Comment by asabjorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asabjorn | Hacker News Reader

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Much of our news media is currently designed to be sports-like, so if your goal is to be informed then this strategy is very wise. To make news more sports-like news channels like CNN offer generous pay to people that are willing to spout controversial cartoonish opinions on national news as explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pS4x8hXQ5c

It is very questionable if these controversial opinions are representative of anything except an antagonistic "other" that is similar to who we want our opposing political side to be, so that we don't have to actually spend the effort to speak together and find common ground. Generous pay would probably not be necessary if anything else was the case.

This way of avoiding civic discourse and not listen is in my opinion incredibly dangerous for our democracy, as the default state of a society is not a working democracy and you have to fight to keep it.

Great points.

If you stop consuming cable television and take a step back, you can see that pundit news shows and professional sports have so much in common. It's "right" vs "wrong", "red" vs "blue", "stupid" vs "smart", "weak" vs "strong", etc. There's a winner. There's a loser. You aren't a loser, are you? Don't forget to buy Doritos.

Since media isn't going way, we really need to create alternative systems that stimulate our empathy instead of our anger.

>...the default state of a society is not a working democracy and you have to fight to keep it.

That's something to think about.

> There's a winner. There's a loser. You aren't a loser, are you?

The whole world runs on this. If you catch it at the right time, you can avoid a lot of mental traps.

Took me 30 years to think I've finally kicked that bullshit. I'm still not sure.

The works of Alan Watts have been instrumental in providing me with a mental framework to notice exactly that kind of bamboozles, and many more. A lot of his ideas (or his intrepretations of others) seem to me like a straightforward cure for many of this information age ailments, I think a rehash for modern times is long overdue. I strongly recommend to look at least at a couple of essays of his, if only for the absolutely delightful prose.

Is there any international coverage of US news that follows a better format?

The closest I’ve found is Democracy Now (which is domestic). They make a one hour show Monday to Friday. It’s a little boring, but rather endearing. Admittedly I don’t watch it much.

I usually read books instead because new world events generally don’t seem to occur at a much greater frequency than the book publishing cycle.

I like The Economist (weekly print magazine)

Us and them.

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