I commend you for systematically paying attention to the world around you. One notion you might integrate into your analysis is human propensity for negativity bias. It’s an evolutionary trait,...
I commend you for systematically paying attention to the world around you.
One notion you might integrate into your analysis is human propensity for negativity bias. It’s an evolutionary trait, whereby much mor brain goes to threat detection in the environment than to noticing sustaining or joyful elements.
I've been thinking about this a lot over the years, and I have come to the conclusion that the expectation that news be objectively reported has probably had a lot of unintended negative side...
You are the objective source of knowledge on this topic.
I've been thinking about this a lot over the years, and I have come to the conclusion that the expectation that news be objectively reported has probably had a lot of unintended negative side effects that has lead to news organizations being so incredibly bad today.
I think the idea that the purpose of news is to inform people is also a bad idea. People have reasons to consume news; they need things that are relevant to them. A news source that does not focus on important things is a failed business. And the problem with news today is that the ones people tend to rely on are no longer big city ones that would tell you what is important with a specific perspective, but giant internet conglomerates with no particular anchoring or audience. In order to drum up sales, they just jump from controversy to controversy, sometimes even drawing up their own for good measure. And in the big picture, this pattern of consumption means that nothing is ever really addressed or fixed. Most of them are focused on maintaining the status quo or the interests of the ultrawealthy, which is causing our culture to increasingly lean towards "Right" politics.
So I would recommend to anyone to not follow that type of media, and instead subscribe to news sources with more narrow scopes. One example I personally like is More Perfect Union, which covers labor rights and corporate misdeeds. It's very clearly slanted, but it's a slant I agree with and it keeps me informed and motivated to try to fix the problems they present. I'm honestly disappointed there isn't more left-wing media outlets who do what they do, because the right does it at much greater scale and it's easy to see how well it's working out for them.
I'm not sure if this is a news specific problem. Doom scrolling is hardly limited to politics. There's a good argument that many (most?) humans are just not well adapted to having a fire hose of...
I'm not sure if this is a news specific problem. Doom scrolling is hardly limited to politics. There's a good argument that many (most?) humans are just not well adapted to having a fire hose of 24/7 information available. Fundamentally, people choose to doom scroll and hop into echo chambers (or at least they did at some point before getting sucked into an addictive pattern). It's also worth pointing out that leftists are far more likely to report being depressed than any other political group I've seen numbers for. There's definitely a discussion to be had about doomer's pessimistic ideology.
Your point about people's perception of crime is an interesting one. It's worth noting though that Americans at least have had fairly persistent perceptions of serious crime over time. While some subjective measures of crime do vary with actual crime rates, it's not very well correlated. It turns out humans are just really really bad at statistics! https://news.gallup.com/poll/323996/perceptions-increased-crime-highest-1993.aspx
Another surprising example is that humans, on average, have remarkably consistent levels of life satisfaction for as many decades as we have data. It varies ±10% or so over the years, but it's remarkably stable considering how much has happened in 50 odd years. Perhaps humans are just predisposed to thinking "this is fine"? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-people-who-say-they-are-happy-eurobarometer
That’s a curious statistic, I would like to know more about how and especially to whom the question was presented. A quick search on the eurobarometer site linked as the source of the data did not...
[happy data]
That’s a curious statistic, I would like to know more about how and especially to whom the question was presented. A quick search on the eurobarometer site linked as the source of the data did not reveal this information.
Side note, I also find it curious that the eu government conducts polls like these. On the one hand, it’s admirable that the government pays attention to its citizens. On the other hand, it’s hard to trust a government to keep self serving bias out of the data.
The EU's explanation is that member states want to measure objective and subjective changes in citizens' wellbeing over time which makes enough sense to me. They record unemployment rates,...
The EU's explanation is that member states want to measure objective and subjective changes in citizens' wellbeing over time which makes enough sense to me. They record unemployment rates, healthcare outcomes, and a bunch of other data, so why not try to measure happiness too? Seems the subjective life satisfaction data may come from a question on their standard monthly survey?
This seems like you're trying to engineer society to receive news in ways that you like, which has its own implications of bias. Not to mention you're trying to solve sociological problems using...
This seems like you're trying to engineer society to receive news in ways that you like, which has its own implications of bias. Not to mention you're trying to solve sociological problems using technological means, which can and does work to some degree such as maintaining a climate of decency and moderation in online discussions, but by its very nature will be exclusive to those who don't want engineered news feeds from a sole news source and would rather seek out news themselves from many channels. Maybe it'll work for some, as we can see today, but not others.
Sorry for just skimming it but I'm very skeptical of anyone trying to spend that much time trying to engineer new ways to manipulate people, using that term neutrally here but it applies to all intentional media, news, etc. I generally try not to follow news either for the same reasons and as stated. I get fed up with people trying to fight over my mind and others and try to use them for their own purposes of being their personal army, which is basically what a lot of news is. Maybe this is a personal issue but even as a kid I never enjoyed commercials, even the "funny" ones would make me cringe because nothing's funny when someone more powerful than you is trying to control you. Sorry for the rant but I doubt I'd be your target audience so my opinion may not be relevant.
I commend you for systematically paying attention to the world around you.
One notion you might integrate into your analysis is human propensity for negativity bias. It’s an evolutionary trait, whereby much mor brain goes to threat detection in the environment than to noticing sustaining or joyful elements.
I've been thinking about this a lot over the years, and I have come to the conclusion that the expectation that news be objectively reported has probably had a lot of unintended negative side effects that has lead to news organizations being so incredibly bad today.
I think the idea that the purpose of news is to inform people is also a bad idea. People have reasons to consume news; they need things that are relevant to them. A news source that does not focus on important things is a failed business. And the problem with news today is that the ones people tend to rely on are no longer big city ones that would tell you what is important with a specific perspective, but giant internet conglomerates with no particular anchoring or audience. In order to drum up sales, they just jump from controversy to controversy, sometimes even drawing up their own for good measure. And in the big picture, this pattern of consumption means that nothing is ever really addressed or fixed. Most of them are focused on maintaining the status quo or the interests of the ultrawealthy, which is causing our culture to increasingly lean towards "Right" politics.
So I would recommend to anyone to not follow that type of media, and instead subscribe to news sources with more narrow scopes. One example I personally like is More Perfect Union, which covers labor rights and corporate misdeeds. It's very clearly slanted, but it's a slant I agree with and it keeps me informed and motivated to try to fix the problems they present. I'm honestly disappointed there isn't more left-wing media outlets who do what they do, because the right does it at much greater scale and it's easy to see how well it's working out for them.
I find scheerpost.com to be a decent amalgamation of various single-person news sources. Openly egalitarian-leftist.
I'm not sure if this is a news specific problem. Doom scrolling is hardly limited to politics. There's a good argument that many (most?) humans are just not well adapted to having a fire hose of 24/7 information available. Fundamentally, people choose to doom scroll and hop into echo chambers (or at least they did at some point before getting sucked into an addictive pattern). It's also worth pointing out that leftists are far more likely to report being depressed than any other political group I've seen numbers for. There's definitely a discussion to be had about doomer's pessimistic ideology.
Your point about people's perception of crime is an interesting one. It's worth noting though that Americans at least have had fairly persistent perceptions of serious crime over time. While some subjective measures of crime do vary with actual crime rates, it's not very well correlated. It turns out humans are just really really bad at statistics!
https://news.gallup.com/poll/323996/perceptions-increased-crime-highest-1993.aspx
Another surprising example is that humans, on average, have remarkably consistent levels of life satisfaction for as many decades as we have data. It varies ±10% or so over the years, but it's remarkably stable considering how much has happened in 50 odd years. Perhaps humans are just predisposed to thinking "this is fine"?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-people-who-say-they-are-happy-eurobarometer
That’s a curious statistic, I would like to know more about how and especially to whom the question was presented. A quick search on the eurobarometer site linked as the source of the data did not reveal this information.
Side note, I also find it curious that the eu government conducts polls like these. On the one hand, it’s admirable that the government pays attention to its citizens. On the other hand, it’s hard to trust a government to keep self serving bias out of the data.
The EU's explanation is that member states want to measure objective and subjective changes in citizens' wellbeing over time which makes enough sense to me. They record unemployment rates, healthcare outcomes, and a bunch of other data, so why not try to measure happiness too? Seems the subjective life satisfaction data may come from a question on their standard monthly survey?
You can find their data here: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/quality-of-life/methodology
This seems like you're trying to engineer society to receive news in ways that you like, which has its own implications of bias. Not to mention you're trying to solve sociological problems using technological means, which can and does work to some degree such as maintaining a climate of decency and moderation in online discussions, but by its very nature will be exclusive to those who don't want engineered news feeds from a sole news source and would rather seek out news themselves from many channels. Maybe it'll work for some, as we can see today, but not others.
Sorry for just skimming it but I'm very skeptical of anyone trying to spend that much time trying to engineer new ways to manipulate people, using that term neutrally here but it applies to all intentional media, news, etc. I generally try not to follow news either for the same reasons and as stated. I get fed up with people trying to fight over my mind and others and try to use them for their own purposes of being their personal army, which is basically what a lot of news is. Maybe this is a personal issue but even as a kid I never enjoyed commercials, even the "funny" ones would make me cringe because nothing's funny when someone more powerful than you is trying to control you. Sorry for the rant but I doubt I'd be your target audience so my opinion may not be relevant.