[EA-3167]

Some people should definitely think that way though, specifically people prone to depression, suicide, and so on. If you're grappling with dark thoughts, the news is a pretty nasty hole to fall down. Aaron was sadly one of those people who probably was right that the news wasn't for him.

[Barrin92]

avoidance behavior is a bad response to mental issues. Even if it works temporarily, in the long run it shrinks your world and reduces your confidence. It's why people with panic disorders are taught to confront stressors and learn to adapt, not lock themselves in their house.

Regarding the news, a practical issue is of course that it doesn't always work. If you're privileged, self-employed or what have you, you can dodge a lot of issues for a while, but not always. Aaron himself ironically and sadly enough found himself at the center of the news years after he wrote this. That the news is just what happens to other people is an adolescent idea that will at some point be shattered.

I've got a lot of Ukrainian friends who did a lot of coding out of a bunker the last year and a half, and over there nobody has ever told me they stopped reading the NYT and their issues went away. That's most of the world, the news is real, only very few people are so removed they can just ignore the world for decades.

[Kye]

Reading the NYT would make me less informed on the issues that affect me and people I care about.[0][1] That's the point, I think. "The News" most people consume is a pale imitation of information. A version of this article with 10 years of growth might modify the suggestion toward finding better sources of information. Less New York Times, Fox News, and MSNBC. More ProPublica, NewsHour, and advocacy orgs staffed with people who are actually qualified to speak on the subject.

[0] https://glaad.org/new-york-times-sign-on-letter-from-lgtbq-a...

[1] https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/human-rights-campaign-cal...

[unmole]

> advocacy orgs staffed with people

who don't even have to pretend to be neutral.

[kragen]

your criticism could hardly be worse directed

the article does recommend finding better sources of information

> to become an informed voter all one needs to do is read a short guide about the candidates and issues before the election. There’s no need to have to suffer through the daily back-and-forth of allegations and counter-allegations, of scurrilous lies and their refutations. Indeed, reading a voter’s guide is much better: there’s no recency bias (where you only remember the crimes reported in the past couple months), you get to hear both sides of the story after the investigation has died down, you can actually think about the issues instead of worrying about the politics. ...

> Most people’s major life changes don’t come from reading an article in the newspaper; they come from reading longer-form essays or thoughtful books, which are much more convincing and detailed.

the article also links to harper's weekly review

he also regularly posted reviews on his blog of the books he found to be good sources of information (as well as some he didn't); in 02006 he read 120 books http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/books2006 and in 02007 he read 70 http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/books2007. many of his other blog posts were about one or another such book

a couple years later i worked with aaron on watchdog.net, an effort to collate and make easily available politically relevant information on politicians; we got a lot of information online and well organized, but voters didn't really care, and other people were doing a better job of providing that information

aaron was easily in the top 0.1% of the world population when it came to helping people find better sources of information