Yes, you have reconsidered the incentives of new agencies, but what of yourself?
My objective when consuming media is to become happy and smart. News reduces my happiness and makes me stupid.
You say that the relationship between your happiness and news is not subjective, but aren’t all feelings
subjective?
I mean that following the news causes objectively observable behaviors that are known to reduce happiness.
Could it be the case that you are a less happy person when watching news because the news is, simply put, largely negative? Or perhaps that you, like many including myself, feel powerless in the face of negative news that is far away?
Yes. Negativity is indeed a contributing factor.
Could your new sources be less biased or more diverse?
Maybe? But I would have to go to extremely offbeat publications to get this to work. I have tried reading Al-Jazeera, news from South Africa, news from Nigeria, news from China in Chinese, anti-Chinese news in English, Fox News, my local moderate newspaper and my local radically leftist newspaper. The radical leftists produce a useful independently-researched cheatsheet during election season. Otherwise, all I found were different flavors of propaganda and advertisements. Specialized forums and independent reporters dedicated to extremely narrow topics can get around the specific bias identified in this post, but even they still run into the (unexplored by this post) Lindy Effect.
Couldn’t it be the case that seeking out authors that have beliefs that align with you could challenge you less as an intellectual, and therefore be less productive for your mental broadening even if it feels better?
Yes? I am not sure what this is getting at because you wrote it before my comment mentioning Noam Chomsky. Are you suggesting I seek out authors who disagree with the likes of George Orwell? That is, I should read straight fascist propaganda? I love being challenged by coherent arguments, but prolonged attention to a repetitive stream of beliefs-as-attire seems like a non-optimal allocation of my time.
My objective when consuming media is to become happy and smart. News reduces my happiness and makes me stupid.
I mean that following the news causes objectively observable behaviors that are known to reduce happiness.
Yes. Negativity is indeed a contributing factor.
Maybe? But I would have to go to extremely offbeat publications to get this to work. I have tried reading Al-Jazeera, news from South Africa, news from Nigeria, news from China in Chinese, anti-Chinese news in English, Fox News, my local moderate newspaper and my local radically leftist newspaper. The radical leftists produce a useful independently-researched cheatsheet during election season. Otherwise, all I found were different flavors of propaganda and advertisements. Specialized forums and independent reporters dedicated to extremely narrow topics can get around the specific bias identified in this post, but even they still run into the (unexplored by this post) Lindy Effect.
Yes? I am not sure what this is getting at because you wrote it before my comment mentioning Noam Chomsky. Are you suggesting I seek out authors who disagree with the likes of George Orwell? That is, I should read straight fascist propaganda? I love being challenged by coherent arguments, but prolonged attention to a repetitive stream of beliefs-as-attire seems like a non-optimal allocation of my time.