Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • Also applies to reading comments and replying to them. You don’t know these people.
    by cryptoegorophy
  • A past thread about one of the papers linked to in the OP:

    Negativity drives online news consumption - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35197587 - March 2023 (355 comments)

    by dang
  • I don't know, I am a naturally anxious person even before I started reading the news daily, and I'm fine. Seeing the brutal chaos of the world definitely makes me appreciate the peace at home more. It's a grounding experience to be aware of the good and bad things that happen in the world.
    by rf15
  • Neil Postman called this the “Peekaboo World”.

    “What steps do you plan to take to reduce the conflict in the Middle East? Or the rates of inflation, crime and unemployment? What are your plans for preserving the environment or reducing the risk of nuclear war? What do you plan to do about NATO, OPEC, the CIA, affirmative action, and the monstrous treatment of the Baha’is in Iran? I shall take the liberty of answering for you: You plan to do nothing about them.”

    https://www.nateliason.com/notes/amusing-death-neil-postman

    by spking
  • "There are a lot more important problems than Sri Lanka to worry about. Well, we have to end apartheid, for one, slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights, while also promoting equal rights for women. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values. Most importantly, we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people."

    - Patrick Bateman (as adapted by Mary Heron)

    by reinitctxoffset
  • I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Back in 2010 I gave a TEDx talk about how the internet can be an extension of your mind.

    Nowadays I feel like it is contributing noise. The internet has become X, Reddit, AI, doomscrolling and group messaging.

    Very little room for positive messaging. I don’t mean to harp about the theft of attention: the message itself is just not even contributing anything.

    by tetrisgm
  • Beter wording: your brain is made for detecting dangers and attention grabbers are taking advantage of that
    by stcg
  • The other option is to be more realistic - people often have wildly unrealistic expectations of how the world should work and seem to get a bit stressed when they are confronted with reality.

    The more pressing problem is the voters who accept policies being put in place based on something going wrong one time without accepting that things go wrong and we have to tolerate problems to some extent. If policies were made after a bit of experimentation, maybe trying a few things in parallel [0] and with prescribed objectives they were to be evaluated against the legislative process would get better results.

    [0] The results of experiments like Shenzhen are significant. The US used to be a lot better at letting people act independently too.

    by roenxi

Explore Birbla archives