I once reasoned that I trust my network of friends, family and colleagues to pass along any information to me that might be relevant to me - as long as I maintain a strong relationship with them - through regular meets, phone calls and texting each other fun memes.
I figured that I don’t need to consume any information from untrusted and unvetted sources (cable news, new york times, reddit, wsj, late night tv shows) - so I disconnected myself from all of the modern news sources and chose to live in ignorance.
Anecdotally, I feel great. I’m at peace, I still find out everything that’s useful - and I don’t waste cpu cycles in my head on things completely outside my sphere of control.
And yes, the whole world is doing really well right now - the way I see it - despite what the TV news anchors yell into the camera every hour.
It's somewhat sad that we choose ignorance to placate our anxiety. This has to be a symptom of feeling oppressed and under a tyranny that suppresses the people asking for change. People are apathetic because there is nothing they can do, so they turn off. The world is flooded with so much noise, no one can be bothered to figure out the signal any more.
It's perfect for government because they can now be elected and govern based on lies and no one cares. Lie your ass off to the remaining people who care to vote, say you'll do everything to fix everything and then just do whatever you want when in power.
No one can compete with that, so other candidates have to do the same.
Bad actors are already very much using the aforementioned media outlets to abuse their positions of power anyway.
I do agree it's a problem - being uninformed of what's going on around you. Not sure that being misinformed is really any better though. I do despair at our general ability to have an accurate sense of the world around us.
It's the sort of attitude that enables a LOT of bad things in the world:
The poster doesn't like "unvetted" news sources like the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times (which get lumped in with Reddit and Stephen Colbert in their opinion). Instead, apparently they consider the information they get from their friends and family as adequately "vetted." Now, that's a very unusual definition of "vetted," plus where are the friends/family getting THEIR info? The poster is information-gathering via the old game of "telephone" with all the attendant problems and distortion that invites.
Now, the poster also claims they are getting all the info they need. How do they know that? How do they know their trusted friends and family are 100% informed on all of the relevant issues?
The world is a fast-changing place so to safely not worry about any of those changes, you have to be:
1) near the top of the socio-economic pyramid, AND
2) devoid of empathy
Example: as a white natural-born US citizen, I probably won't have to worry about any upcoming changes to the existing legal permanent resident program personally affecting me. But a recently-approved permanent resident really SHOULD pay attention to the news so that they can learn that many Americans and their representatives want to revoke their residency and kick them out.
Same thing for marriage laws: I'm a straight unmarried man, so I won't personally be affected if the GOP re-bans gay marriage, invalidates all of the existing ones, and jails county clerks and pastors for officiating them in the future.
But as a human being who cares about the people who ARE affected, it would be incredibly selfish of me to ignore not just their plight, but to go out of my way to avoid learning about what is going on.
I feel that being an informed citizen is a critical responsibility, an integral part of citizenship.
There is zero reason to believe your personal network are better vetted than the New York Times and a lot of reason to suppose that they are probably a lot less accurate. The average person is a moron barely functional beyond the things they have been trained by rote to do. Even their professional betters are often very good at some tasks and worthless at others. Remember our erstwhile presidential candidate who simultaneously was a capable brain surgeon and honestly believed that the Pyramids were built by Joseph to store grain if you are tempted to believe anyone has a universal trustworthiness score rather than a degree of capability on a particular topic.
The average mainstream source is edited multiple times for clarity and correctness, passes through multiple sets of eyes, potentially seeks the opinion of subject matter experts, has the names of people involved which one could follow up with and statements from them. The average casual conversation or share on Facebook has none of these virtues and often a multitude of sins including but not limited to being mangled in transmission and having the ultimate and unknown trustworthiness score of the original primary source replaced with an emotional analysis of the person presently passing it on.
A story from a person whom you wouldn't trust to tell you the time is ultimately judged based on the high esteem you hold for the person who bandaged your knees and baked you cookies and then passed on to others based on their emotional esteem for you or even their legitimate analysis that you seem smart and successful.
Extrapolate and you will began to understand why a pretty sizable minority don't believe we landed on the moon, believe that vaccines cause autism, and or are out there looking for fucking Bigfoot.
The real reason people prefer their in group is that their in group consistently reinforces their preexisting beliefs which is comforting and safe. Unfortunately everyone's in group has a strong bias towards people whom are like self in terms of beliefs, geography, and wealth. In particular if your in group is successful in a wealthy country you are likely to be well insulated from misfortune and will probably receive the collective "everything is OK" social signal long after the society you are riding into the ground passes the point of no return.
If you would pull your head out of the sand and tune into something outside of your bubble you would note some signs of real trouble. I'm wondering as I write this if there were people out there actually watching the Iraqi misinformation minister who crowed about crushing the American military in the streets on Iraqi TV while in fact their nation toppled and their people died. I think you should have a look around.
> The average mainstream source is edited multiple times for clarity and correctness, passes through multiple sets of eyes, potentially seeks the opinion of subject matter experts, has the names of people involved which one could follow up with and statements from them.
None of which says much about how relevant the material is to your life. Do I really need to know about how the republicans did whatever?
It bears on whether I'll be able to afford medical treatment for myself and my wife and whether I can keep breathing and she can keep being alive so ya.
For the vast majority of people, that information isn't really actionable. I maintain that politics is way overemphasized in media relative to its importance to the consumers of said media.
I figured that I don’t need to consume any information from untrusted and unvetted sources (cable news, new york times, reddit, wsj, late night tv shows) - so I disconnected myself from all of the modern news sources and chose to live in ignorance.
Anecdotally, I feel great. I’m at peace, I still find out everything that’s useful - and I don’t waste cpu cycles in my head on things completely outside my sphere of control.
And yes, the whole world is doing really well right now - the way I see it - despite what the TV news anchors yell into the camera every hour.