This "updating the world model" can still include reading news, but for me those should be level headed overviews and not emotional appeals. And they do not need to be real-time: reading news 2 weeks later works just as well and cuts down on "you would not BELIEVE what just happened" type of coverage.
> I cringed when reading "I Hate the News" because it came across as very naive.
To me, this is simple, might be a bit simplistic, rather than naive. Which is good -- erring on the side of simplicity is better than giving such a "nuanced" approach that one cannot get any actionable advice from reading something. I may agree or disagree, but I prefer opinion posts to have clear advice (maybe this is just my preference).
> It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting
I see no problem there. When voting offers two choices, both of which unattractive, it is OK in my book to abstain. I grew up in a place practicing one-candidate votes (i.e., you choose between "in favor" that in the end will show 95+% and "against" with no alternatives) so acquired immunity to "citizen votes solve all problems" mentality.
> Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your friend, loved one or neighbor.
The news should not affect my family or friends. Change in the real world could; but I think "news" is not a great source of information to detecting such changes. Just my 2c.
I grew up in a place with effectively single party rule, and it was imbued into our culture that it's pointless to vote because you'll never unseat that party anyway. A big recent change was when, in a semi-recent election, an opposition party won an electoral constituency, worth a mere 5% of parliamentary votes, by the thinest of margins. I couldn't tell you what the opposition platform was today. But regardless of the fact that the opposition still wielded absolutely no legislative power, this led to an era of what many would consider a very electorate friendly legislative push.
This "don't vote for the lesser of two evils" business is nonsense. Use your right to vote relentlessly: to punish arrogant politicians, to press on single issues, to fight for the lesser of two evils because it is the LESSER of two evils. Finding and balancing the lesser of two evils is your job as a voter.
Even if your desired choice has no chance of winning, grinding down the margin, year after year, makes the other side nervous and more willing to compromise. Even if your desired choice has no chance of losing, expanding the margin gives them more room to take less "centrist" stances and push for the things you want. If there's a lesser of two evils, keep voting until the more of two evils has no choice but to compromise and become less evil. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I was talking literally, not figuratively: two options would be "yes" or "no" for a single candidate. There would not be an option for a second candidate, however unlikely to win. Thus, sorry, I am not buying "use your right to vote relentlessly" whatever the options. If the ballot box is rigged, the other three boxes of liberty (soap, jury or ammo) should be considered instead. My 2c.
I started my academic career in political science, I thought I wanted to be a journalist. Ultimately found that computer science had problems that I was better at working through.
Different people have different strengths, there's nothing wrong with outsourcing your news consumption and analysis to someone who represents your interests.
Good news sources create accountability that isn't managed by PR. Poor news sources instead empower PR.
I don’t think the original intent was that government would be involved in “all this stuff”, but I agree that representative democracy works for the system we’ve built since then.
Your recommendation to find your news, local or otherwise, might have been valid 50 years ago, but it isn't today as most news ( local, national and international ) is owned by a handful of conglomerates who more or less share the same value. Your recommendation is like telling people who don't like facebook to use instagram instead. Ignoring the fact that facebook owns instagram.
I do agree that actual journalism protects democracy. I'd be interested in what you consider actual journalism.
People you like and respect can have very naive ideas.
>but it isn't today as most news ( local, national and international ) is owned by a handful of conglomerates who more or less share the same value.
You might be thinking of broadcast news? It's definitely not true of all local news sources.
All journalism is full of biases (of the institution, of the individual reporter, etc). You can (and should) still get the news out of them. Learning that your local council is holding a big vote in a week is still important news whether or not its coming from a source on the payroll of a company owned by clearchannel.
He provides some pretty good reasoning that ignoring the news and doing candidate research might be make you a more informed voter.
Could you give an example of something you learned or read in the news that had a practical effect on your life?
Today the news told me that a particular road I use to get to work is closed.
Yesterday the news told me that a charity I usually contribute to, but forgot to this year, is falling short of its annual fundraising goal.
Last week the news told me that a product I use has been recalled for safety reasons.
The only people who say that the news is irrelevant to their lives are people who don't actually consume the news, and choose to imagine that the reality is identical to the parody in their minds.
There are more news sources today than ever. If you don't like the one in front of you, there are others.
However, a newsletter or a status update on social media seem like they would cover that type of information.
But they're not "news" in the common usage made of that word by any stretch of the imagination.
The reason it's called "journalism" is because newspapers started as daily journals of what ships were coming into port, and what cargo was expected.
Boring, mundane, everyday, very local news.
The point was that people more and more disassociate these things with "news", and when they say they're not reading the news, that's not what they mean — regardless of the origin of the word "journalism".
The fact they don't refer to that as news might however have to do with the fact that information comes to them through apps that are not news apps. (Weather app, social media apps, etc.).
I'm also puzzled as to the statement that "all news is local." No, when you watch the news, most news is definitely remote and irrelevant to the life of the people who watch it. That's why they stop watching/reading it, usually.
To me, more specialized news sources sometimes definitely can be relevant to your career (think trade journals and similar), or perhaps helps you learn new things (techniques, tools, etc.) about your hobby. Definitely I've learned some things from these type of sources.
If you have a good local media source, you will also see stories with relevance to your life, perhaps affecting some of the things you do, at the least involving the town you live in. Unfortunately good local media can be tough to find in some places.
It usually does not involve me directly (though it indirectly involve me if said investigation is about things I pay for via taxes), but I do appreciate good investigative journalism sometimes for unearthing various wrongs and putting public pressure on organizations to do the right things. Good investigative journalism unfortunately is also in decline, however.
I think Aaron's point is absolutely correct when it comes to the current trend of "news" to be talking heads shouting at each other, and yellow journalism designed to titillate, not inform. Even more sober journalism can over-focus on national issues, and that can be problematic without a balance of the local, as Aaron IMHO correctly implies. Unfortunately increasingly national and increasingly overemotional is the most visible trend of "news" today.
The question boils down to this. If information doesn't promote action, what good was the information?
> It's the same logic young people use to justify not voting
And why should they? Has the outcome of an election ever come down to one vote?
The pattern is simple. The news let's us focus on what we can't control so we can ignore what we can control.
How many fat voters want free health care? How many of them sit down to watch the news instead of exercising?
How many voters want more money but won't invest time learning a skill?
How many voters want better education but won't log on to (MOOC-du-jour)
How many voters want world peace but won't change their consumption habits?
How many voters want cleaner energy but won't buy an electric car?
I'm with Aaron on this one. Keeping up with the news doesn't make you more "woke". It means you've wasted time that could have been invested in direct action of the outcome you want.
This happened last year. It was all over the news: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/court...
(As you may already know), Swartz was heavily influenced by Chomsky, and Aaron definitely had that pessimistic view of the "news machine." But imo, it seems justified in hindsight considering the backlash that he personally experienced after (arguably, single-handedly) stopping SOPA in it's tracks. His legal persecution was practically guaranteed after that; he was going to be found guilty of something, eventually. Unfortunately, the Secret Service got him by the legal balls for using MIT's facilities to bulk download JSTOR docs.
not nit-picking, rather trying to help correct a common error that distracts from an otherwise excellent comment
The point is you don't need to follow the news to make informed voting decisions.
I'm not convinced. Reading books just subjects you to different biases from those authors. How are they supposed to be immune to problems periodicals have?
I think the “everyone should read the news” culture that Aaron describes is a straw man. Most people I know who read the news regularly know that it’s partially entertainment for them and that you can get your info from places other than the daily news. Only people like Donald Trump think that being informed means watching cable news all day.
Maybe I just haven’t met any of these people who think that books are bad but daily news headlines are good.
At an individual, probably nothing. But at a macro level, apathy is equivalent to a lack of legitimacy, which is a big problem. If the cancer of apathy spreads too far, the entire system comes crashing down.
It’s like a party where your job is to bring one of the mixers. You don’t bring yours, nothing that terrible happens. No one brings any, and the party becomes a disaster.
Well... yes. And I view this as a good thing. The current US voting system is broken and I am not sure it is fixable simply by voting more - that simply entrenches the current system.
I prefer to use illegitimacy and disenfranchisement to spur useful change to the systems themselves. I want to see somethink like ranked choice with an instant runoff, the abolition of the electoral college and a simple one person, one vote choice for president, without dividing people into small groups first.
Reforming the senate is likely also a good idea.
Apathy and illegitimacy are the kindling needed to foster real change.
You assume your vote doesn't matter. Then
If you are correct and you vote, nothing happens.
If you are correct and you don't vote, nothing happens.
If you are wrong but you vote, you help make change.
If you are wrong and you don't vote, you enable bad things to come about.
Game theory says to vote.
> If you are correct and you vote, nothing happens.
Not true. If you vote, something does happen — you take time out of your day to vote. You're also likely to spend a lot of time researching candidates and issues, following along with the results, telling everyone else that you voted, etc. That investment of time, emotion, and energy comes at a cost. Most importantly, there's the opportunity cost: you could direct those resources to other things, e.g. reading a book, volunteering at a shelter, improving your career, getting extra sleep, etc.
Voting is only worthwhile (at an individual level) if the benefits end up being worth the costs, just like any other decision or course of action.
The reason I bring this up is because in the current US system, I would posit that the harder it is for a person to vote, the more likely it that your vote is important given the political capital and effort expended to make sure it is hard for that person to vote. (again, this is predicated on the belief that I do not consider this phenomenon to be accidental in any way)
It would make no sense for voter suppression to be aimed at an individual. It would only make sense for it to be aimed at large groups of people. No one is going to spend political capital and effort to stop you from voting personally. They may spend political capital and effort to stop some large group you are a part of from voting.
Vote, and preferably against the group of people that uses voter suppression as a tactic for winning an election in a democracy.
Sure, but that doesn't imply they would have spent $(X/population of group) to stop you personally from voting, if it was not a part of a package deal.
>The emphasis on individual vs group only serves to distract, groups don't target individuals with disenfranchisement because it's just easier to target entire groups.
That's true, because our laws are set up that way. The important distinctio between group and individual is that you choose to vote or not vote as an individual. You don't choose to vote as a group. Voters are not suppressed as individuals. They're suppressed as a group.
>They still don't want you to vote
They don't care if you personally vote or don't vote. They care about how many people like you vote.
>then clearly your vote is worth both the concern and the price of the group targeting you (among other people).
No, it's not. What's worth something to that group is reducing the number of people in your category that vote.
>Vote, and preferably against the group of people that uses voter suppression as a tactic for winning an election in a democracy.
Out of spite? What if the policies of the people using voter suppression align better with your interests than do the policies of the people whose votes are being suppressed?
It turned out my vote was not particularly instrumental in the election I was participating in, but if just assumed that from the start I definitely wouldn't have gone out canvassing and trying to convince other people that their votes matter. If other people like me made similar decisions and didn't vote and didn't try to mobilize, would the election I participated in still have gone favorably? Maybe, but I know I sure felt a hell of a lot better doing everything I could than sitting on the couch worrying and fretting about things instead of actively trying to influence them.
Why not? If you can sway the decisions of large numbers of people, that sounds like something that could have an impact on the outcome of the election. Would you feel badly that you were lying to them by telling them their vote mattered?
>If other people like me made similar decisions and didn't vote and didn't try to mobilize
Unless you make the decision to canvas/vote or not canvas/vote collectively, your own thought processes don't determine what those other people do, and wondering about what would happen if they did seems to me like some weird form of solipsism.
My point is that the net effect is the same for both things, one you don't vote because your vote was suppressed and the other is you not voting because you don't think it will matter. Obviously if it's worth paying money to try to make sure than many people can't vote then it's even better if some people don't vote for some personal reason because they don't even have to pay for that or potentially get caught doing shady shit. Disenfranchising yourself serves the same coalition that seeks to dismantle the system in return for more personal power.
Sure, if you can convince large numbers of people of the validity of that argument, you could potentially affect the election. That doesn't mean the argument is actually wrong though.
>My point is that the net effect is the same for both things, one you don't vote because your vote was suppressed and the other is you not voting because you don't think it will matter.
It's not the same net effect. If you decide not to vote personally, because you evaluate the argument and find it to be correct, that changes the tally by 1. If someone suppresses the vote (whether by convincing large numbers of people that their vote doesn't matter, or by making it more difficult or impossible for them to vote), that changes the tally by a lot more than 1 (or else they failed badly in what they were trying to accomplish).
>Disenfranchising yourself serves the same coalition that seeks to dismantle the system in return for more personal power.
That coalition might like that the argument is out there, but it still doesn't make the argument incorrect. It still isn't likely to change the outcome of the election if you personally choose to vote or not to vote.
I have this concept I use internally a lot where I consider what I believe to be true and what I consider to be "useful", and sometimes I will choose to believe things that I am sure are false because it is more useful to me personally to believe it is true. One example of this is the concept of karma. I am don't believe there's some mystical force in the universe that will balance everything out and ensure "what goes around comes around", but it sure is useful to believe in some mystical balancing force so that I don't feel compelled to avenge every instance of me being wronged. Instead I just let it go and assume that the universe will right itself. The previous paragraph is taking this type of analysis to an external level when I decide what I will propagate with my time and energy and what I will simply read and move on.
I don't particularly care whether or not the idea is structurally sound for some framework of debate and a system of rules for determining if it is valid or not, I'm more concerned with the real implications of believing and propagating belief in the idea. You mention that it's not the same net effect because personally deciding not to vote would change the tally by 1, but the voter suppression targets a group of more than 1. Yet here you are trying to spread the idea to other people to convince them that they also should join you in evaluating this idea as correct and thus not vote. This increases that count to more than 1, and the better you are at it, it increases further. It is exactly the same net effect because humans are social creatures and ideas spread through socialization and group acceptance. People who read your post and agree with it will feel that your reasoning justifies their belief in not voting as well. In a way, whether intentional or not, you are commenting on this topic in a way that serves to disenfranchise voters through self-disenfranchisement. If that is not your intent, I would ask that you examine what the effects of your efforts are and how they align with your goals in life and reality and perhaps focus less on systems of logic that are meant to help simplify and parse arguments, not determine your every action.
"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal." Emma Goldman
Or you get into a car accident, or just waste some time and energy getting to the polling station, or waste a stamp if voting by mail.
>If you are wrong but you vote, you help make change.
Not necessarily a good change. You could be the one that enables bad things to come about.
Pascal's wager was always a bad argument because it assumes there's no cost to living as though there is a God. You made it worse by assuming that your vote will necessarily make things better in the situation where it does anything at all.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=arguments+that+voting+is+not+merel...
It is like saying "I can lift at most 100 pounds; Bob can lift at most 50 pounds: therefore, there's nothing we can do to lift that 104-pound rock".
Feel free to refute the argument's validity with empirical data. I would genuinely love to see it. I've seen apologetic researchers offer reasons for why their data isn't as damning as it seems, but never seen anything remotely close to proof of validity.
Plus consider that if you increased the number of voters by the margin of victory, what are the odds that 100% of those new voters would vote alike and swing the election?
If we had pure direct democracy that'd be one thing, but in the age of the electoral college, your dismissal of youthful naivety comes across to me as empty arrogance from someone who's convinced his own beliefs are the only ones worth adhering to.
"I vote in local government matters" doesn't really put you in the "not voting" camp.
>while I'm a blue voter in a permanently very blue state.
It provides signals. Vote for other blue candidates to show support.
>your dismissal of youthful naivety
The dismissal is of people who don't vote. Those people are the issue because voting is the only way to get changes into your local governments, etc.
What's wrong with not voting? If you're a regular person, it takes a lot of time and energy and you get nothing out of it. One vote never made a difference.
I don't buy the argument that "If everyone thought like that, then it would make a terrible difference"... This statement is bullshit because the premise is false to begin with; most people will not think like that because most people are sheep and will vote for whoever the media tells them to vote for.
The people who buy the rhetoric that their vote makes a difference are the same people who buy all the bullshit propagated by the political media.
If someone is suggestible enough to accept the premise that one vote out of hundreds of million makes a difference, then surely these people are also easily influenced by other kind of media. It's very far fetched.
If you're a thinker, then your vote can never compete against the masses who just follow the media.
...is the sort of thing said by people who don't watch the news and because of that are unaware of the number of manual re-counts that are done each election.
In a fair system with over 300 million potential candidates, how likely would it be that a father and his son would both be elected as president (as was the case for George Bush junior/senior)? What about the Clintons? When we factor in the empirical evidence, how can we still think that one vote out of hundreds of millions make any difference at all?
I once looked up the personal histories of U.S. presidents. It was about 50% candidates who came from well-connected families (like both Bushes or FDR), and about 50% candidates who rose from seemingly humble beginnings (like Clinton, Truman, Eisenhower). It crosses party lines; both Carter and Reagan had humble beginnings.
Have you run for office yourself? You might feel differently about votes if you did. The field of candidates is only limited at the end. At the beginning, as you point out, it could be anyone.
And logically, a high volume of votes can't disprove the value of a single vote. If a single vote did not have any value, neither would a high volume of such votes!
But if a million votes are worth something, then each vote must be worth something too.
If all 300 million people lived identical lives and had identical histories, then the chances are about one in 300 million.
In the real world, people who take specific life paths, get specific degrees, and acquire specific skills are more likely than others to end up in a particular place. Especially when the other 299,999,999 people get to weigh in on the decision.
Just as not every one of those 300 million people has an equal chance of becoming a database administrator at Google, and not every one of those 300 million people has an equal chance of becoming a barista.
Except when you start preaching that idea, then you are part of the masses that think that way, and hence the minority of people who do vote, and who do not represent the majority opinion, are the ones that influence the outcome.
If everyone thought like me, then society would churn through governments like toilet paper and life would be better for people like me who only stand to benefit from change.
Find new sources, find your news. While today's news doesn't effect you directly, it might tomorrow, or it might effect your friend, loved one or neighbor. What Aaron is ranting about is the "business" of news which is fair. If the nightly news on your TV news network of choice offers nothing for you, find your local news, follow a reporter, a journalist and get involved. Actual journalism is what informs, enriches and protects American democracy. See also the "fourth estate".