

This post really resonated with me.

------
zampano
On the other hand, when my own personal problems seem immense, sometimes it
can give me a lot of perspective to see the problems the world as a whole has
to face. Surely in doses too large or too often, it can be a major detriment
to my ability to work (especially when there is a news "crisis" going on, real
or imagined). However, I'd say overall the net effect of regularly ingesting
the news has been to make me feel closer to my fellow human beings than before
I read the news often and had only the things and people in my immediate
surroundings to ponder about.

------
shurcooL

      "Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months,
      name one that – because you consumed it  - allowed you to make a better decision
      about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business.
      The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you."
    

I agree, yet I find my main use for news is to make me feel connected with
other humans... If I cut myself off from it, I feel disconnected and lonely. I
feel like I'm missing relevant context.

Is that an unfounded fear, and I should find ways to get rid of it?

Or is it a valid concern, but are there better ways to feel connected?

I work from home so I don't interact with a lot of people regularly.

~~~
rubinelli
You can start by not having meals alone. It may sound silly, but having meals
in a group is a great way to form stronger bonds.

~~~
shurcooL
Yes, that's very helpful. I do that whenever I work at my university lab.

Unfortunately, it's not really an option when I work from home.

------
bjhoops1
I would agree to the degree that "News" refers to shallow news reporting. News
on TV? Undoubtedly detrimental. Long form journalism? Lots of merit.
Sensational coverage of a kidnapping? Waste of your time. Coverage of the
political process? Could lead you to a revelation about certain political
entities.

Basically, I would not recommend completely dismissing all forms of news. News
consumption can lead you to change your mind about something. If you never
expose your self to new data, you will find yourself holding onto stale
beliefs and opinions. There's something to be said for remaining an informed
citizen.

~~~
alexqgb
Exactly. This article doesn't make much sense unless you read it carefully
enough to understand that "news" has a very specific and limited definition in
this context.

Indeed, when it described the damage done by news, it notes an inability to
grasp the kinds of deep, large, and truly world-changing stories that are
happening all around us, and which the shallow, fragmented, and
sensationalistic sugar hits of "news" can never convey.

Generally, following these larger, deeper stories (to say nothing of
participating in them) requires both a measure of focused interest, and pre-
existing knowledge. A lot of the news on HN fits into this category. This is
very different from the parade of horribles that is found on FOX News, CNN, in
USAToday, etc.

------
api
I completely agree. I have cut nearly all ordinary news from my life. I read
domain-specific news, industry news, news from various little corners of
interest, and occasionally glance at the headlines just so I have some clue of
what's going on in the world. But ordinary "if it bleeds it leads" news is
generally one of: (1) sensationalism, (2) government propaganda, (3) corporate
propaganda, (4) veiled advertising, or (5) filler.

------
StacyC
News programming should be pronounced _noise._ It's mostly gossip and tragedy
and crap. We stopped watching it years ago.

My parents watch the news and talk about "staying informed" and "keeping up"
with things. What exactly is newsworthy? You need to know about that apartment
complex that caught fire or the shootout between drug dealers?

------
Aqueous
"News is Bad For you" by Guardian News.

What's their angle here?

~~~
greenyoda
It looks like the author of the article wants to promote his book (see the end
of the article) and The Guardian will profit since it provides a link to the
book in their own "book shop". And they figure that nobody will actually give
up their news addiction after having read the article, so there's no risk to
the newspaper's business.

For those who like the article, the complete version from which this article
is excerpted can be found here, in PDF form:

<http://www.theartofthinkingclearly.com/no-news-2?lang=en>

------
jdrobins2000
"It is in literature as in life: wherever you turn, you stumble at once upon
the incorrigible mob of humanity, swarming in all directions, crowding and
soiling everything, like flies in summer. Hence the number, which no man can
count, of bad books, those rank weeds of literature, which draw nourishment
from the corn and choke it. The time, money and attention of the public, which
rightfully belong to good books and their noble aims, they take for
themselves: they are written for the mere purpose of making money or procuring
places. So they are not only useless; they do positive mischief. Nine-tenths
of the whole of our present literature has no other aim than to get a few
shillings out of the pockets of the public; and to this end author, publisher
and reviewer are in league."

Schopenhauer, 'On Books and Reading', from early 1800s I think.
<http://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Books_and_Reading>

With some small changes in language, it could easily apply to today's news.
There are many great quotes, but in essence he says reading is essential, but
you must be discriminating about what you read, because most of it is garbage.
And you must be careful not to read so much that you aren't able to process it
or drown out your own independent thoughts and activities.

I had already reached these conclusions on my own long ago, but he puts it
into words very well, and it is interesting that the more things change, the
more they stay the same.

------
cturner
James Althucher is a writer who has lived through a bunch of nasty
experiences, and now writes about what he's learnt.

In his writing he often preaches to cut yourself off from news.

Here's an article I found quickly that makes reference to avoiding stress
sources like news: [http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/09/how-to-cure-stress-
befo...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2011/09/how-to-cure-stress-before-it-
kills-you/)

------
dredmorbius
Even following nominally "quality" news sources -- NPR, PBS, The New York
Times, the Economist -- I've been finding the points of this article
increasingly true.

Mainstream commercial news -- CNN, HuffPo, my local city paper / news site,
and much of what passes for news on the Web, are virtually intolerable. Banal,
lowest common denominator (erm: "greatest", but nobody would understand)
content, celebrity gossip, baiting headlines, "ten reasons" pageview content.
Gratuitously paginated articles. Excessively overdesigned pages with floaters,
social nags, and pop-up interstitial surveys and yet more "social" pleadings.
Fake-viral advertising whether "flash mobs" orchestrated by banks or Hollywood
movie hype engines. Intentionally infuriating political tactics. Get off of
me!

Somewhere during the past Presidential campaign I think I started to snap.
Whether it was talking heads blathering about things they understood poorly,
incessant focus on horse-race (and ignoring the deeper historical and policy
stories), everything just started grating on me.

The lack of depth and context to much news coverage has also been apparent to
me for quite some time. Particularly in the case of large developing stories,
or those with a long backstory, I've found that Wikipedia is often a much
better source of information. I'd first realized this during the 2004 Indian
Ocean earthquake & tsunami -- far too vast a story for any one news article to
wrap its head around. TV and radio could merely repeat the basics or show the
same footage repeatedly. Wikipedia could _organize and contextualize the
facts_ as they came in.

There are also the odd stories which do affect me, my life, my neighborhood,
or my professional interests. They're rare, but they do happen. A benefit of
today's world over, say, 20 years ago, is that when such events do occur, it's
much more possible to dig in and get more than the very light spread of truth
and misreporting that's inevitable in the lay press.

Not that I've stopped paying attention to the news. But I'm very conscious of
when it is annoying, and there are days I'll turn it off. The day of the
Newtown shootings I heard the news late in the day, and just turned it off. I
knew largely how it would unfold, that it didn't affect me directly, that
there was nothing I'd be able to do that day, but that listening would just
sicken me.

Increasingly, rather than turn on news, I'll put on music. Often classical or
jazz. And listen to that instead.

~~~
3825
I would not worry too much about people misconstruing greatest common
denominator as something "great". At least not here on HN.

------
mehrzad
I hope I'm not the only one seeing the irony of this post.

~~~
vy8vWJlco
I'm amazed to see an article trying to inform me that, indeed, ignorance is
bliss. While I think people should watch their garbage intake, I'd certainly
not encourage tuning out world events any more than I'd encourage running with
both earbuds in. In either case one is likely to be taken off guard.

~~~
alexqgb
That's not what it says at all. What it says is that there are really big,
deep, important, and world-changing stories happening all around us, but you
won't get them from what passes for news. What you will get is a fragmentary
sugar-high that actually damages your ability to grasp more meaningful
accounts of the world. That is to say, the kind of news this story refers to
(and which the Guardian sees itself as being above) will make you ignorant.
Moreover, that ignorance is characterizes by anxiety and aggression. In other
words, the opposite of bliss.

~~~
vy8vWJlco
I see what you're saying... It's just that the author says "news" when he
means "the stuff called news that isn't news" which is hard to talk about
without sounding like a hypocrite; he describes the phenomena - factoids - for
example, but is ultimately participating in the proliferation of exactly the
type of water-cooler/factoid/self-help pseudo-intellectual article that he's
deriding. His article is filler in the "Media" section on guardiannews.com.
The author might have said "too much junk 'news' makes people unhappy" and I'd
have promptly carried on ignoring those types of articles. :)

------
dhughes
I used to like watching the news but these days supposedly reputable news
organizations are what tabloid shows were 20 years ago. "Guess what happened
today!?" instead of just reading the news.

And everyone editorializes, everything has to be dramatic no news
organizations seem to be impartial anymore news organizations are classed as
either left or right of centre and people have to choose their side.

Someone once said about watching TV news "Your central nervous system isn't
meant to handle seeing death and disaster everyday".

The only US news I like is PBS. Here in Canada CBC isn't too bad but I find it
drifting to the left instead of the impartial center and also it seems to also
be fascinated with making everything dramatic.

I think this problem with news these days is only for the under 30 crowd since
it seems nobody I know under that age reads a newspaper or watches TV news,
maybe at most a one paragraph blip on a website.

------
mrgrieves
I do like the concept of information obesity, and the importance of budgeting
one's attention. The article seemed to borrow it from The Information Diet:

[http://www.amazon.com/Information-Diet-Case-Conscious-
Consum...](http://www.amazon.com/Information-Diet-Case-Conscious-
Consumption/dp/1449304680)

------
mattsfrey
Yeah honestly I've learned to repress my need to be informed due to just how
depressing the news is in general. I don't find out about politics or world
events until they are so big somebody IRL relays it. I keep it to HN, tech
news, science, Nat Geo, etc, informative and positive (mostly).

------
nate
During 1999-2005 I was a news junkie. I was constantly scanning popular news
sites.

In 2005 I attended the first Startup School, which is incidental but sticks in
my brain of course. I took my lunch break that day and went to the Harvard
Book Store. I browsed around and saw a book on positive psychology that looked
interesting.

I devoured that book. One of the biggest changes I took from that book was to
avoid most of the news. It was for all the reasons mentioned in this article.

I've been pretty good at sticking to this. Not perfect of course. There
obviously needs to be a balance. But removing the tie to the news has made me
a lot more creative and optimistic about the opportunities in my life.

We should all spend more time creating than reading about other people
creating and destroying.

------
chinmoy
This blog post "The power of ignoring mainstream news" by Joel Gascoigne is
also worth a read. [http://joel.is/post/31582795753/the-power-of-ignoring-
mainst...](http://joel.is/post/31582795753/the-power-of-ignoring-mainstream-
news)

------
jmtame
How exactly do you define "news" here? Right now, I'm on a news site, because
it says that in the top left corner of my screen. I've seen this type of story
mentioned before, and in the past the response was "the purpose of news is to
give people conversational topics to talk about." On Hacker News, I'm possibly
saving myself some time.

I don't have to sift through all of the content out there, the filter exists
for me and that of itself is performing a lot of work. Hacker News is
essentially a crowdsourced sorting mechanism done by its users. Sometimes it
works, sometimes it doesn't, but I still decide what I'll read and what I'll
pass over.

I am reading essays and articles that do a lot of the thinking for me. Sure, I
may think less critically by letting someone else do that for me, but I
ultimately decide whether I agree or disagree with the point being made. I'll
choose the things that I really care about and I'll think harder about those,
and maybe I'll contribute my own findings, which other people will find
helpful.

I'm not sold that giving up news entirely is good. And how do you define the
word? Google News is an aggregate collection of news articles. Am I still
reading "the news" if I'm on Google News or Hacker News, or do I need to be on
a direct source such as AP or CNN? Does it even matter, since the aggregators
and other bloggers will refer back to them?

------
ctdonath
Any suggestions for a good neutral concise must-know news source?

~~~
sien
The Economist.

It's not neutral. It's pro-market.

But it is concise and if you just read it you'd be better informed than almost
everyone.

~~~
anigbrowl
the other advantage of the Economist is that it only comes out once a week.
I've gotten slack about reading it lately but I should just cut out the time I
spend reading daily news. What you'll notice if you read the Economist
regularly is that after a few months or a year you realize that virtually
everything of consequence you see on the TV news or the front pages of daily
newspapers (with the exception of truly surprising stuff) is stuff you already
read about weeks previously.

------
eyeareque
I gave up my multiple time per day reads of news.google.com. I decided that it
didn't improve my life to hear what shooting took place, or what North Korea
had done this time, every day. I still read technology news, but the normal
day to day stuff I've completely stopped following. It's been a few months
since I gave it up and I must say that I'm happy with my change. I did the
same thing with reddit. I gave that one up because it was too much of a time
sink.

------
yason
I don't read news anymore. I haven't, for years.

After reading a newspaper I didn't remember anything of what I had read. I was
as well off after reading the paper as before reading it. The same with
internet news sites, there's just... news, everywhere. It doesn't seem to
stick, and it doesn't change my life.

If something truly important happens, the information will eventually trickle
down to myself via friends and friends of friends. I can then look it up on
the internet, and read more.

~~~
Kurtz79
And yet you are posting on Hacker "News".

------
xradionut
Depends on what you consider news and how you consume it. I tend to view
conventional "news" as limited information/propaganda tool.

In the mornings/afternoons I listen to the local news broadcast for weather
and traffic. These affect my daily activities, I live in a commuter region of
Tornado Alley and own a house that involves outdoor maintenance.

I skim my local newspaper and local feeds, sometimes there are items that
directly impact my community/household that I need to consider/deal with.
(Local elections, West Nile, etc...) My spouse keeps up with the more
entertaining items, so I've outsourced the fluff consumption. I use a RSS
reader to stay current in my work and hobbies. It allows my to filter out the
cruft in a timely manner.

If I need to be knowledgable on a political, economic or other topic, I have a
wide range of resources available on the web and through the local libraries.
I don't often dig deeply into the serious macro-issues, the truth is very
disturbing, most people can't handle it or deny it, there's little change I
can make, so I limit my "briefings" to a couple of times a year.

Knowing the "true" national/global situation and being powerless, is damn
depressing. Maybe I should be a sociopath, but unfortunately I'm not wired
that way.

------
ohwp
I read the original "Avoid News part 1" (<http://dobelli.com/?page_id=827>)
some time ago and also quit reading news. What occurred to me is that a lot of
decisions people make are based or have to do with fear fed by news.

For example: fear for bad weather. Rain is just rain but reading the forecast
in the papers sometimes make you wonder if you will survive the next day.

------
jdrobins2000
That article is either an ironic metacommentary with itself as exhibit A of
what is wrong with news stories, or the edits were ironically introduced by
the editor doing what he typically does. For starters, the title is hyperbolic
click bait, and the hyperbole continues. "The only solution: cut yourself off
from news consumption entirely." Clearly the only choices are inundation and
complete isolation. I suppose moderation is one of those "non-stories" too
boring to report, because it doesn't stimulate the limbic system and get
clicks. One clue of intentional irony: "In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada
showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document
increases." In the article, that sentence contains a hyperlink.

That said, I agree with 98% of the article. Like everything else, moderation,
critical thinking, and self-reflection are essential.

Food for thought: perhaps the author's reaction is similar to an alcoholic who
realizes their weakness. Though for many people, alcohol can be a healthy and
beneficial part of their life, for some the most effective relationship to
alcohol is complete abstinence.

------
DigitalSea
There are some serious offenders who take the low and quick road when it comes
to journalism but I have seen a swing of sorts in higher quality journalistic
standards. While Fox News is considered the epitome of everything wrong with
biased news, there are lot of smaller shows and websites that have a higher
standard. Here in Australia while we have the likes of news.com.au (a joke and
a half) we have other online news outlets in the form of Crikey! and the
philanthropically funded long-form journalism website The Global Mail who put
effort into their articles and don't misconstrue the facts to get more
Facebook shares and readers.

Not all news is bad news. I see the likes of Facebook and Twitter are forms of
news, both have their fair share of gossip and junk, but also have their share
of information that we need to know; massacres, accidents, bank robberies and
slaughter of innocents in countries that try and control their people and
shield their actions from the rest of the world. Choose your news carefully,
don't believe everything you read and always look further into things (there
is more than meets the eye).

------
arikrak
Most of those reasons seem exaggerated, except one: News wastes time. It's
just to easy and effortless to click on news stories and bam - there goes 45
minutes of time.

Does anyone know a good program that blocks you from e.g. wasting more than 25
minutes reading news each day? Browser tools are too easy to bypass to be
effective. (Editing the hosts file works, but then you can't visit those sites
at all.)

~~~
GHFigs
_Editing the hosts file works, but then you can't visit those sites at all._

Consider doing that for a week (or however long) and see if your habit
changes. I've found that sense of effortlessness declines after such a break.

~~~
slig
One of my "new year resolution" this year was to block news sites on my
/etc/hosts.

Almost 5 months in and I'm not going back. The next step is blocking reddit.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
and HN?

~~~
slig
I believe I get positive value from HN. So while it's a good way to
procrastinate, I'm think HN is a good news source to learn about new stuff,
new frameworks, neat projects, etc.

------
afterburner
Reading news articles that are informative can be thought provoking and
improve my understanding of people and the world around me. Over time, many
smaller pieces of information can accrue into an understandable whole,
providing context for future experiences and information. If you never end up
understanding the information thrown at you, or consume garbage news, then
yeah, it won't help. It's possible you need to ingest a lot of background
material to really make sense of the news in a useful and non-helplessness-
inducing way.

The news to me is incremental history, economics, and political science. I
wouldn't watch low-content information like daily TV news, but that's not the
only option.

That said, you don't have to do it all the time, because sometimes, in your
topic of interest, nothing much happens for a while... The most I do on an
actual daily basis is read the top three headlines on the BCC News site, just
to check that nothing incredibly crazy happened. Oh, and read too much HN, but
that stuff can be interesting... and I mostly read the comments...

------
lignuist
I once thought about starting a news service that only publishes good news,
but the problem would be, that probably nobody would read it.

~~~
kaizen-konpusai
South Africa has a site like that: <http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/>

------
dstorrs
I gave up on reading newspapers and watching TV news over a decade ago and I
can't point to a single way that it's ever harmed me. My basic theory is as
follows:

\- I miss out on the fearmongering

\- I save a tremendous amount of time

\- If anything important IS happening, everyone will be talking about it, so
I'll hear about it

\- Even if I do miss hearing about an important issue, what does it matter?
What can I actually do to prevent e.g. the fiscal cliff, or the failure of
Lehman Brothers, or etc?

\- When it comes time to vote, I talk with my friends who actually care about
news / politics and, if use their information (plus a bit of research if
needed) to decide my vote

\- I read Hacker news or other sites like it because the news that geeks want
to know about is far more likely to be interesting / relevant.

Aside from some occasional mild embarrassment when someone asks me an opinion
on something I'm not aware of -- which can usually be deflected simply by
saying something innocuous and then turning the conversation back to them --
this has worked excellently for me.

------
kragen
I came to some of these conclusions in 1997:
<http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/real-news.html>

In 2008 I savaged Digg and Reddit for the same reasons:
[http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-
tol/2008-January...](http://lists.canonical.org/pipermail/kragen-
tol/2008-January/000878.html)

I recommend watching the EPIC 2014 video I allude to in that post; even though
it's nine years old and clearly depicts an alternate history at this point, I
think its core points have aged well. <http://www.robinsloan.com/epic/>

Today, I think there actually _is_ a better alternative to reading news sites.
You can read Wikipedia. Instead of reading the HN frontpage post about how
Sebastian Castro likes having his office in Kendall Square
[http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/square-
still-...](http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/13/square-still-place-
for-start-ups/JcqbMI98Drrb2NG17jH54M/story.html) you can read
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendall_Square> and get the history, polysemy,
and local attractions of the place — with photos of Kendall Square instead of
Sebastian Castro. Or you could read something on Wikipedia that there will
rarely be a news story about, like
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index> or
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadhu> or
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina%27s_12th_congres...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Carolina%27s_12th_congressional_district),
or never, like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vis-viva_equation>. And the
things you read will be verifiable, objective, and most likely _true_ — unlike
the vast majority of crap that passes for journalism today. And most of what's
true will still be true five or ten years from now.

But the Grauniad piece is, mostly, not really about how to form a better
understanding of the world. It counsels ignorance: don't learn about the world
because it isn't practical (doesn't help you make better decisions affecting
your life), stresses you out, is enjoyable like a drug, confirms your pre-
existing prejudices due to confirmation bias instead of changing your mind,
makes you feel helpless, limits your creativity, and is deeply intertwingled,
which "inhibits thinking". Reading the encyclopedia has these same drawbacks!
But I don't believe that ignorance is bliss, that ignorance helps you think
clearly, or that ignorance limits your creativity. Instead, I believe that a
broad base of knowledge gives me perspective on our current problems, helps me
think more clearly, and enables my creativity.

Up to a point. You can become a mindless factoid junkie from any source of
factoids. Building real knowledge out of facts requires really understanding a
subject; as David MacKay says in the preface to "Information Theory,
Inference, and Learning Algorithms"
<http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/itila/>, that means you must "creat[e] it
for yourself."

I admit I'm pretty distracted by news items myself, at the moment.

(edit: changed "more or less these conclusions" to "some of these
conclusions", which is a lot truer.)

------
blablabla123
This is an adventerous claim.

But maybe they are right, maybe giving up reading the Guardian and similar
news sources makes you happier. I for instance prefer fpif.org, fas.org and a
random selection from news.google.com to stay up to date.

"Out of the ­10,000 news stories you may have read in the last 12 months, did
even one allow you to make a better decision about a serious matter in your
life, asks Rolf Dobelli."

I used to spend at least 2 hours a day on reading news. (Only a part of that
consisted mainstream news.) At least every month I felt I read things that
totally mattered towards my personal life. Maybe because I did read more
scoped news and really tried to understand the issues. Papers like the
Guardian are just there to make Joe Average happy and feed his average
interests. It's good to not approximate yourself with Joe Average. Anyone ever
wondered why Twitter got so popular as News Reader?

------
bharath_mohan
The article takes a primordial approach to what news is. Technology and media
have long addressed this problem, and news is really free now - thanks to
Blogger, Google News, Twitter and the like.

Its also an irony that most of us discover our news on a site like Hacker
News, and are seconding an opinion that news has become bad.

Some ways to rethink news:

1) News should be an ambient thing. It should be around you, and relate to
what you are doing, where you are, who you are, and the people you care about.

2) The good things you do today must reflect in what you receive as news
tomorrow.

3) News can be seen as appealing to the producer or consumer in you. When you
read something just for infotainment, its for the consumer. When you read
something, and you go like - this can help me, its helping the producer. We
should strive to tilt the balance of news, and make it more productive - for
you.

~~~
kaizen-konpusai
One of the main reasons I come to Hacker News is because a) the upvoted
articles tend to be of high quality and in-depth, and b) the comments section
tends to have even greater depth of discussion and variation of opinion.

I think both those points make HN fall outside the article's criticism, for
the most part.

------
hawkharris
I think the problem is a little more nuanced than watching news or not
watching news. It has to do with what media scholars call agenda setting
theory.

That is, media can't always persuade us to believe in a story, but they're
very good at persuading us to think about a story. News sources like Fox,
MSNBC or CNN might dwell on 3-5 leads in a day. Because they're so ubiquitous
and influential, they might make you concentrate on (even debate) an issue
that has little relevance to your life.

The solution is not shut out news altogether, but to consciously seek out
sources of news that are relevant to your interests and your community.

It's analogous to consuming food: if you pay attention to what you're taking
in and where you're getting it from, you'll feel a lot happier and healthy.

------
bbbhn
There's also a certain arbitrariness to what the media establishment chooses
to cover and how they choose to cover it. It often seems as if the "news" is
nothing more than what entrenched political and/or private interests want
people to be thinking that day.

That's one of the reasons I'm really enjoying the new Vice show on HBO --
they're covering topics nobody else is touching, they don't censor or clean up
the horrific aspects of the human behavior they're covering, and their
presentation doesn't try to pretend that their reporters are anything other
than human beings who possess their own viewpoints (rather than "objective"
beings capable of transcending their own subjective perceptions and beliefs,
like poor CNN still claims).

------
koltkorivera
This all comes down to a distinction that is not made in the article at all.
One has a choice in engaging the news: one can be a passive consumer of
whatever gets thrown at one, or one can be a thoughtful consumer who directs
one's own reading/viewing of the news. None of the issues mentioned by the
author apply to the latter approach.

In a highly interconnected, multicultural, technological world, it is more
important than ever for the ordinary citizen (let alone the entrepreneur,
thinker, or "creative type") to be aware of what is going on in the world, and
on every scale (global to local). The author's recommendation would lead to a
radical disengagement that would be suitable only for those aspiring to be
hermits or stylites.

------
motters
News isn't necessarily bad for you, and it's not a good idea to live in a
bubble of cherry-picked information. However, the mainstream news is fraught
with all kinds of problems so you need to be prepared to believe that what
appears there is at best a partial picture of the events. The phenomena of
churnalism also illustrates that it's easy to believe that what looks like
impartial information is actually just crudely re-arranged press releases from
particular companies who likely have a vested interest in the content and
framing of the story.

So don't switch off the news entirely, lest you fall into a state of general
ignorance about wider events, but be prepared to interpret it critically.

------
jschuur
Also worth a read, this piece by Steve Pavlina on Overcoming News Addiction,
all the way from 2006:

[http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/overcoming-news-
add...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/09/overcoming-news-addiction/)

------
HunterV
I totally agree, hardly ever read the news even with a slight background in
journalism. But I have to say the title alone sounds a tad Nineteen Eighty-
Four. News does have a purpose as a balance of power.

------
podperson
Seems like the article is true for "bad" news -- e.g. Daily newspapers, cable
news, and nightly news (which I have gone without for over ten years). Most of
the criticisms of news in the article do not apply to the news sources I
consume, although perhaps they shouldn't be called news so as to avoid
confusion.

My favorite is the New Yorker, which frequently breaks major stories despite
being (or because it is) a weekly with long lead times. Similarly, The Daily
Show usually does a better job of providing context than "serious" news
broadcasts.

~~~
bbbhn
Are you serious? The Daily Show is no more "news" than Hannity is.

~~~
podperson
I've never watched Hannity so I really can't make an informed reply. There's
no question that the Daily Show has a Liberal point of view, but there's a
difference between having a point of view and intellectual dishonesty. Humor
is a trap in portraying the truth because the funny thing may not be the true
thing, but it's less of a trap than the Cable news cycle.

------
mindstab
... "Ignorance is bliss"

Happiness maybe isn't always the optimal end state.

------
Skibb
Generalizing title is generalizing. The title actually proves the point it's
trying to make: that news often skew towards less details, dramatized, click-
bait-y. Of course news are bad for you as most of the information is not
directly important to your immediate life and usually the information is
presented in a very toxic way which creates a certain mood and actually, an
addiction to the certain "SMH" behaviour.

------
anonozc
That sounds like what Tim Ferriss said in 4 hour workweek

~~~
Paul_D_Santana
Yes! Definitely! It is such an incredibly excellent book. I listened to the
Audible version twice in one month (26 hours in total). I think everyone
should check it out, at least for the alternate viewpoints on doing things. I
actually wrote about this on my own site (link in my profile).

On topic, I absolutely love the part in the book that says " _Replace reading
the newspaper over breakfast or dinner with activities like speaking with your
spouse, playing with your children, etc._ "

It's funny but this book has made me better at relationships, and even life. I
wholeheartedly believe in the notion of not reading the news. It makes you
more present, and more engaged with _your own life_.

~~~
Skibb
Tim, it's ok, we get it, you love your own book. Calm down babe. ;)

Joking aside, the book has some very interesting ideas and personally has
inspired me to seek change in my professional and personal life. Although, a
blueprint everyone can follow word by word it's not.

~~~
Paul_D_Santana
Haha.

I agree. It has some great and inspiring ideas but definitely not a blueprint
for anyone. For example, I have no desire to live abroad so I completely
disregarded the travel parts of the book, which is at least half of the book's
content. I mean I did listen to those parts (via audiobook), but I focused my
attention elsewhere.

Whenever reading or listening to something, whether a book, podcast, or blog
post, I look for at least one idea that I can apply to my own life. If I find
something, then it was a worthwhile read/listen.

------
bhashkarsharma
I remember reading (can't recall the source right now) that a study conducted
over multiple newspapers over a period of time revealed that 95% of news carry
a negative tone. Add this to the fact that most news channels focus on trivia
more than important issues and I have a perfect reason to not dive into news.
I still sneak a peek at any interesting story that shows up on my twitter
stream though.

------
solarflair
National vs. local news is an important distinction here that many of these
"The key to happiness is ignoring the news" posts miss.

The breathless CNN story about the latest missing white woman might not be
relevant to your life, but your local newspaper's stories about property
taxes, parking fees, local entertainment events and people in your community
most certainly are.

------
wildgift
There's a ton of useful news out there. I get it filtered through serious
people, or people interested in important things like labor laws, Social
Security, Medicare, Obamacare, local politics, urban development, civil
liberties, and hacker news :). These are things that will affect me, and I can
affect (in groups of course).

------
totmann
That really depends on what kind of news we are reading, and when we are
reading, sometimes skimming and scanning is a good way to save time if you are
just to comprehend the main theme of the news, or decide whether you will
continue to read. But, obviously, over-read the news will kill your brains
like chronic diseases.

------
blots
I don't have TV at home and don't read any news online, except maybe once a
month while procrastinating. I rarely find anything that really concerns me
there and if I do I usually skip right to the comments for the broader range
of opinions or search the internet for more information.

------
usablebytes
I believed so for years and haven't intentionally tried to read or watch news
for almost more than 10 years; and I like it that way. Instead, I focus on
tech updates especially related to the field I'm involved with. And feel, even
sitting idle will do less harm, hypothetically.

------
bjourne
News is useful for exactly one reason: to have something to chat about. Don't
underestimate that. You may have no interest in NK, Beckham, sports, the stock
market or other stuff that frequents the news, but having something to talk
about with people around you is important.

~~~
zcid
“Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss
people.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

Edit: I don't mean this to be rude. I am just trying to point out that
discussion of news items usually IME is nothing more than idle gossip. While
possibly beneficial in social bonding, it can also have potential negative
effects on the mind.

------
renanbirck
I stopped using Google Reader recently; this has had the side effect of making
me read much less news and, thus, being less buzzed to write a scathing or
snarky comment/reply.

I browse a few news sites once or twice a day, read the 1 or 2 news that look
relevant to me, and that's it.

------
jspiros
I haven't been reading or watching the news for years, now, and it's had a
huge positive effect on my life.

But it's also made me, I think, somewhat more sensitive and aware of how other
similar things affect me. Which is why I've started to cut down on Twitter,
and Hacker News.

------
random2
The article makes some bold affirmations, which I'm not sure are covered by
actual research (they may be). That being said, having stopped watching TV in
the last years had made me better spend my spare time (e.g. studying or
working on personal projects).

------
kislayverma
This is why, paraphrasing Taleb, I shun newspapers and TV and keep hoary tomes
by my bedside.

------
polskibus
Bad news is even worse! Seriously though, Kahneman in his last book described
very good experiments that show bad news having a much deeper effect on ones
psyche than good ones. This obviously extend to social sites, like facebook
etc..

------
Wonderdonkey
This writer should have qualified "news" as general consumer news.
Professional/trade news, tech news, science news, health news, environmental
news — all of these have a direct and sometimes meaningful impact on our
lives.

------
SCAQTony
What about culling the news to those stories that you exactly need or want,
such as heath, medicine, art, a favorite sport, the weather, and/or business.
Perhaps that can lead to a more productive and creative life?

------
tippenein
"New has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface
of a deeper world." Which news is this? weather.com has some rather shallow
"news" but it's a pretty big blanket statement..

------
ufmace
I completely agree with the premise... but does anybody else find it ironic
that an article explaining why you shouldn't read the news is published on a
news website owned by a major newspaper?

------
duncans
Obligatory Charlie Brooker "How To Report The News"
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4>

------
meerita
I read/watch less news, but those related to the world. Everyday I care less.
I just read tech news, they're happier and much more interesting.

------
viame
AMEN! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg5wkZ-dJXA> minute 4:30

------
bjoe_lewis
yes. but wait, I developed an [android
application](<https://github.com/joelewis/emotionreader/bin/emotionBBC.apk>)
that categorizes news by emotions, so why not just try to ignore the anger,
sadness and fear sections of the app and read the rest?

------
debt
in america each election is similar to an exam in school. you need to study to
pass an exam. your textbook is the news outlets of your choice. hopefully
you've been keeping up on your studies so you can vote for the right candidate
and pass the exam. you can determine for yourself if you've passed
by...reading the news.

------
Mc_Big_G
I knew this when I was very young and people still look at me like I'm crazy
when I tell them I don't watch the news.

------
mudil
The world is a dangerous place. There is no way around it: it's always been
this way. Whether it is a North Korea crisis, something burning in the Middle
East, or our national debt, the news can bring you to the reality of danger,
of war, of looming financial crisis.

Sure, by not reading it, you can retrieve yourself to a happy place in San
Carlos or Palo Alto, but the danger still irks there, and it is not going
away...

Reality check!

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
Mass media focus on drama not in information; so your emotions are appealed
more than rational thoughts.

You can't do nothing about the North Korea crisis even if you watch the news,
that's a "Reality check".

~~~
mudil
That's right, jQueryIsAwesome, jQuery is awesome in Palo Alto.

And you can do nothing about North Korea. And you don't care about North
Korea, because the only thing you care about is Palo Alto, its organic
restaurants, its girls, and, of course, jQuery.

But NK isn't going away. And you, American kids, can stick your heads in Palo
Alto sand, and assume that all is good, and by not knowing what's out there,
you will make yourself happier.

Happy happy joy joy!

~~~
jQueryIsAwesome
I'm Colombian, like, live in Colombia/South America.

------
lucb1e
News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier (guardian
_news_ .com)

Hmm...

------
devgutt
Also news has the dangerous ability to dim your faith in the humanity by
exceptions.

------
mesozoic
Does this include hacker news and reddit? Cause I already gave up most other
news.

~~~
GHFigs
Sites like these mitigate some of the problems with news but they make others
worse. A good comment thread can provide a lot of valuable background and
context, for example. On the other hand, the bias towards unimportant but
attention-grabbing stories is not especially improved by making editorial
decisions with a literal popularity contest.

------
gadders
Certainly if you read the left-wing propaganda from the Guardian it will./

------
biggfoot
The author should have added a TL;DR "ignorance is bliss" at the top.

~~~
OmIsMyShield
Slightly more subtle - TL;DR: news does nothing to cure you of ignorance, so
avoid the aggravation of news

------
soundwave
This is a VERY naive point of view about news.

------
anactofgod
Says a newspaper.

------
jpswade
Hence the phrase: ignorance is bliss.

------
j_s
What about tech news? :)

------
mbloom1915
you do realize you are posting news right? on Hacker NEWS

~~~
alexqgb
RTFA. Or don't, and simply understand this: "the news", as referred to in the
OP, is actually a subset of news in general, in the same way that fast food is
a subset of food in general.

The point is what while most people can easily distinguish between fast-food
and proper food, many people aren't nearly so discerning when it comes to
their information diets.

~~~
VLM
Not sure if I'm that pessimistic. Check the actual ratings. Google for it, I
am glancing at "Live + Same Day Cable News Daily Ratings for Thursday, April
11, 2013" In a country of 400 million people, "1,133 thousands" aka about a
million watched fox news. There is the hidden assumption that the million who
watch are true believers as opposed to out for a laugh or just filling time or
curious what the opposition thinks. But for the sake of argument I'll assume
any TV tuned into fox news is a true believer. That means 1.1 million people
cannot distinguish between the information diet equivalent of fast food and
proper food, but roughly four hundred million can distinguish. Lets assume
there are around 10 or so other networks pushing meaningless mind candy.
Making it a problem around the two percent range.

Its a narrowcasting thing. Could you make a news station that appeals broadly
to maybe 25% of the population, which would be about a hundred times as many
as watch fox news? Yes, but from a narrowcasting perspective they've convinced
themselves that having 1% of the fans but having them be absolutely rabid fans
is "better" for advertising sales or whatever.

The same thinking is killing mass media in general. For example saturday night
live appeals intensely to about 2 million hard core fans. The other 398
million in the population will not watch it for free. Does "Survivor" define
the american cultural obsession with reality TV? Maybe, but it doesn't define
american culture because only 9.38 million bothered to watch last week for
free... the other 390 million are uninterested.

Not quite as severe as the obesity epidemic.

------
ranman
Oddly relevant today.

------
homakov
yes this is why i am not going to read this item

------
lefinita
so, you said, I should give up Hacker News?

~~~
scotty79
I'd say yes, but I'm not entirely sure. I ditched TV, apart from TV news, then
the TV altogether, then mainstream news on the net. I moved to digg, I moved
off digg. For the last two years I read hacker news, and occasional newspaper
I can get my hands on (I'm not buying them though, I firmly believe that not
funding your addiction is the first step to limiting or even shedding your
addiction).

I read hacker news for almost two years now. The problem is that I can't
dismiss hacker news as easily as I did with all the other news sources because
I strongly suspect I'm learning some valuable things here. Sure, 90% is just
amusement, 9% has some conversational value but I'm afraid 1% is actually
enriching for me and I'm afraid where could I get this if I ditch HN.

Best (sort-of) news addiction I had so far was being addicted to
stackoverflow. Helping strangers with their problems as fast as I can was
really good for me. Unfortunately I got the job, then I lost the job. That
messed my mind somehow and now stackoverflow seems like too much work.

------
joshguthrie
"Meta".

------
nwzpaperman
Heroin is supposed to make you happy, if that's the goal. Being an ignorant
member of society is a recipe for personal and societal disaster.

How many people have taken the time to define news? Not in terms of what makes
one thing more interesting than others, but at the simplest level: what is
news?

You can't ask for more substance until you define what the substance you are
after is. Once you've defined it, you will see solutions where you haven't
before.

After that, ask yourself if the information sources you've historically
related to as news media are in fact news sources or public relations sources.

More third-party aggregators and readers are only going to disappoint the
market because they don't do anything about the underlying news problems.

~~~
LatvjuAvs
Have you tried Heroin? :)

------
dsfasfasf
News used to be bad for me when I was a young kid in my teens. It used to
depress me. Now that I'm in my thirties I've become desensitized and pretty
much nothing bothers me. News is only bad for you if you let it affect you.

~~~
smtddr
I'd say becoming desensitized is a problem in itself.

<http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2042953>

------
pinaceae
great "article" shilling for his own book. news is bad for you.

 _everything_ is bad for you. every single thing will kill you in the long
term. should write a book about that.

is it important to know about current events in politics? what the sequester
is and how it impacts a US citizen? who won the venezulean elections? latest
financial news out of europe?

well, it depends on the person. do you have an interest in the world around
you? do you feel that a cultured individual should not be fully ignorant
what's happening around him?

and then, the business perspective, this is HN after all - shouldn't you know
what's affecting your target group or maybe investors? being able to talk with
someone you meet from India about something that is going on in his/her
country proves you _care_ about what's going on outside of your little tech
bubble.

is it necessary to know who won the US masters? No, you will survive without.
but it provides context if you meet someone who cares about golf.

------
aaron695
I went on a 'news fast' a while back and felt amazing after it.

It might be herd vs individual health but watching / reading the news will not
make you better off.

I do think concentrating on knowledge of the world is important but I think
this is separate from news.

------
vacri
"I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie" is not the
same as "stop consuming the news altogether, it's bad for you". It's a
horribly fallacious argument.

------
ttrreeww
Ignorance is bliss.

