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title: News Sobriety
modified: 2026-07-31
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> “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” — Mark Twain

> [“People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.” — A. J. Liebling](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/77035-people-everywhere-confuse-what-they-read-in-newspapers-with-news)

> “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” — Malcolm X

> “News is to the mind what sugar is to the body: appetising, easily digestible and extremely damaging.” — Rolf Dobelli, [Stop Reading the News: A Manifesto for a Happier, Calmer and Wiser Life](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/73913219)

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24 hours each day isn’t enough to consume 0.0001% of the world’s events.

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The Paradox of News: The more news you consume, the less informed you are about the world.

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Want to know more about the world? Turn off the news and go spend time in it.

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# Nassim Taleb’s “Noise Bottleneck”

[@talebAntifragileThingsThat2016]

> **Data is now plentiful thanks to connectivity; and the share of spuriousness in the data increases as one gets more immersed into it**. A not well discussed property of data: it is toxic in large quantities —even in moderate quantities.
>
> **The more frequently you look at data, the more noise you are disproportionally likely to get** (rather than the valuable part called the signal)**; hence the higher the noise to signal ratio**.

* 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.

> “To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, [The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms](https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/14286203)

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# 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

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[@robertsonNegativityDrivesOnline2023]

> For a headline of average length, each additional negative word increased the click-through rate by 2.3%.

# The Negativity Doom Loop

![](https://media.huam.ing/image/a81f2e1b47ec847676a23f23786c35fd.webp)

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# Trends > News

> 專注於「不會變的東西」（invariants），才不會每天都被「變來變去的東西」搞得心神不寧。

* 只關注/吸收具有「時效性」（Timeless）的資訊，這些內容在多年後依然適用、價值不減。
* 反之，盡可能忽略「即時性」（Timely）的新聞，例如：
	1. 某政治人物遭遇事件（如川普槍擊）
	2. 體育賽事精華（環法賽、世足賽等）

	這類資訊雖然短期內令人興奮，但通常無助於長遠成長，甚至可能在事後帶來「空虛與失落感」☹️