[JoshCole]

Ironically, crossing roads is an example of a time where people tend to feel checking the news is stupid and reckless. The reason being that it calls into stark attention how a lack of awareness of your actual surroundings impacts your safety.

[phabricator]

...and a lack of understanding that your phone won't work tomorrow can impact your safety. Presumably the phone was near GP's actual surroundings.

[JoshCole]

You can't cite his example as evidence that the news is required - his example contradicts the thesis. He was informed without needing to pay attention to the news via a friend prior to the event happening.

I get what you're trying to say though - not paying attention to your surroundings and so not knowing what is happening is potentially dangerous. The problem, of course, is that no one was arguing that being uninformed was ideal.

They were implying that the news wasn't optimal and stating outright that even without it you will be informed of the important things.

I'm assuming you understood that - maybe we are talking past each other - but if you did and you still disagree with the thrust of their points I think we'll have to agree to disagree. I find that it is an incredibly bad conflation to think paying attention to what a monetization of attention corporation thinks you should pay attention to is necessarily going to translate into being aware of your surroundings; I'm quite certain that, very very often, it not only doesn't do that, but accomplishes the opposite. The reason why I'm so certain is because of how poor the information quality is. News has perverse incentives, like being fast, rather than right. Generally you would be better off having been informed through slower channels - for example, by taking a course or reading a book or getting first hand accounts - rather than having gotten a watered down, distorted, and in many ways wrong interpretation from a non-expert optimizing for engagement.