| Humans seem to be wired to weigh negative news much more strongly than positive news. (The most plausible hypothesis I’ve found for this is that bad news - fire, predators nearby - has historically been much more likely to kill you than good news to benefit you, so we are descended from people who over-weighed bad news, and survived to reproduce.) Modern media seems to really lean into this. All takes on everything are The Worst Possible Take. I heard Twitter described yesterday as “gain of function research for takes”. It’s not that the takes have to be bad, they just have to provoke a strong reaction, and bad news just gets a stronger reaction in humans. “Cure for death found - social security bankrupt!!” We have become more anti-fragile: and good things are way more likely to benefit us than before, and bad things less likely to harm us. Eventually we will evolve into this, but it will take literally generations! Anyway, given people’s tendency to give bad news more weight, and given that most media is strongly negative, it is no wonder that people can come to believe that everything is terrible and that we are all doomed and that humanity has never had it worse. This seems absolutely ridiculous to me, comically so, but it seems almost tautological to many people. And telling them that things are actually great can seem like an attack!!!!! If people don’t carefully curate their media environment, it is almost inevitable that they’ll become negative about the future. I don’t know what to do about this in general, but I know that I have to be very careful about what I consume. (And be gentle toward people who have been harmed by consuming too much negative for too long. I don’t think a psychologist can help though!) |
I should submit this to HN, in fact. It doesn't seem to have ever been submitted.