[coldpie]

Haha, if websites like that that are where you're getting your news from, I can see why you're terrified all the time! I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I'll choose to take the risk and keep blogging about grapes :)

[at_a_remove]

I'm sorry, are you suggesting that these things didn't happen? Because that is the only translation I have of "getting your news from."

Is the idea that the NBC San Diego branch just ... made this up? That the BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d70h) fabricated this wholesale? Let's just click through some of those hyperlinks in the Unherd thing. https://fringeassociation.com/2019/01/07/2019-my-year-of-col... sure seems to have happened; take care to note "I've offended many people with this post, and for that I am deeply sorry. Please read my comment here. And 01.12 Please read my follow-up about what’s wrong with this post here."

These are all things that have occurred in "reality" and the "real world," to use your diction. You can now ignore them -- feel free! -- but pretending that they didn't happen is, I don't know, a performance only for yourself, because I cannot unsee what has been seen.

I am not terrified; as above, I pointed out that the potential negatives outweigh the possible benefits at this point. It's a simple analysis. You have elected not to factor those real world events into your analysis.

[coldpie]

I'm not saying they don't happen, what I'm saying is if you immerse yourself in a constant stream of "here's a bad thing that happened to one person out of the dozens of millions of people who created content on the Internet today", you'll get a really distorted view of what's actually happening. It's like never leaving your house because you see shootings and murder reports every day on local news. You're missing out on a whole lot because of the distorted view that kind of information diet gives you.

[propwash]

This is the sad part.

If your news diet is consumed by negative press and sad stories, they become more readily available[0] to you and can affect your decisions adversely by making you think that the base rate of such bad events are more common than they really are[1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy