Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

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100% agree with the premise. Outrage culture is ruining all reasonable discourse in this country (and world), and is now massively fueled by politicians, corporations, media for their own gains.

I do not, however, agree with their solution. Turning off the news/Facebook/Twitter and ignoring everything happening around you is not going to make things better.

The world has made a lot of progress over the last few centuries (as the article calls out), but all of it has been driven by common people like you and me getting outraged over things that might not directly concern us. Anger is sometimes justified.

Instead, when you read something that angers you, take a few minutes and do that extra step of research. Could it be completely fake? Does the headline reflect the contents of the article correctly (it is normally not written by the author)? Is the data researched and sourced? Is what you are reading heavily opinionated? Are you subscribed to a healthy mix of sources?

If enough people actually did this (instead of reading the title and going straight to Twitter/Reddit/HN), meaningless outrage will disappear without the trade-off of not being informed about the world. You will organically discover that everything is a lot more reasonable and moderate than people want you to believe. And if something actually isn't, you will be able to see it.

I was taught early on to "question everything", so it comes naturally. But it's really really tiring to do, when everything is at least a little bit wrong (and the things that are not obviously wrong are often the most insidious).

The most reasonable people in the world often end up in a fact-checking loop, where they will never have any real influence on the world. For me that's what sparks my outrage, when I realize everything I'm reading is full of truthful lies. Maybe you're right that this could fuel change; I am less optimistic.

one of my peeves is the ongoing attention that outrage itself has garnered (think terms like cancel culture, sjw, karen, etc.). it's sickening because it's a diversion from the real issues that matter, like economic fairness and equality of opportunity. there is so much we could do to improve the meaningful aspects of our lives, and yet we focus on the bullshit that doesn't matter.

for instance, who cares if someone calls you a (perhaps racist) name, even if they do it incessantly and meanspiritedly? it's meaningless and you can choose to not to let it affect you (yes it's hard, but doable). but instead, stuff like this is where the dominant/popular narrative is spinning its wheels to keep our attention away from substantive matters that can actually alter the dynamics that favor the already wealthy and powerful and spread opportunities further and wider.

What do you think about this idea: a social media platform that is based on the principle of epistemically sound discussions, where the culture of the site is truth seeking and comprehensive accuracy?

Of course, this is not going to have big subscriber numbers, a plausible business model, and many other traditional human concerns - but consciously leaving these aside, do you think such an approach could yield some value to humanity?

I have time and time again debunked fake news sent to me by friends whom usually I would call intelligent, and kindly asked to next time do a minimum of fact checking. It's useless.

It's depressing but people don't care about truth. Not acknowledging this will give you a lot of frustration.

From OP's post

> If enough people actually did this

A classic HN comment misstep. Most people aren't like the typical reader here (for better, for worse). It's not wise to act like they are.

To be fair, even HN is not so perfect - we are brilliant when abstractly discussing outrage, fake news, etc - but visit any thread where the article is an object level example of a story that contains these characteristics, and compare the quality of discourse you find there to that which you find in threads like this.

Then what's the point of even posting the article? Most people aren't going to take any advice, but you yourself still can.

I just stick to local news outlet now of the localities that matter the most to me. They really are the last bastion of real journalism.

Local news is just as subject to the same nonsense just at a smaller scale, how many local news stories are "this local business did something outrageous" or "local gov't regulations are hurting this business" for example?

I disagree. It's far harder in towns where the degree of separation is 3. Everyone knows someone close to the matter. Never heard of a local news outlet making up quotes or began an article with "according to a source near the official in question". And it might not be true for big cities, but hearing that regulation is hurting a well known company of your town will usually trigger swift changes from officials. This happens a lot where I come from.

For me, I find a shockingly large number of local news stories can be reduced down to the formula "this person in the community is mad about something and they talked to the newspaper about it to try and get attention on the issue."

Over the last weeks I have watched hours and hours of historical TV from The Netherlands ( NL ). In the 70s and 80s people were protesting left and right, against nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons, against polution, against (child) traffic deaths, to preserve nature, womens rights, for better wages etc.

There was no public internet at the time. I remember parts of these times.

Nowadays engagement is pretty effortless. One only needs to feel enraged.

Well I don't think it has to be taken so literally. 1% of the news is actual new info that you should know, the other 99% is repetition, opinion, speculation, propaganda, etc. You can check the news once a day from a reasonably neautal source and know all the relevant information.

You can check the news far less than once a day. If you apply a low-pass filter to current events by, say, checking once a week or even less, the broad movements and important things will remain while the shallow and ephemeral will naturally be filtered out.

There exists a quote ( probably from Mark Twain or Aristotle ) that one should put away the daily paper and read it 14 days later.

If somebody can help out and dig up a link : please do.

> the other 99% is repetition, opinion, speculation, propaganda, etc.

I'd respectfully amend this to: the other 99% is repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, sportball, sportball, sportball, sportball, celebs, celebs, opinion, speculation, propaganda, etc.

While I 100% agree with you, I think 2 things are somewhat implied in the article: that a ton of the outrage bait is in bad faith, overblown or in some instances completely fabricated, and that everyone will not do what you say everyone should do, so the outrage machine will continue. If these are both true, then yes, the solution 99% of the time is to tune out. And where it isn't, when something is really that bad and so important to you, just getting outraged about it makes you feel like you care even though you aren't doing anything. Discuss it clearly, without getting emotional, and if it is really important, try to do something about it if you can.

Exactly, outrage is bad but we can't just ignore the outside world.

For me, it's environmentalism that gets me. I do believe I have a reason to be outraged by this topic and our inactions, although so does everyone who is outraged. My thoughts basically hit all the checkboxes in the article, but does that make them excessively outraged, or is just that the situation itself is truly outraging?

But in the modern environment, a lot of people can't take a few minutes, because they're exposed to too many things that anger them. A Twitter poweruser can easily see 100 maddening tweets in a day, and most are unlikely to have the 5 free hours it would take to investigate each.

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