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Comment by janmarsal | Hacker News Reader

I've been trained like a Pavlov's dog to ignore any news article with the word "may" in the title as it allows journalists to write about any kind of bogus that may or may not be true. Makes me wonder how many innocent, truthful and insightful articles I've ignored because of this.

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Likewise. Especially for: solar power, wind power, nuclear fusion, super conductivity, battery technology, cures for cancer. If a had one $ for every article that I saw over the years that didn't pan out I'd be able to retire instantly.

Solar, wind, battery and cures for cancer had significant incremental improvement for the last 20 or so years. What kind of claims wrt to these technologies don’t you think panned out?

The key is incremental. The problem is that every news article about any of that stuff invariably hails things as 'may be revolutionary' and they never are. But I'm perfectly happy with the incremental stuff. I just can't stand the way the news gets hyped.

Exactly.

To elaborate on my agreement with you....

There's a fundamental tension between "news" and "incremental". Which means that in many many important areas of human enterprise (and progress), the "news" model is fundamentally counterproductive. So don't consume the news.

Instead, read a new textbook every year (or however often you can afford to).

I typically agree but I also have to remind myself that change happens very slowly, then all at once.

You may have missed a few.

But it generally seems like a good idea, similar to headlines ending with a question mark.

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