Well put. My only counterpoint: sure, if you want to be 100% productive 100% of the time, don't succumb to distractions.
If you see coworkers chatting over a coffee, do you think, "wow, they're being totally unproductive. They don't need those coffees, they should be working!"? Of course not.
Consuming _and discussing_ news is a social activity. If your life is your work and nothing else, you'd be a very boring person.
Consuming information by choice allows us to express ourselves later with our opinions. Everyone should make an effort to learn about their surroundings to be an informed, contributing member of a democratic society. People say politicians are out of touch, but compared to a lot of Americans who willingly cut off their exposure to news, are they really?
It's actually funny reading your post, because you sound exactly like me when I was your age. As you get older, I think you'll learn to appreciate relationships with people more. The 18+ hour startup days lose their appeal.
Consuming information by choice allows us to express ourselves later with our opinions. Everyone should make an effort to learn about their surroundings to be an informed, contributing member of a democratic society. People say politicians are out of touch, but compared to a lot of Americans who willingly cut off their exposure to news, are they really?
If you are not an expert on a political issue. You are uninformed, period. You don't have time to write papers, do extensive research, email scientists. The reality of being humans is that we don't know most of everything and we can't. We specialize, not have uber intelligent men decide the fate of humanity.
This is the problem with politics. It's not that we are stupid, it's just that our brain can't store and think through the vast amount of knowledge needed to decide on multiple complex issues. To believe that we can build our society with informed voters in democracies is extremely naive.
Fortunately, most of the time voters choosing "representatives". As human creatures, we do tend to be better (yet far from optimal) at recognizing worthy people to follow.
I was wondering just that a few weeks ago. I found this perspective interesting to think about, even if it's impractical...
http://www.see.org/garcia/e02.htm
Lichtenstein, Singapore. Consumer capitalism is not tied to democracy. And it is consumer capitalism that is raising the world's desperate out of subsistence.
Democracy is a luxury good that rich nations purchase.
>To believe we can do anything else is the road back to Dachau.
I am arguing that democracies can't work due to the impossibility of having informed voters by the way our democracies are organized. The first step to the road of better governance is acknowledging human limitation and nature.
That's argument from ignorance. Just because we doesn't know a better solution doesn't mean there aren't any. Hackers build solutions. And as the above poster said, the first step to start building better practical solutions is to acknowledge the limitations of the resources and tools at our disposal.
Yes, and the US is a federal republic, with a very specific electoral system to boot...so many other types of democracy exist before we get to non-democracy lol
I don't think your point is at odds with the OP. Even though the OP essentially advocates cutting out all new sources from your life at the end of the article, the real point of the article is to disabuse you of the illusion that these news sources are contributing to your productivity. So, if you want to keep up with the news so you can participate in water cooler discussions and build your social network[1], that's fine. But if you are spending large fractions of your time reading news because you think it will somehow improve your productivity, or even make you more informed, you're fooling yourself.
[1] I mean your actual social network, in the sense we all used that term before Facebook came along.
If you see coworkers chatting over a coffee, do you think, "wow, they're being totally unproductive. They don't need those coffees, they should be working!"? Of course not.
Consuming _and discussing_ news is a social activity. If your life is your work and nothing else, you'd be a very boring person.
Consuming information by choice allows us to express ourselves later with our opinions. Everyone should make an effort to learn about their surroundings to be an informed, contributing member of a democratic society. People say politicians are out of touch, but compared to a lot of Americans who willingly cut off their exposure to news, are they really?
It's actually funny reading your post, because you sound exactly like me when I was your age. As you get older, I think you'll learn to appreciate relationships with people more. The 18+ hour startup days lose their appeal.