News Is Bad For You

[fccool]

I've ran across this article, and I thought that you guys may appreciate it:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli

"The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognize what's relevant. It's much easier to recognize what's new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age. Media organizations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of a competitive advantage. Many fall for that. We get anxious when we're cut off from the flow of news. In reality, news consumption is a competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the bigger the advantage you have."

[phkrause]

Great article

[BigMark]

I disconnected from the TV long ago. I get my news from Rense, Natural News and Drudge. I think more accurate, but news nonetheless. 

[Tom Wetmore]

Before one accepts what the author says without thinking about it ( ironically), one should also read the response to the article that appears directly after it.  

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/18/rolf-dobelli-ideas-news-dangerous 

News is not the problem. Information and knowledge are not the problem. How we consume it is more on target.

My assistant is a real example of strict adherence to what Rolf Dobelli is advocating.  And the response article hilights the fallacy and misdirection it involves. I must preface this by saying  she is a lifelong friend  and an excellent assitant that I value greatly.  She absolutely avoids the news in any form to the extent Dobelli seems to advocate.  But unlike his actual practice of getting the news indirectly or in other formats (hypocritical it seems to me), my assistant lives in a small reclusive world to her comfort level and avoids all news or information about current events. I would not be surprised if I called her right now that she would be unaware of anything that happened in Paris.  If I talk to her about it tomorrow, I very likely would have to fill in a lot of essential background details, like even the existence of Isis or the European refuge problem.  I  am not even sure she is aware of the Russian Airliner that crashed.

There needs to be a middle ground.  Moderation. Mindfulness. Thinking. Focus. Selectivity. Balance of headlines with more in depth follow up investigation of the stories that are relevant, important and essential for being a responsible citizen of society, and the world we live in.  The alternative really sounds dangerously like willful ignorance which ends up a serious liability to functionality in the real world.

[YvetteS]

Interesting some of his thoughts seem to echo Ellen White from over a century ago.

"With the immense tide of printed matter constantly pouring from the press, old and young form the habit of reading hastily and superficially, and the mind loses its power of connected and vigorous thought" (Adventist Home page 415)

Compare that with the article's claim that  "Most news consumers – even if they used to be avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. It's not because they got older or their schedules became more onerous. It's because the physical structure of their brains has changed."

Note that Ellen white does not suggest ignoring all current events.  I don't think he was either - (and I'm not prepared to argue that his and EGW's views on news consumption are exactly the same - just that once again,  the world seems to have caught up to something she was shown years ago).

But to touch on the example given by Tom Whetmore,  Rolf seems to be in favor of reading books or lengthy articles that treat subjects more in depth,  and  there are already books written about ISIS. 

Logically, some of his thoughts could be extended to social media,  smart phones,  or even message boards :-)   Not that any of these things are bad by themselves - they all have great usefulness.  But we need to be careful that the way we read and consume information isn't turning us into hasty and superficial readers and thinkers.  That means I need to be more thoughtful about what I am reading,  how often I am reading,  and how what I read does - or doesn't - affect my thinking.

[fccool]

18 hours ago, Tom Wetmore said:

Before one accepts what the author says without thinking about it ( ironically), one should also read the response to the article that appears directly after it.  

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/18/rolf-dobelli-ideas-news-dangerous 

News is not the problem. Information and knowledge are not the problem. How we consume it is more on target.

My assistant is a real example of strict adherence to what Rolf Dobelli is advocating.  And the response article hilights the fallacy and misdirection it involves. I must preface this by saying  she is a lifelong friend  and an excellent assitant that I value greatly.  She absolutely avoids the news in any form to the extent Dobelli seems to advocate.  But unlike his actual practice of getting the news indirectly or in other formats (hypocritical it seems to me), my assistant lives in a small reclusive world to her comfort level and avoids all news or information about current events. I would not be surprised if I called her right now that she would be unaware of anything that happened in Paris.  If I talk to her about it tomorrow, I very likely would have to fill in a lot of essential background details, like even the existence of Isis or the European refuge problem.  I  am not even sure she is aware of the Russian Airliner that crashed.

There needs to be a middle ground.  Moderation. Mindfulness. Thinking. Focus. Selectivity. Balance of headlines with more in depth follow up investigation of the stories that are relevant, important and essential for being a responsible citizen of society, and the world we live in.  The alternative really sounds dangerously like willful ignorance which ends up a serious liability to functionality in the real world.

Tom,  I think that most of the people here will be mature enough to understand that the title of the article is a "tongue in cheek" pun on exactly what the writers is trying to point out in terms of headline news relevance to how we consume most of the news information.

I don't think that the point is that all of the news is terrible for you, and that people shouldn't be informed.   The point is that in a common news cycle today that's little to no relevant information that would propel the life of individuals and a society at large in a positive direction.   News today present a marginal view of the world in which solution tend to be rush, reactionary, and political in nature.   It's quite ironic that the response to the article would pander to classics of Huxley and Orwell, which most the people reading that particular response didn't read to begin with, or in case of Huxley, even aware of who these people are.   And that's precisely the point.   In order to make proper and relevant conclusions about the world around you, one has to be informed by contextual and relevant information and not merely new(s) information.   Feeding the context for the news in news themselves generally serves the purpose of the reactionary political propaganda interrupted by emotional sales pitches for products that you likely won't need.  

The point being, your friend who doesn't consume news may be better informed if she eventually picked up a couple books on the subject some time down the road, rather than absorb the shock value of informational frenzy of "breaking news" that tends to illicit a rather reactionary sentiment that tends to lack context.   But more on that in conclusion.

The point of the author is precisely this - you don't need news to be informed. It sounds like an oxymoron, but most of the time it's better for the events to digest into a proper context with more relevant information flow and less irrelevant junk, for it to be nutritious for a healthy worldview.

Look at it from this perspective...   All immediate news is essentially past events.   The more these go into past, the more obscure and relevant they become.  If you ask people who won Superbowl in 2010, most likely no one will care to remember.   In 20-30 years, even the shocking events like September 11, will fade into obscurity of a paragraph-worth of information in entire contextual history of human race.  Russian Airliner crash will probably only be remembered by people directly affected by it.  Historically, there were much bigger and important events that happened with little to no remembrance on our end.  Human events that shaped history.   People like Tesla, who change our world and fade into obscurity, and people like Einstein who become heroes for less pragmatic reasons.

I think I'll draw up another example of relevance, that perhaps may hit home, especially in terms of you mentioning your assistant.   People may look down on a farming hick for being uninformed and uneducated.  The hick may not know much about history, or science, or latest political development... yet he is a farmer that feeds an entire city block of people who are seemingly more informed than the hick, yet who'd starve if left on their own to grow food.  

Some things are just not worth being informed about, especially if the information is trivial in a sense that people don't use it or act on it.  What' the point of knowing that a plain crashed, if the only thing one can do is to think how terrible it may be and that one is glad not to be in that position?   With enough stories like these the concept loses its weight in shock, and people become desensitized to the idea to begin with.   All of the shock becomes a mere headline one consumes

 

 

 

 

[fccool]

22 hours ago, Tom Wetmore said:

There needs to be a middle ground.  Moderation. Mindfulness. Thinking. Focus. Selectivity. Balance of headlines with more in depth follow up investigation of the stories that are relevant, important and essential for being a responsible citizen of society, and the world we live in.  The alternative really sounds dangerously like willful ignorance which ends up a serious liability to functionality in the real world.

 

I don't think that the author would disagree with the above, but the reality is different.    We are discussing news in context of reality, and not wishful approach to reality.  News today mostly consists of a junk food of information.  Sure, there is some nutrients, if you look at these in isolation, but there are better alternatives.

When you talk about "alternative sounds dangerously like willful ignorance",  I'm not really sure what you mean there.   Willful ignorance is not a bad thing.  You are willfully ignorant about plentiful things, many of which could be of paramount importance of humanity.   You simply are not interested in paying attention to these details in depth required to be informed about these.   So, the question being... what should people be informed about in scope of their immediate existence?  Would the extraordinary current events in distant lands land in the are of "things we shouldn't be willfully ignorant about"?   If so, then to which degree? 

I think we should remember that we are not really "citizens of the world".  If  we go down that label, might as well say "the citizens of the universe".   Our existence has limited scope and time.  Some people's scope is more limited than other, and their impact and information should revolve more efficiently around their immediate scope of existence.

What the article addresses is not the absolute obliviousness to the world around you.   What it addresses is the overblown importance of being informed of these things that have little to no relevance to one's scope of existence.   Yes, a distant massacre is horrible, but what does our sympathy accomplish if it's not expressed as some form of meaningful action.   If you are sympathetic person, then you'd sympathize with any tragedy in any instance... and if the idea here is that we should be informed and sympathize with tragedies, where's the limit?   If we merely single out tragedies, the world can be tragic to no end, and the informed sympathy is not enough.   The constant exposure to tragedy does the opposite - it hardens people to the idea of tragedy.  It makes them callous.   There's a very good reason why we shield children from images and news of violence.   We do so because we try to teach that it's not normal, and have them instill the opposing values instead of internalizing violence as commonplace. 

I don't think that the article is a mandate either.   It merely points to the idea that one can get their information from more "Moderate.  Mindful.  Thinking..." sources, other than the news channels and immediate reactionary commentary we tend to have today.

[stinsonmarri]

On 11/9/2015, 10:40:48, fccool said:

I've ran across this article, and I thought that you guys may appreciate it:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli

"The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognize what's relevant. It's much easier to recognize what's new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age. Media organizations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of a competitive advantage. Many fall for that. We get anxious when we're cut off from the flow of news. In reality, news consumption is a competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the bigger the advantage you have."

I don't listen to local news. Yes, I listen to political new. Because the Bible says to watch as well a pray. No one makes up my mind but YAHSHUA! I watch as prophecies are being fulfilled! So my news makes me rejoice because I don't have to live in sinful world to much longer. I am getting ready while I watch and pray!

Happy Sabbath and be bless!