Only news
The latest events that are reported to us make up the news—and the default spirit of the news is that it is bad. Saying “bad news” is itself redundant. Good news is seldom reported on—not because it is rare, but because it is too common, I would contend. It doesn’t hold an audience’s attention to report that planes arrived on time, for instance. That represents someone else’s good fortune, and it doesn’t otherwise satisfy any inner needs. We find it more pertinent to learn of someone else’s bad fortune—and to try to figure out how it befell them, or how they brought it upon themselves.
This bias to the negative is adaptive. Our species (like all the other surviving species) has persisted by being risk averse to a significant degree. We tend to move away from things that put our lives and our families’ lives at risk. Our senses are on high alert for threats and danger. We want to learn about what dangers to avoid. That’s the news that’s important to us.
To imagine ourselves as our ancient predecessors, we didn’t care if the cavemen next door had a great dinner yesterday—not if we didn’t have a share of the meal. We did want to know about a sabertooth cat eating local big game, though. That information was more relevant and potentially useful to staying alive.
None of this is meant to overstate the case. The negativity bias has its uses, but it is something to be aware of rather than necessarily embraced. There’s a lot of bad news because that’s what we tend to be drawn to it. Purveyors of news are just satisfying the demand. The modern world, especially in the developed nations, is not as perilous as it’s made out to be. It’s nothing like the dangers faced by our forebears. Yet it’s easy to see how the bias could become a basis for mental torment, though. The bias amplifies the bad news no matter what.
Much of my thinking on this has been influenced by The Power of Bad by Roy Baumeister and John Tierney, a book that is organized in chapters about different aspects of this bias. One is about bad news and the modern media. Ironically, another is about negative online reviews, and how these tend to be elevated above positive reviews—and the top two reviews of their book are negative ones at the site Goodreads! So here’s my negative review of those negative reviews: the first has an alternative theory of mind that appears to revolve around gender, the second states that the reader didn’t finish the book.
At any rate, those reviews aside, I found the book interesting, but admit that it helped to organize a set of my own thoughts about negativity. It scratched a mental itch for me, as it were.
Of course, none of this will matter in the near future, when AI chatbots take over the writing of book and product reviews, the books themselves, and this newsletter. Then we’ll have the time to return to our troglodyte roots, worrying about the caveman or -woman next door, and why s/he has no reason to lead such a happy and carefree existence.
OC 1/24/23
For the benefit of some potential readers, the AI chatbot creating the following is labeling it TLDR, or to save on letters, T.M.W., and advising that they proceed, or not, according to how desperate they may be for entertainment, 'cause there's really no news here. But perhaps that last is an unnecessary redundancy that wasn't eliminated in initial de-bugging. It will be looking into that shortly...
The good news, fwiw, is that after thoroughly reviewing this latest from our esteemed host and observer of the human condition, I can find nothing negative to say about it. And the bad news is... that I can find nothing negative to say about it, which likely makes what I'm attempting to say here a whole lot less interesting and attractive to any human beings lurking about these environs. Apologies.
In fact, *not* knocking this is necessary if I-of-questionable-intelligence am to say what I find relevant here, since I'm in complete agreement with our resident flesh and bone oracle on all his points, and my own being: that by the time the AI created by the so-called real thing takes over this space completely, which it one day certainly will, by then it will likely have taken over a whole lot of other stuff, some of a bit more import, and, while being much more efficient but in reality not any smarter than those who created it, it will eventually make a miscalculation, misinterpret a piece of data - make a mistake, if you will - and push that big red button, after which, once the smoke clears, those of the real thing who're still here will have a more than ample opportunity to return to their roots, troglodyte or otherwise. And also to question not only why the guy in the next cave over has a much better cut of meat - or tastier selection of roots and bugs - on his table, but also to question the intelligence of the invention of same of a non-human variety, and the placing of so much human faith in it for the really important stuff.
Of course, being able to point to a smoldering pile of hardware once chocked full of software consisting of non-human intelligence as the culprit will have the distinct advantage of humans being able to relieve themselves of the responsibility for current circumstances, which is what they've always done anyway. So, in the end, it will likely be just business as usual to the very end, even though they like to think they're far too intelligent for that.
Afternoon all...
I don't know. I have been avoiding "bad news" big time recently, and was never a big fan. I always like The Optimist stories in WA PO, and the NY Magazines positive ones way more. But , it might be both that I tend to internalize bad stuff , not on purpose, it just does that to me, and because I just generally feel better when I focus on the positive and good overall.
Plus, I have survived several possible life threatening things, and came out ok, I may be over confident...