While I encourage everyone to opt out of the sensationalized news cycle and prioritize their own mental health, people who aren't paying attention aren't better informed, because the news is actively being censored by their billionaire owners, so it takes a lot of effort to be fully informed, and no, remembering a few things they heard off of Joe Rogan doesn't make them well informed.

Ea-nāṣir sold me poor-quality copper. I need high-quality copper. Therefore, I will buy loads of copper from Ea-nāṣir, and sift through it until I find high-quality copper.

The copper market sold me copper, some of which was low quality, some of which was high quality. But instead of continuing to shop at the whole market and developing any sense of what is quality, I've decided to go exclusively to Joe's Best Copper. He tells me his stuff is the best. I don't go to anyone else now so I have no way of comparing it to anything else. Anyway, there's no possible way he could be lying to me, I'm way too smart for than.

Well that's a bit of conceptual selection bias, isn't it? Good for their mental health, but you cannot regret something if you don't know what you're missing.

There must have been 1930s Europeans who checked out of all those news about Hitler, after all. Must have been much better for their peace of mind, until one day suddenly it wasn't.

> There must have been 1930s Europeans who checked out of all those news about Hitler, after all. Must have been much better for their peace of mind, until one day suddenly it wasn't.

Since we're on the topic of being informed, there are many books and articles -- spanning almost 100 years now -- that you can spend some time with to better understand how all sorts of different "1930's Europeans" were relating to the happenings of their world.

As you suggest, that kind of insight can be really enlightening.

Most people would be way more informed about current events by sourcing, reading, and reflecting on something like that once a month while absorbing big events through occasional exposure and personal conversation than by anxiously drowning themselves in the noise of 24/7 engagement media.

Being informed doesn't come by catching every bit of rumor and ephemeral trivia scattered across Twitter, but by relating major events to a learned understanding of how they may impact people and communities. For many, this becomes apparent as they live through more news cycles as an anxious news junkie and recognize that only a tiny share of the things they became fixated with actually proved to matter and that most of the people who weren't so caught up in the noise were no less informed about the things that did.

It's actually not nearly so hard to be informed as you might think and a lot of the things that people to do make themselves feel more informed often just distract and confuse them.

The thing is the Nazi's didn't come out of nowhere.

If you check the news once a week or once a minute you'll still notice them.

The rise of Hitler was noticed and minimized by even the most plugged-in governments and leaders. The UK was led by a chap who thought he could mollify him by just giving him parts of Central Europe. You can call Chamberlain many names but "uninformed" isn't one.

I like the description earlier in the thread of "the carnival". You can leave at any time and your life and dopamine will be the better for it.

lol. Because I’m sure all the news was posting anything critical about the nazi party at all. Look at now the vast majority of the mainstream news handled Covid. Absolutely zero intellectual curiosity or actual honest insight and 100% pure grade-a government propaganda. Not even a shred of actual investigation or thought. They were nothing more than a mouthpiece for whatever nonsense the government spewed out.