 It ain't May 40 here So have you read that? Last of Tom Wolf's novels back to blood it said in Miami. It's about immigration and one of the main characters is a news reporter for Miami Herald John Smith and Tom Wolf writes about the type of people who become news reporters He says news reporters are created at age six when they first go to school and this rings true to me in In the schoolyard boys immediately divide into two types immediately There are those who have the will to be daring and dominate and those who don't have it Those who don't like the journalist John Smith here spent half their early years trying to work out a Modest with Andy with those who do and anything short of subservience will be okay There are boys from the weaker side of the divide who grew up with the same dreams as the stronger And the boys standing before me John Smith is one of them these weak boys to dream of power money fame and beautiful lovers The boys like this grew up Instinctively realizing that language Is a sword or a gun? So I remember in second grade. That's why I entered school second grade I read a poem and like suddenly people around me were affected by is like whoa, I can write things that affect people and I realized schoolfully that language has the power to achieve things Well, maybe not so much to achieve things is to tear things down including people Including the boys who come out on the strong side of the dividing line. That's what liberals are theology economic social justice There's a nothing but their prom outfits their politics were set for life in the schoolyard at age six They were the weak and forever after they resented the strong. That's why so many journalists are liberals and then Noah Smith confirms this view he's an economics columnist for Bloomberg and He tweets getting picked down by red nicks as a kid sucked Yeah, I got picked down a little bit at school, but I didn't enter a public school till 10th grade So there wasn't wasn't so much bullying in the private schools. I went to So what did liberal gen X's and Millennials do we moved out? We didn't stay and work to build a real nation out of the people who gave us a hard time We got college degrees allowed us to escape to better places So a little overview of the type of people who become journalists and then interesting op-ed in The Guardian today It's an excerpt from a new book That's called the art of thinking clearly better thinking better decisions by Rolf dobelli He says news is bad for you and giving up reading it will make you happier So you've heard of the term evolutionary mismatch So we were we did not evolve in circumstances where there are there are supermarkets around like we evolved Where food was scarce and so that when you could get food you ate food now we live with an abundance of food and so our Evolutionary tendencies to see food eat food consume food, you know stuff food down because we never know where a food will come next and to you know consume food with Carbohydrates and you know things that excite our taste buds just eat as much as we want Obviously, that's not so good for us now But the news told me that everyone should get vaxed or they're bad people Isn't that good for me? interesting maybe I do think that every pretty much everyone should get vaccinated and That's that's my thought but I don't really know enough to to get all self-righteous about so this essay says news is bad for your health So maybe it's an evolutionary mismatch like the the vast abundance of you know cheap carbs and junk food and how it Just excites our taste buds, but it's really bad for us so and Then maybe like the serotonin hits that we get when we check Twitter or social media Maybe that's that's bad for us too or picking up our phones. So I Think I pick up my phone about 40 times a day Based I respect the acknowledgement of relative ignorance So it news is bad for your health it leads to fear and aggression and Hinders your creativity and your ability to think deeply the solution top stop consuming it altogether So I admit that some of the time I think you know what the hell am I doing here? I'm not I'm not saying anything that that People can't get elsewhere. I'm wasting my time and then I got a comment on it just a throwaway video I think I made on Friday I think I just made a five minute video less than five minutes on the advantages Just trying to understand how the world works versus being in a state of judgment And they're absolutely times of being in a state of judgment. It is inescapable We can't help judging right that is inherent to who we are as human beings But it's all about the percentages Do you walk around outraged and and judging? 90% of the time do you walk around outraged and judging, you know, maybe 5% of the time? So I think I've shifted over the past year or two or three into spending more time just trying to understand how the world works Trying to understand how power works understand why people act the way they do why people think the way they do rather than trying to Be an activist Negative self-talk about what you're not good enough is the root of paralysis and demotivation well, I Didn't earlier video about the the benefits of depression and I don't think I'm depressed But I just realized I was expending a lot of energy in a way that wasn't productive on my like three-hour daily Livestreams and so it took a step back. I'm just I'm no longer making that expenditure and I'm doing many fewer streams briefest dreams and Just just thinking about what will be my my path ahead So recognizing what's not working. I think it's valuable and also recognizing what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are and coming to terms with endeavors that are not productive and And taking a pause from endeavors that are not productive to maybe direct yourself in a more productive way I think is is useful. So I got a comment yesterday that that really moved me from the reasonable and responsible guy so he's a heredity Jew on the East Coast and He said about my understanding versus judgment stream You have influenced my thinking and behavior toward more trying to understand and accept reality as it is or trying to learn and to understand others thinking and perspective and Less lecturing less preaching less presuming to judge Nearly seeking to have my views and biases confirmed and corroborated. It is a constant challenge. Wow. So I did this like four-minute Stream on understanding versus judgment and these one person seems to have been positively affected by this stream of my thinking and Party but says we missed the full Monty 40 university stream Perhaps a weekly traditional show could keep the community and fan base engaged We sit in anticipation could so eagerly awaiting the supreme analysis of moral leader So I'm sure I'll do some longer streams in the future. I just don't have to rush into it right now No one streams Tucker Carlson monologues better than Luke Ford so this is a Yeah, negative self-talk about why you're not good enough is the root of paralysis and demotivation that's interesting So I think what you're referring to here is this this underlying feeling of lack of self-worth But recognizing your limitations and what you're not good at and recognizing what you you are good at I think is wisdom, but say the feeling that you're unworthy to share your views on YouTube or thinking that you're you know, unworthy of having a larger life or a more prosperous life or the not worthy of You're going out and being social and making friends. Yeah, I think obviously that's The root of paralysis and demotivation, but I think there's really adaptive time for paralysis and demotivation I think there are times when we should stop exerting ourselves stop pursuing things and just be paralyzed and just think and Just let go of motivation get into paralysis and just think about the new ways that you want to exert yourself and Think through what would be the implications if I exert myself in this way with this negatively affect other areas of my life So, yeah, I think there's a time for sadness. There's a time for introspection and there's a time for not taking action I think a young person is better served by irrational exuberance than awareness of their limitations. I In some cases, yes in some cases no, so I'm not sure I'm Think I'm 50-50 on that certainly don't do anything that could have serious long-term negative consequences for you Like jumping off a bridge from a great height So news is bad for your health as a guardian leads to fear and aggression Hinders your creativity and your ability to think deeply the solution stop consuming it all together and Ironwood says incoming hurricane will not hit me because I do not watch the news So this is an essay in the Guardian so good on the Guardian for publishing this past few decade Decades the fortunate among us have recognized this hazards of living with an overabundance of food obesity diabetes We have started to change our diets. Yeah, this is a product of evolutionary mismatch But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body So, yeah, I'm struck by the number of smart people who tell me they can no longer concentrate on reading a book Because their mind has been programmed from social media to just get things in bite-sized doses and Because I continue to enjoy reading books This isn't my experience, but I'm surprised how many people tell me they can no longer read books The news is easy to digest. I remember on my journalistic training. We were taught to Present the news as if to an eighth grader to a typical eighth grader That's kind of the level that you're you're aiming at so the news media feeds a small bites of trivial matter true tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking generally true and Ricardo says I can't wait for the paragraph where right wing news is more harmful than normal news. Well, you can you can Know that there is no such paragraph in this essay So the media feeds a small bites of trivial matter tidbits that don't concern our lives and don't require thinking That's why we experience no saturation. That's a good point So you can eat carbs and not be full but if you eat a steak you'll feel full if you eat meat You feel full if you eat food that's heavy and fat and protein generally speaking you'll feel full So I think news generally speaking is like cheap carbs and a book is like eating a steak So unlike reading books and long magazine articles which require thinking We can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright colored candies for the mind I think there's something to that Today we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food You're beginning to Recognize how toxic news can be If you eat properly cooked lentils, you will not be full So I grew up on lentils. I think I can get full on lentils, but I do think being vegetarian sucks I regret that I'm a vegetarian. I'm a self-hating vegetarian news misleads and So this is an example borrowed from Nicholas Nassim to lead a car drives over a bridge and the bridge collapses But what does the news focus on it focuses on the car and the person in the car where he came from where he planned to go How he experienced the crash if he survived, but that's not particularly important What's what's relevant is the structural stability of the bridge? Right. That's the underlying risk that has been lurking There and in other bridges, but the car falling off the bridge. That is flashy. That is dramatic It's a person so it's not abstract and it's news. It's cheap to produce So need news leads us to walk around with this completely wrong risk map in our heads Terrorism is overrated as a there's a threat to your life Chronic stress is probably underrated the collapse of Lehman brothers is overrated fiscal Irresponsibility is underrated astronauts are overrated nurses are underrated so We're not rational enough to be exposed to the news watching an airplane crash on TV is going to change your attitude toward that risk regardless of its real Probability if you think you can compensate with the strength of your own inner contemplation You are wrong bankers and economists have powerful incentives to compensate for news hazards have shown that they cannot So the only solution cut yourself off from news consumption entirely Wow so every day I start off with the dredge report and then go to the LA Times then the New York Times and the Washington Post and Steve Saylor than the Wall Street Journal And they also read the website outside the Beltway several times a week News is irrelevant out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you've read in the last 12 months name one That allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life your career or your business I think this is overstated. I think I frequently find Insightful articles that enable me to make Better decisions. Yeah, I need to learn to eat meat. That's a failing the consumption of news is irrelevant to your life But people find it difficult to recognize what's relevant It's much easier to recognize what's new the relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of our current age Media organizations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of competitive advantage. That's true They do program like get informed so you make better decisions Many people fall for that. We're anxious when we're cut off from the news In reality news consumption places us at a complete Competitive disadvantage the less news you consume the bigger advantage you have I think there's a dramatic difference between watching news on TV We're just getting news on Facebook or Twitter versus reading like the articles So if more information leads to higher economic success, we would expect journalists to be at the top of the pyramid I think there's a fallacy there. So Just because journalists Producing news and news Create create some sort of advantage. It doesn't mean the people who create the advantage You're going to be at the top of the pyramid News is toxic to your body It constantly triggers the limbic system. So panicky stories spur the release of cortisol. That's the stress hormone This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release of growth hormones So your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress when you follow the news so high Cortisol levels cause impaired digestion lack of growth cell hair bone No, this nurse and susceptibility to infection and other side effects include fear aggression tunnel vision and desensitization News increases cognitive errors news feeds the mother of all cognitive errors confirmation bias So what the human being does best as Warren Buffett is interpreting all new information So that prior conclusion remains intact. I just heard that know if it's true But 80% of reality we either distort or ignore so that we can continue feeling safe So news exacerbates our tendency towards confirmation bias we become prone to overconfidence. We take stupid risks. We misjudge opportunities Our brains crave stories that make sense even if they don't correspond to reality Any story that makes sense is one that corresponds to our worldview To any journalist who writes the market move because of X is an idiot I've fed up with this cheap way of explaining the world Livestream you return to me consumption look huge ratings More gesticulation, please animated Ford is best for Watching COVID news puts you more at risk for COVID by stressing you out and compromising your immune system with the news you lose When these when did you start thinking you should eat meat? reading Nathan Coffness he wrote a deconstruction of analyses that say vegetarianism is perfectly healthy. He made the point that everyone studying these These these matters about vegetarianism that they usually have a bias towards vegetarianism and so he pointed out the cognitive and health Problems with being vegetarian. So I read that from Coffness Shortly after I read his critique of Kevin McDonald's work. So that's that started me thinking. Hey being vegetarian is not so healthy so for years For years people told me you should eat me like that's where you got chronic fatigue syndrome I just ignored them just ignored them and now Now I'm realizing that they're right And News inhibits thinking thinking requires concentration concentration requires uninterrupted time news is designed to interrupt you News stories like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes news makes us shallow thinkers news severely affects the memory So there are two types of memory long-term memory And our capacity for that is nearly infinite working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data The path from short-term to long-term memory is a choke point in the brain Anything you want to understand must pass through that choke point If this passageway is disrupted nothing gets through because news disrupts concentration it weakens comprehension Online news has an even worse impact and comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a story increases Because whenever a hyperlink appears your brain has to make the choice not to click which is in itself distracting So news is an intentional interruption system News works like a drug. I know this if I start watching a little bit of a game It becomes really important to me to know how the game turns out. So it was news stories developed We want to know how they continue. We've got hundreds of arbitrary Stories in our head. So this craving becomes increasingly compelling and hard to ignore here if I start watching a game I have to know how it turned out and It's hard to stop watching it so The more news we consume the more we exercise The neural circuits in our brain devoted to skimming and to multitasking While we ignore those neural circuits used for reading deeply thinking deeply with profound focus So most news consumers even if they used to be avid book readers have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books After four or five pages they get tired. They're concentration vanishes. They become restless It's not because they're old because their schedules have become more demanding It's because the physical structure of their brains has changed everything we do affects the structure of our brains So neurons that wire together fire together News waste time. So if you spend say an hour a day Watching the news that's half a day a week wasted news makes us passive news stories are overwhelmingly about things that we cannot influence The daily repetition about things we can't act upon makes us passive It grinds us down until we accept a worldview that is pessimistic desensitized sarcastic and fatalistic Scientific term is learned hopelessness So maybe news consumption is contributed to depression and news kills creativity All right, people tend to produce the most creative works at a young age When their brains enjoy a wide uninhabited space that emboldens them to come up with novel ideas Don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie not a writer not a composer not a mathematician a doctor a scientist Musician designer architect or painter, but I do know a bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs You want to come up with old solutions read the news if you're looking for new solutions don't Bye. Bye