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Comment by smitty1e | Hacker News Reader

> After controlling for household income, education, age, gender, race, marital status, and political views, I found that people who were “very interested in politics” were about 8 percentage points more likely to be “not very happy” about life than people who were “not very interested” in politics.

If we could locate these philosopher-kings from Aristotle and put them in charge, then ignoring politics might be safe.

But your disdain for bossing others around isn't reciprocated by the Chads and Karens seeking office.

This, detachment from the swamp is a sin of omission. You and your wallet will be punished.

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I am very interested in policy, but I do not watch the news.

Why? Because it contains no actionable information that changes my decisions: I'm still going to vote in every election, I'm still going to research the candidates when the time comes, I'm still going to volunteer at the polls...

The news is trivia, generally speaking. When I have a more active life in politics I'll take the Chomskian approach to news, but for now I'll vote with my ideals (which don't change with the passing tides of the news cycles)

I don't watch the news either but I do scan headlines here and on AP and/or Reuters every day and follow up on what interests me.

I can't say "it contains no actionable information that changes my decisions". For example the news that Obama wanted to renegotiate the "SOFA" agreement before he even took office made me regret my decision to vote for him in `08 and I did not vote for him again in 2012 because I already knew he would not end those wars.

The only actionable thing I've really done since is keep others informed via FB of our progress to end those wars but for the most part interest in that fell off long ago with their yellow ribbon car magnets so it hasn't amounted to much real action.

What is the Chomskian approach to news?

Instead of drinking the koolaid, you complain that companies are manufacturing koolaid, despite the fact that you are currently using an I.V. drip of the stuff. Turn the dial on your I.V. up to 11, while you lean back and realize that you are glad that you’re not thinking about linguistics.

> says person commenting on a news aggregation site

This story didn't contain anything actionable that changes your decisions either, and yet you still read it and spent the time to comment. I don't see a substantive difference between reading HN and reading following political news. Nearly everything on this site (not even just this piece) will not affect your ability to accomplish your goals in anyway. It's a distraction at best.

Disagree.

Let's suppose for a moment that we ever reach a point where the democratic process gets involved with the question of how best to manage the western forests (what's left of them) in the USA. There will be people arguing for regular understory and brush burning, and others arguing against it.

Let's suppose that you're a citizen who gets to vote in some way on this matter. What will you base your vote on? The materials circulated at the time by those for and against various policies? Perhaps. But how will you judge those materials if you have not even a basic understanding of forest ecology.

Now, if you sit down and read about forest ecology today, it will have no impact on your ability to accomplish your goals in anyway. But is is not a distraction: it's the groundwork and the preparation for you to be able to participate meaningfully in democratic decision making, perhaps tomorrow, or next year or some other time in the future.

In short: it is education. You just have to be careful that you're learning about the actual world.

Agree, educating oneself is a great investment even if not immediately actionable. The knowledge you gained will pay dividends later when it comes in handy.

The issue with news is that I'm not sure reading all news sources is an effective way of educating yourself.

Another problem though is that of shared values and goals. In your example you said:

> the democratic process gets involved with the question of how best to manage the western forests

But how does it even get to this point? Does news play a bigger role in that part of the democratic process? The part where we decide on our values and our priorities?

I didn't read the story.

Interestingly enough, Plato's proposal for creating an ideal city-state had specific instructions for how to breed philosopher-kings.

He advocated eugenics, and he also recommended lying to the citizens about how it was decided who would be paired up with who.

So...I'm not sure we should go down that road?

Any quotes to share?

As a hypothetical, can you imagine a scenario where nobody voted or put faith in the political class?

From this perspective, participation only validates the farce.

My (apparently unpopular) point is that non-participation affords no solace.

It isn't non participation though. You can participate in politics (local, state or federal) without consuming the 24/7 news cycle. The "news" is usually pushing doom gloom and fear no matter which side of the spectrum you are on because that gets the clicks. Rarely do political issues have meaningful developments everyday so continually checking not actually enhancing your ability to participate.

Fair point. My response is quite binary when there is a full spectrum of engagement possibility.

If you’re upset about the system or the options, your other option is to vote a write-in. This sends a stronger message in my opinion: we call such votes “protest votes”, whereas not voting all all leaves the situation a bit more ambiguous to the rest of us.

Many jurisdictions will ignore "write-ins" and they will not be reported.

This is a good point: opting out of reality is a worse strategy for happiness on a longer timescale. However, reading the 24-hour news cycle and being aware of the real political landscape is not perfectly correlated; I'd argue it's 50% overlap at the upper bound and sub-ten % at the lower. Furthermore, reading the news cycle and being politically active in a way that affects your, your family's, and your "heirs'" wellbeing is probably almost negatively correlated.

Any political wins made by groups exploiting and dominating mainstream media (Trump) are explained by the fact that the barrier to entry in political action is so low—just getting a few people to vote is politically effective because almost everyone is just watching the news instead of doing anything real. Meanwhile Trump's team meets with money and accrues powerful stakeholders by annexing their agenda, building support in institutions and markets.

So ignoring political news and pursuing interfaces with actual nexuses of power is far more politically effective than the hundreds of people with twenty tabs of The Atlantic open and the WSJ draped across their lap like a religious shawl every morning. Go out, meet politically active people in your city, email representative staff, make friends with people with money and vested interests that are vulnerable to political changes.

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