Don't read news

Dunno if this trick will help anyone but me, but here it is anyway: go looking for Really Important news from a few years ago. The more sensational the headlines, the more portentous the tones, the better.

When I tried this, I got a mixture of boredom and disgust. This didn't replace the craving, but it did sort of overwhelm the craving and compelled me to put my attention anywhere else. I think I ended up going for a walk or something.

However, the only sustainable strategy I know of is to put together all the standard habit/addiction things in place. Find a decent replacement (maybe fiction or video games or just journaling), make a personal rule against opening anti-informative media, configure your devices to increase friction around news-reading and lower the reward, take an official break and maybe add some kind of mastbinding mechanism (a week in a cabin without internet access would count), and when you do decide to give in to the temptation, at least try to first spend a few seconds visualizing what it will be like.

Related : I Hate the News by Aaron Swartz.

It should be noted that the linked-to article make many claims that lack nuance and justification (e.g., "News is toxic to your body" and "News massively increases cognitive errors").

Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that–because you consumed it—allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career, your business—compared to what you would have known if you hadn’t swallowed that morsel of news.

It's helpful to know some COVID-related things (when is a vaccine expected; what are current prevalence rates) to help make decisions regarding how much risk to incur, how much toilet paper to buy, etc. In a few weeks (once the markets have settled), I'll have made a few thousand dollars trading on PredictIt against people who thought that Trump's chances were better than they were. I increased my charitable donations when the charitable-deduction limit was increased from 50% to 60% of AGI.

The article is right that very little news is of practical use! But overstating an argument isn't the best way of convincing people of this.

The map is to the territory as the corporate media complex is to the Truth.

• The media used to be history as it was being written, a level 1 simulacrum, a simple descriptor.
• Then it was level 2, assumed to still be level 1 but from a reasonable perspective with obvious implications.
• Then it was level 3, promoted as level 1 but known by insiders to be level 2 or 3.
• Now it is level 4, known by most to be a tool, but still mistaken for level 1 or 2 by those not paying attention.

Why should I believe a level 4 simulacrum of the election results when all the superweapons are both at stake and in play?