The quality of reporting has certainly declined, just as the quality of almost everything in the West has been declining for decades.
But I think the poor quality of mainstream journalism is much more perceived than, let's say, three decades ago. Take the coverage of the Ukraine war as an example. Just a few decades ago, it would have been almost impossible for the average citizen with a full-time job to access sources other than what professional journalists offer. In this case, one would be much less likely to notice how biased and poorly researched the journalistic offering is compared to what is the case nowadays. It's amazing what reasonably neutral and independent bloggers can achieve these days, even though they have much fewer resources available to them than media corporations. And for that, I am grateful.
One tactic that I use to cut down on doom scrolling is to have an Internet browser that is dedicated solely for work. Work in my case is defined as the various writing projects that ensure that I am being productive with my time. I find that I sleep better at night when I know that I have achieved something.
At the moment that browser is Opera. There are two tabs that are always open - Power Thesaurus and Etymonline. The latter is, at present, very useful since my focus is on the mid-18th century and I do not want to used words that came into being after that time. Any other tabs relate to research. Currently I have a scan of a 19th century book of demonology open on one of the archive sites.
There is no email. No social media. When Opera is open all other browsers are closed. It's a signal to myself that it's time to get my head down.
"Telecommunications systems could have remained government monopolies, accountable to parliaments and publics, rather than cash cows to be sold off to friends of Ministers."
This is good as far as it goes. For those of us who do not need to spend as much time as our host digesting and analyzing the news, it is possible and I think desirable to cut further. Phones in particular are addictive; I am attempting to counter that with habits, not least of which is putting my phone upstairs when I come home and (trying) not to pick it up again until the next day, unless I need to look something up or contact someone. As you can see from the timestamp of this comment, that tactic isn’t working 100% yet - but I do think that using the power of habits is key. Trying to consciously vet and contextualize each piece of data before deciding whether or not to pursue it takes a lot of executive function. Habits, once developed, don’t.
Another thing to consider in the light of this essay is that the same process described by our gracious host has been occurring with ongoing enshittification of science "journals" controlled by large corporations and paid for by advertising.
Most folks don't want to think about the "replication crisis" that is assidiously being ignored as much as possible. The mechanism is pretty much the same.
The one thing I might add to this fine piece is that we have now unprecedented access to primary sources, and those tend to be much better than the MSM telling us what those sources actually contained. For example, if President Putin gave a "state of the country" speech as he did a few weeks ago, I would like to read it, so I would go directly to the Kremlin.ru site to do so. Seeking out the primary sources cuts through all the unnecessary chatter and distortion.
Discerning "Signal from Noise" (or "wheat from chaf") is fraught with uncertainty, bias, and dilemmas. Concepts of Bayesian probability are helpful (to me) in deciding what story "headlines" seem worth pursuing. When I "click" on a story, I have a "prior" probability that the story will be useful, and if it turns out to be useless I have made a Type 1 error (I use that experience to adjust my "prior" when I get into that website again). When I don't click on a story, it's because I've judged it to have a high "prior" probability of being useless, but if it's actually useful I've made a Type 2 error. I think we all have an implicit threshold "prior" probability which, if exceeded, causes us to click on a link (or not click on it). After clicking on many useless links in my long internet surfing career, my threshold is generally very high, i.e. I click on very few stories unless I have a very, very high "prior" probability that the story will be very useful (and ignore the rest). I undoubtedly miss a lot that way, especially with Type 2 errors. I figure that the "signal" I miss today will --because it is "signal" -- will almost assuredly be repeated tomorrow and the next day. The more repetition of a story the more likely it will seem like true "signal." This is not always the case, as with really important stories that get reported once, then disappear (because they go against the acceptable narrative). Missing those I regret the most! I count on certain sites like nakedcapitalism.com to help me correct for many of these unavoidable biases and errors in the way I filter the day's news. I also go to sites at the other end of my ideological comfort zone because I'll find useful "self-bias correcting" stuff there. In the end, I web-surf in order to live "better" (maybe more wisely), not live to web-surf, so I usually have to force myself (with difficulty) to get off the keyboard (as I must and will now!).
"Yet it’s generally accepted that people are no better informed, on average, than they were fifty years ago, and that the average quality of the data they receive is lower than it has ever been. Theoretically, we should be living in a golden age of information, where everything we might want to know is only a click away: a delusion that led some idiots to suggest in the early years of the Internet that soon schools and universities would be unnecessary, because everything you might need to know would be easily available."
I have between my paws a device that allows me, 24/7 in real time, to access most of the material ever recorded through history, from the clay tablets and cuneiform era all the way through the present.
Humans mostly use this device to look at funny pictures of cats and argue with strangers.
We are enveloped in a blizzard of bullshit. Much ink is spilled now about the perils of misinformation and whom or what has the duty to address this problem. All of this verbiage obscures a far greater problem: one of no reliable information.
The irony of our age is the deluge of data we get served is precisely not the data we need to process.
I just don't see what the problem is. If so many people are so stupid nothing will change them. I bookmark websites that I regularly read, like this one. I bring up the tab every 2 or 3 days to see if there's anything new. Why should I subscribe? Just to get an endless number of emails telling me there's a new article? How dumb can one get. I don't subscribe to anything, and if I have to for one reason or another, I promptly unsubscribe. I don't do ANY social media. Yes, one has to be selective in what one reads and it sometimes takes a bit of self-control to weed out the unnecessary. I don't get junk mail, or very, very little of it. I don't want it?....I block it.
I just don't see what the problem is. If so many people are so stupid nothing will change them. I bookmark websites that I regularly read, like this one. I bring up the tab every 2 or 3 days to see if there's anything new. Why should I subscribe? Just to get an endless number of emails telling me there's a new article? How dumb can one get. I don't subscribe to anything, and if I have to for one reason or another, I promptly unsubscribe. I don't do ANY social media. Yes, one has to be selective in what one reads and it sometimes takes a bit of self-control to weed out the unnecessary. I don't get junk mail, or very, very little of it. I don't want it?....I block it. The author is describing somewhat diseased persons. Addicted to their mail or the news or social media. It's sickness and there's no helping them.
You say that Bill Gates 'introduced' email - I can not think that this is true - when I was growing up it was always said that it was Darpa 'invented', if that is the correct term, email
The situation you describe is very middle class northern hemisphere - after a blissfull couple of learned and well organised centuries of hierarchised & capable information distribution the world in general is now returned to the status quo ante
Of huge amounts of bits and pieces of news jumbled up for sorting out according to other than middle class notions of relevance order and reason
This might be, I mean I'd say it is, a more useful and more autonomous method of information distribution - the collective....
The number of people who have derived from randomised sources decided opinions about, say, Myanmar rebels and régimes, is overwhelmingly inefficient
What can I say? This post is long, boring and misguided.
All good algorithms (optimization, development, evolution, jazz, learning etc.) have both components: explore and exploit. In the name of efficiency or peace of mind you suggest throwing out exploration. No wonder you got from "trying to understand the world" to this meandering discussion of email management.
One can summarize quite a bit of this article using two of the three definitions of "entropy":
1-A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system, or
2-A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.
Trying to impose "order" on any system decreases entropy and, hence, requires work; the more perfect the order desired, the greater the work needed to impose it. Perfect order is not achievable at finite temperature. Here the "system" could be files in folders in a cabinet, e-mails in virtual folders, or understanding and retaining the information content in a message, in news, etc. Once order is achieved, maintaining it requires far less effort. Thus, ideally,, one should maintain order at all times. Like all truisms this is easier said than done. Putting things in order is draining work, so most people just let things go, and contribute to the entropic exhaustion of the universe. Thermodynamics ...
The quality of reporting has certainly declined, just as the quality of almost everything in the West has been declining for decades.
But I think the poor quality of mainstream journalism is much more perceived than, let's say, three decades ago. Take the coverage of the Ukraine war as an example. Just a few decades ago, it would have been almost impossible for the average citizen with a full-time job to access sources other than what professional journalists offer. In this case, one would be much less likely to notice how biased and poorly researched the journalistic offering is compared to what is the case nowadays. It's amazing what reasonably neutral and independent bloggers can achieve these days, even though they have much fewer resources available to them than media corporations. And for that, I am grateful.
One tactic that I use to cut down on doom scrolling is to have an Internet browser that is dedicated solely for work. Work in my case is defined as the various writing projects that ensure that I am being productive with my time. I find that I sleep better at night when I know that I have achieved something.
At the moment that browser is Opera. There are two tabs that are always open - Power Thesaurus and Etymonline. The latter is, at present, very useful since my focus is on the mid-18th century and I do not want to used words that came into being after that time. Any other tabs relate to research. Currently I have a scan of a 19th century book of demonology open on one of the archive sites.
There is no email. No social media. When Opera is open all other browsers are closed. It's a signal to myself that it's time to get my head down.
Thank you Aurelien🙏
"Telecommunications systems could have remained government monopolies, accountable to parliaments and publics, rather than cash cows to be sold off to friends of Ministers."
.
Like the dreadful BBC? Gawd forbid...
This is good as far as it goes. For those of us who do not need to spend as much time as our host digesting and analyzing the news, it is possible and I think desirable to cut further. Phones in particular are addictive; I am attempting to counter that with habits, not least of which is putting my phone upstairs when I come home and (trying) not to pick it up again until the next day, unless I need to look something up or contact someone. As you can see from the timestamp of this comment, that tactic isn’t working 100% yet - but I do think that using the power of habits is key. Trying to consciously vet and contextualize each piece of data before deciding whether or not to pursue it takes a lot of executive function. Habits, once developed, don’t.
Another thing to consider in the light of this essay is that the same process described by our gracious host has been occurring with ongoing enshittification of science "journals" controlled by large corporations and paid for by advertising.
Most folks don't want to think about the "replication crisis" that is assidiously being ignored as much as possible. The mechanism is pretty much the same.
The one thing I might add to this fine piece is that we have now unprecedented access to primary sources, and those tend to be much better than the MSM telling us what those sources actually contained. For example, if President Putin gave a "state of the country" speech as he did a few weeks ago, I would like to read it, so I would go directly to the Kremlin.ru site to do so. Seeking out the primary sources cuts through all the unnecessary chatter and distortion.
Discerning "Signal from Noise" (or "wheat from chaf") is fraught with uncertainty, bias, and dilemmas. Concepts of Bayesian probability are helpful (to me) in deciding what story "headlines" seem worth pursuing. When I "click" on a story, I have a "prior" probability that the story will be useful, and if it turns out to be useless I have made a Type 1 error (I use that experience to adjust my "prior" when I get into that website again). When I don't click on a story, it's because I've judged it to have a high "prior" probability of being useless, but if it's actually useful I've made a Type 2 error. I think we all have an implicit threshold "prior" probability which, if exceeded, causes us to click on a link (or not click on it). After clicking on many useless links in my long internet surfing career, my threshold is generally very high, i.e. I click on very few stories unless I have a very, very high "prior" probability that the story will be very useful (and ignore the rest). I undoubtedly miss a lot that way, especially with Type 2 errors. I figure that the "signal" I miss today will --because it is "signal" -- will almost assuredly be repeated tomorrow and the next day. The more repetition of a story the more likely it will seem like true "signal." This is not always the case, as with really important stories that get reported once, then disappear (because they go against the acceptable narrative). Missing those I regret the most! I count on certain sites like nakedcapitalism.com to help me correct for many of these unavoidable biases and errors in the way I filter the day's news. I also go to sites at the other end of my ideological comfort zone because I'll find useful "self-bias correcting" stuff there. In the end, I web-surf in order to live "better" (maybe more wisely), not live to web-surf, so I usually have to force myself (with difficulty) to get off the keyboard (as I must and will now!).
"Yet it’s generally accepted that people are no better informed, on average, than they were fifty years ago, and that the average quality of the data they receive is lower than it has ever been. Theoretically, we should be living in a golden age of information, where everything we might want to know is only a click away: a delusion that led some idiots to suggest in the early years of the Internet that soon schools and universities would be unnecessary, because everything you might need to know would be easily available."
I have between my paws a device that allows me, 24/7 in real time, to access most of the material ever recorded through history, from the clay tablets and cuneiform era all the way through the present.
Humans mostly use this device to look at funny pictures of cats and argue with strangers.
We are enveloped in a blizzard of bullshit. Much ink is spilled now about the perils of misinformation and whom or what has the duty to address this problem. All of this verbiage obscures a far greater problem: one of no reliable information.
The irony of our age is the deluge of data we get served is precisely not the data we need to process.
I just don't see what the problem is. If so many people are so stupid nothing will change them. I bookmark websites that I regularly read, like this one. I bring up the tab every 2 or 3 days to see if there's anything new. Why should I subscribe? Just to get an endless number of emails telling me there's a new article? How dumb can one get. I don't subscribe to anything, and if I have to for one reason or another, I promptly unsubscribe. I don't do ANY social media. Yes, one has to be selective in what one reads and it sometimes takes a bit of self-control to weed out the unnecessary. I don't get junk mail, or very, very little of it. I don't want it?....I block it.
I just don't see what the problem is. If so many people are so stupid nothing will change them. I bookmark websites that I regularly read, like this one. I bring up the tab every 2 or 3 days to see if there's anything new. Why should I subscribe? Just to get an endless number of emails telling me there's a new article? How dumb can one get. I don't subscribe to anything, and if I have to for one reason or another, I promptly unsubscribe. I don't do ANY social media. Yes, one has to be selective in what one reads and it sometimes takes a bit of self-control to weed out the unnecessary. I don't get junk mail, or very, very little of it. I don't want it?....I block it. The author is describing somewhat diseased persons. Addicted to their mail or the news or social media. It's sickness and there's no helping them.
You say that Bill Gates 'introduced' email - I can not think that this is true - when I was growing up it was always said that it was Darpa 'invented', if that is the correct term, email
The situation you describe is very middle class northern hemisphere - after a blissfull couple of learned and well organised centuries of hierarchised & capable information distribution the world in general is now returned to the status quo ante
Of huge amounts of bits and pieces of news jumbled up for sorting out according to other than middle class notions of relevance order and reason
This might be, I mean I'd say it is, a more useful and more autonomous method of information distribution - the collective....
The number of people who have derived from randomised sources decided opinions about, say, Myanmar rebels and régimes, is overwhelmingly inefficient
What can I say? This post is long, boring and misguided.
All good algorithms (optimization, development, evolution, jazz, learning etc.) have both components: explore and exploit. In the name of efficiency or peace of mind you suggest throwing out exploration. No wonder you got from "trying to understand the world" to this meandering discussion of email management.
One can summarize quite a bit of this article using two of the three definitions of "entropy":
1-A measure of the disorder or randomness in a closed system, or
2-A measure of the loss of information in a transmitted message.
Trying to impose "order" on any system decreases entropy and, hence, requires work; the more perfect the order desired, the greater the work needed to impose it. Perfect order is not achievable at finite temperature. Here the "system" could be files in folders in a cabinet, e-mails in virtual folders, or understanding and retaining the information content in a message, in news, etc. Once order is achieved, maintaining it requires far less effort. Thus, ideally,, one should maintain order at all times. Like all truisms this is easier said than done. Putting things in order is draining work, so most people just let things go, and contribute to the entropic exhaustion of the universe. Thermodynamics ...
Ishmael Zechariah