This is Your Brain on News
Things to think about before you listen to my latest 80,000 Hours podcast
Even people friendly to my views routinely point to recent headlines and ask, “Doesn’t this make you question your views?” I can’t remember a single time anyone has ever pointed to a recent headline and asked, “Doesn’t this make you more confident in your views than ever?”
You could sarcastically conclude, “That’s because all the facts are against you, Bryan.” Consider, though: What newsworthy event could even conceivably show, for example, that Muslim immigration to the First World is fine? The news is never going to announce, “Another week without an Islamist terrorist attack. Muslims are looking better by the day!” Which reveals the deep truth: The problem with news is the format, not the facts. Facts that undermine hysteria don’t count as news.
Once you understand this, the rational way to consume news is to constantly ask yourself questions like: “In a well-functioning society of 8 billion people, how much bad stuff would be reported anyway?” I never sympathized with BLM, but when I learned that the total number of unarmed blacks fatally shot by U.S. police in 2019 was 14, even I was astounded by BLM innumeracy. Hundreds of kids drown in U.S. swimming pools every year, but there will never be riots about that. Nor should there be.
If you have the steely temperament to watch news without losing your mind, I salute you. Otherwise, you will think more clearly if you quit cold turkey. Which is the just one of the angles Rob Wiblin and I examine in my latest 80,000 Hours podcast, “Why You Should Stop Reading the News.” Since the next big election is coming up, fixing your bad news habits is about to become more vital for your clarity and peace of mind than ever. If not now, then when?!
During all of Black Lives Matter years, I was really hoping someone would pick up the slogan of "If you think police brutality is bad for black lives, look at heart disease and cancer!" and demand more federal research dollars to help the black community approach this problem effectively. Maybe earlier cardiovascular and cancer screenings for black Americans. IDK, something. But nope. I considered promoting that myself because it truly seemed a once in a lifetime chance to focus on, yano, saving black lives. For obvious reasons I couldn't have been the one, but the energy was there. Maybe people tried. But with people whipped up by the media about police first and foremost, there was no hope of the movement changing course, or even branching into little cells that could focus on other things costing way more black lives.
I found BusinessWeek of the 90s/early 2000s to be the counterpoint to this problem. You read about economic trends: places in Africa where metal production was on the rise, hubs of plastic manufacturing throughout Asia, American cities outsourcing parking enforcement, and other stuff like that. It gave you a sense of things going on in the world without jumping from flashy topic to flashy topic. I still haven't found a replacement.