“People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.” — A. J. Liebling
24 hours each day isn’t enough to consume 0.0001% of the world’s events.
The Paradox of News: The more news you consume, the less informed you are about the world.
Want to know more about the world? Turn off the news and go spend time in it.
Nassim Taleb’s “Noise Bottleneck”
- More data leads to a higher ratio of noise-to-signal
- By consuming more, you end up knowing less about what’s actually going on.
Gell-Mann Razor
- Assume every media article contains a certain percent of false information.
- Sandbox the article from your worldview until you’ve:
- Seen primary sources
- Spoken to 3 domain experts