Re:Littlewood’s Law and the global media
by btilly on Friday February 14, 2020 @12:16PM
(#22328224)
If the bias was random, this would be less worrisome. However the bias is not random at all.
In particular we are biased towards stories that grab our attention. Which means that they scare us, they outrage us, they confirm our biases, and so on. Media is then incentivized to present them because those are the stories that get clicks.
A wonderful book laying out the incentives in detail is, Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday.
And a wonderful book demonstrating how our world view gets twisted by this is Enlightenment Now. Despite most of us feeling that the world is a dangerous place and getting more so, on every measure that we can find, it has never been so good. Someone blows up a bomb on a bus? Everyone gets scared. A quarter million people are lifted out of extreme poverty yesterday? Nobody hears about it.
In fact blowing up a bomb on a bus is rare. A quarter million people lifted out of extreme poverty in a day is common place - that was the average for every day across a the last couple of decades.
So you can't just discount rare events. You also have to understand how the reporting and your mind is biased and actively work to bring it back to reality.
In particular we are biased towards stories that grab our attention. Which means that they scare us, they outrage us, they confirm our biases, and so on. Media is then incentivized to present them because those are the stories that get clicks.
A wonderful book laying out the incentives in detail is, Trust Me, I'm Lying by Ryan Holiday.
And a wonderful book demonstrating how our world view gets twisted by this is Enlightenment Now. Despite most of us feeling that the world is a dangerous place and getting more so, on every measure that we can find, it has never been so good. Someone blows up a bomb on a bus? Everyone gets scared. A quarter million people are lifted out of extreme poverty yesterday? Nobody hears about it.
In fact blowing up a bomb on a bus is rare. A quarter million people lifted out of extreme poverty in a day is common place - that was the average for every day across a the last couple of decades.
So you can't just discount rare events. You also have to understand how the reporting and your mind is biased and actively work to bring it back to reality.