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STOP Watching NEWS Right Now! Why NEWS is Bad for You - FutureIQ

6,650 views Wait, is this logic right? • Mar 16, 2024
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Slog Reference: Stop Watching The News

Description

You need to stop consuming news to protect your physical and mental health. This week in FutureIQ we make the case for not consuming news. And that's not limited to TV news, but all forms of news that you consume. Yes. Consume less news to stay sane and protect your health!

Stay informed with Navin's Substack - FutureIQ: https://futureiq.substack.com/

Episodes Referenced:
World is Improving - https://youtu.be/2l0jnwf-2kA
The Internet Is Making You Stupid - Echo Chambers & Content Curation: https: //youtu.be/ftSJN9R-IY4

Recommended Episode:
Pollution is Making You Dumb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANvfe_pPg-Q

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

#futureiq #news #breakingnews

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Transcript

stop watching the news huh it is toxic for your mind as well as for your body okay okay and you can stop watching the news and still not become an uninformed idiot okay in fact it is recommended that you should how do I stop watching the news and not become uninformed okay first of all let us Define what news means okay okay what is news news is stuff that happens in the world that I need to know about okay that is one definition of news okay things you should know about to be a responsible Global citizen okay right a different definition of news is the things they show on news channels and newspapers okay okay okay I get you you realize
there are two different things they are right yeah the first one is like probably one or 2% of the second one yeah right and we need to be clear on which news we are talking about right I asked this question I suggested on x Twitter that uh stop watching the news and there was a big argument because half the people were talking about the first kind of news and the other half we're talking about the second kind of news right I like the name X Twitter because it's no longer Twitter it's now X Twitter so here is the thing sure the first kind of news which you should know right that's all good and you should be
aware of that and all that we can all agree on itre but most of the news on news channels newspaper papers is the second kind which is bad for you in fact it is making you less informed wait how is it making me less informed it is still news okay let's take an example Right comes from En Talib the philosopher and investor okay so suppose a car goes over a bridge and the bridge collapses oo right like a huge amount of the news is going to be about who that person was and what his family is like and what the make of the car was and a whole bunch of things right the things that really need to be discussed
structural reasons like how did the system that we have set up to prevent this from happening why did it fail that'll all be a little vague won't even be discussed in detail right but human life is important and and from a journalistic background focusing on the human life telling the story of the human life allows you to draw in the attention then you can direct towards the structural reasons public policy you are just explaining why the news sucks you're not say right that if you tell the things that are important nobody will pay attention I completely agree okay right that is why the news sucks and you should stop watching it right okay so take a different uh set of
things right okay news causes us why it is making you less informed is that it is causing us to have a very wrong impression of what the real risks out there in the world are right like for example when you go out on your vehicle you are worried about an accident right more likely you're going to die of the pollution right but the accident is exciting and makes headlines the pollution most of the days it doesn't except pollution kills or a longer term accident kills right now same thing terrorism right huge news items kills a tiny number of people okay whereas but it's the terrorism part that is the news not the no it's the terrorism part which
is engaging and interesting to people but it is not the news you should know in this much detail okay okay right so other examples here are collapse of lemon brothers or uh Malia right that is over big news but just generally the NP of Banks and all that is like you know the boring news most people don't uh read about right astronauts big news nurses boring astronauts are important they are the next generation of explorers once there were Sailors now there are astronauts without the nurses there won't be a next Generation okay I'm not I'm not saying nurses are not important I'm saying astronauts are also important you can't call them overrated yeah but the news if
you read the news you will think that only astronauts are important right that's the problem with the news okay and generally the idea of risk is wrong right think about it everyone thinks that the world is getting worse and worse and worse and worse right over the last 30 40 50 years we did an entire episode on this proving that the world is actually getting better it's just that the news is getting worse okay so take a look at that episode yeah so here is the problem with the news right like imagine somebody investing in the stock market okay okay so the news is like the every little movement second by second movement of the stock market oh my God
it is up oh my God it is down oh my God it is up oh my God it is down reading the news is like a day trader in a world where mutual fund right you put it in a mutual fund and you forget it for two years you're not supposed to look at theman congratulations you managed to successfully piss off both our stock market and enthusiasts and our news enthusiasts by just one example well done well if you want to piss off there are more people right news is like sugar okay it makes us feel good it is easy to digest and it gives us diabetes in the long term but wait sugar actually
affects health and it has been proven yes news also affects your health you said that in the beginning I want to know how first of all let's start with the fact that news makes you depressed right there is news about genocide yeah right all over the world currently and a lot of the news will be wrong okay or I mean at least it'll be some biased reporting showing just one side of the story right and the people on the news talking about it and just going on and on and giving like very strong opinions will usually be very uninformed people the real experts who really understand what's going on in the ground there are not the ones talking on the news they
are quietly doing things in the background okay understanding what every little detail of what's going on out there in Palestine and Israel and all of that right Ukraine and Russia as well still happening right as of this it doesn't really change your life a whole lot okay there's nothing you can do about it other than just getting stressed and depressed about it right and when I say stressed it is actually causing surges of cortic steroids in your body and those corticosteroids are causing your body to do things like slow down digestion don't produce insulin and make the fat cells bigger and things like that it's actually changing your body okay wow so news is technically
worse than sugar in that sense oh yeah it is also affecting your immune system so very likely that if you're like continuously a News Junkie and getting stressed with the news you are prone to getting infect sections more often okay that is interesting I do remember when uh I was a heavy Doom scroller during the pandemic there was a serious bout of depression that I went through just looking at all the Doom and Gloom on my timelines uh but here's my worry if say I take your advice and I stop watching the news yeah won't I become a frog in the well yeah so I mean the point is that I am saying stop watching the news
channels and newspapers right stop consuming everything that they are throwing at you okay you still want to be informed of that tiny percent of important news so you have to figure out ways of filtering your inputs okay so what I do is I follow a few people on Twitter and on uh some WhatsApp groups where I know that sensible people who only forward the important news okay I subscribed to a few newsletters and I read those religiously uh and those are people who will look at all the news from the last one week and then talk about just the four items that are worth uh talking about right so you basically curate your news through curators of the
news yes so for me I'm very thankful to those people that they are like the soldiers standing on our borders right they are taking the risks so that I don't have to of all the toxicity of the news and you should get this curator curated newsletter from na called future IQ we'll drop a link in the uh show notes in the description brilliant newsletter really writes well right so I mean basically the point is instead of spending 90 minutes on the news every day you probably want to spend 5 minutes okay you will be much better informed okay but uh fair I curate the news I look at certain news sources uh will I stay informed though yeah yeah yeah okay
I find that I am actually more informed than my friends who actually watch the news a lot you mentioned WhatsApp groups and WhatsApp groups have been known to be centers of disinformation that's why I'm asking yeah so again I stay away from WhatsApp groups where most of the discussion is around the news as it is right I only stick to the ones which are discussing the news as it should be right the important ones I stay away from the other groups so you need to curate your WhatsApp groups also that is actually the big question because how do you curate a WhatsApp group I mean it's the same thing how do you curate should I follow this person or not should I
subscribe to this newsletter or not and should I be on this WhatsApp group or not just look at what fraction of the stuff in there is like just daily news items that sound exciting but are not useful and what fraction will be useful even one year from now or conversely look at what was being discussed in there one year ago and see how much of it is still useful and relevant right good point good point although uh one month most WhatsApp groups that I was referring to are in the disinformation category or the misinformation category and stay away from all of those yeah but then they become Echo Chambers and they Fester lots of nonsense things but yeah
there is other ways to deal with them he's right to and he's always right he's naen I'm Shri Kant so what is our takeaway for this episode one stop obsessing over current news items right most of them are like you know hourly stock market updates yeah in the long run they do not matter right so F stop focusing on current events focus on voltage events okay figure high voltage events figure out ways of staying informed briefly 5 minutes a day should be enough right and of course if you find something a topic which is going to be of interest for a very long time then you can go into the depth there focus on depth rather than
just knowing little little little little about a large number of things but I want to show off among friends thankfully I have this wonderful Channel called future IQ where I get to learn a lot of things and you can show off with depth you don't have to show off with bread right focus on things which are important not urgent oh that's interesting important not urgent remind me of the Heisenberg Matrix look it up important not urgent H urgent requires action right correct and if you can't take that action then it's not urgent for you it's urgent for someone else exactly that's one of the most important things as far as news is concerned and if you liked what we are talking about
keep in mind that all of this is happening because bad news is stronger than good news so we have done an entire episode of bad is stronger than good how it applies in a whole lot of other areas check it out