Humans evolved to pay close attention to danger, but today that instinct is being overwhelmed by an endless supply of bad news from around the world. Researchers say the answer isn’t to stop following current events—it’s to build healthier habits around how, when, and where we get our news.
Oh, great… more bad news.
I want to read this in Marvin’s voice from HHTTG
Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they’ve got me delivering bad news.
Your brain wasn’t designed at all.
Iteratively designed by evolution to maximize survival, I guess
Yeah, so you could easily say we evolved to, or our brains evolved to… And so on
No, in fact that is still teleological.
Is it? I’d guess ‘to evolve to do smth’ doesn’t necessarily need to be teleological. IIRC the verb ‘evolve’ means the fittest getting randomly selected, no?
I think I understand where you’re coming from but I think it’s fundamentally different to ‘being designed with a specific goal in mind’
Evolved into or evolved with may reduce the implication of an intention.
- Our brains evolved into structures capable of supporting complex language.
- Our brains evolved with the capacity for complex language.
Don’t mind me, I had a prof who was uptight about it. I am sure it would only matter for formal or technical writing, like a scientific paper.
Oh I don’t mind. I just thought it an interesting question. I would like to know your prof’s reasoning for his insistence.
Because that would mean that ‘evolve’ can also be used teleologically, imho.
Since we’re all being pedantic about words here, we wouldn’t say our brains evolved to X because it’s our ancestors’ evolutionary precursor brains that evolved into ours.
I’d suggest we just back off the pedantry in general. The headline could have said “your brain isn’t suited to…” if they wanted to avoid the possible implication of a deity but I think we know what they were trying to say.
I just took issue with the very literal interpretation of the phrase “not designed for” and I couldn’t hold my tongue
well, my fingers, I guess
Yeah I dunno about design as much as iterative adaptations over incomprehensibly large periods of time.
Evolution did as much design as my socks design themselves to stay in their drawer. Evolution doesn’t design, it works with what it has and nothing else. It doesn’t even optimize because optimization requires choosing between options with intent. Evolution has zero intentions. Evolution creates un-“optimized” things that go extinct all the time, but it’s not because it “failed” at designing because that implies it “tried” to design, but because it’s not a designer, it can’t design. No design made fish have legs. No design gave elephants their tusks and no design gave flies their wings. Evolution won’t ‘design’ new vertebrae segments, but they still might happen—it just won’t be because of any design.
Natural selection is actually technically an optimisation algorithm. Its just a kind of crappy one that only ever finds local maximas because it can’t traverse valleys (the thing just dies). So we end up with optical receptors on the wrong side of our retina. Ooof.
Neanderthals evolved to traverse valleys just fine
And see where that got them!
I don’t mean literal valleys.
That was just my highly-evolved sense of humour
Settle down.
Figure of speech. Perhaps “optimized” would be more accurate?
Ok
And the people who are in charge and doing evil things know this and are using it to their advantage.
It’s literally written down as part of the playbook.
I remember when Majorie Taylor Greene left the government she made a comment about something regarding a playbook she was given when she first came to Congress. I wish someone would dig into that more because I’m fairly certain it contained things like how to belittle people when they ask serious questions or how to revert to whataboutisms as soon as you’re confronted with damning evidence.
There’s a book? A new one or is it just the usual suspects?
Project 2025 has a book.
I think Steve Bannon articulated the press blitz approach clearly even before that, back when he was a Trump inner circler, back in that farcical first term.
Amazing how much history rhymes.
Is Jar Jar the key to all of this?
How high are you
Right now? Not very much 😇
My brain was not designed for anything. It was not designed.
“The human mind has not adapted to this level of bad news”
Yet
I’m going to stare into the abyss until it blinks first
Sure it has, meet my brain’s healthy levels of bitter sarcasm and bitter cynicism!
I feel like it kind of has.
Otherwise, people who are about 40+ years old would all be driven mad by now.
Umm. I am driven mad.
That’s our secret, we just hide it well.
bro I just turned 40 and… it doesn’t seem far off
I think I was wrong, the human mind adapts on the fly however it needs to. I should have kept it closer to the original: “The human brain has not adapted to this level of bad news.” All of our minds have adapted, right, one way or another?
Your brain is one of the most artificial things in existence. How many years did you spend in formal education in one form or another? What is education other than a way of shaping a mind to a certain form?
That and, you know, all the microplastics in there.
They make it run faster. What are computer chips made of? Duh.
/S
That’s the mind, not the brain. The way I see it, the opposite mistake that I made elsewhere in the thread.
What do you think the mind is other than a physical thing directly molded by the environment around it?
I guess I consider the mind something that emerges from what the brain does. I’m sure it could be defined in other ways, though.
We must leave behind the fiction that a God created us. There is no God, we have no souls.
Don’t tell me that then, you’re just making it worse.
I’m not sure I understand what “build healthier habits around how, when and where we get our news” exactly means and how that would help. I mean if TACO drops bombs on little kids, I can’t think of how digesting this differently is going to be any healthier for me.
One thing I see a lot is the same event repackaged repeatedly with various headlines from different angles to elicit despair and outrage. If you heard about it once already, that is probably enough.
Spending an hour a day reading news from reputable sources is a lot healthier than doomscrolling questionable content for 8 hours on Reddit and Instagram.
If you say so, but he still diddled children.
It means that you are not in control of any of it. You can’t impact any of it meaningfully as a single force, at least in real time. People used to watch a “news hour” once a day. You could artificially recreate that, and then detatch for the other 23 hours using self control, muted phone notifications and browser filter extensions. And maybe your brain will thank you.
Of course you could have a separate rule for local alerts that may be more relevant, but local news is dying unfortunately, soo… You could probably just check in once a week to see how the surviving local paper verbatim reprints favorable press releases from the city’s PR person that they retain from the local municipal consultant group with a forgettable acronym.
What is the question here? You take kids to do your work?! Die! You even just slightly have sexual dreams about kids?! Die twice! Kids must be protected and sadly that doesn’t happen as much as you think. Anyhow.
Yooo, wtf?? Who the hell is having sexual dreams about kids? I mean if you are then it means you are probably sick and should get therapy for that. Help is available.
I am painfully aware.
Isn’t this the thing we are doing by being on Lemmy? My mental state is better when I scroll the feed here, as opposed to scrolling reddit.
I do both still, but I’m nearing the phase where Lemmy gets more attention.
It’s just fucked that I read too much so I might run out of content on Lemmy which pushes me to read the news then back to reddit untill I wake up again
You might take some of the time you’re doomscrolling and read a silly book. Not a lot, like 30 mins.
I’ve found my attention span destroyed now. I don’t read much any more at all, it’s kinda sad.
I think it’s also because I work from home and a commute used to isolate me and I’d be forced to read.
Hopefully not while driving.
lmao no, I hate driving … always the bus, train or subway. I can barely text and walk let alone text and drive.
I read books too.
Try this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You can keep clicking it too!
This is great, thank you!
Try this link: SOURCE: Government Degree College Kulgam https://share.google/5WYoNhBKEFePMIS9j
you only have to click once!
When you finally decide to leave reddit, remember to make some posts or comments inviting people to join lemmy
Oh no I’ve been banned so many times since the fascist took over
Don’t have an account anymore it’s not worth it. Lurking is fine. Mental health way better not being able to respond
It’s really bad now even just saying fascists should be punished gets you banned. Imagine that.
Here, I hope, I am free to say things. Even:
Hang Elon musk and burn Trump alive. Prosecute all of the evil people to the max. Kill dictators, fight the power. Bleed for each other and see the new sun rise.
I’ve noticed recently that reddit just makes you a random username and you can comment without having an account. I’m sure it’s still tracking you somehow but it’s kinda nice to still comment on something you’re looking up info for. I guess it makes sense with the AI modeling data usage now. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they have enough data now to weigh comments based on the information they have about each user. Like if someone works in IT their comments get a little bit higher accuracy scores in the IT subs and same for any profession and it’s corresponding sub.
I haven’t seen this and I don’t think I’ll ever return
We all know it’s been bad, getting worse
Really at the point where reddit lost its grimey subs and even dropped support for darknet market subs was the big tell
Then the API changes… I still miss relay
Does can go fuck himself and truly, the crowd on reddit now, meaning the current generation of Americans mostly, is completely and utterly retarded.
As a low support needs retard myself I tend to agree with you. But your use of our word makes me question your priorities. And I’ve been told that the word hasn’t been reclaimed enough even by my community to effectively use it this way yet. But we work towards a better tomorrow every day
Hey man, I was raised by a mother whose worked with mentally handicapped people all my life. People with down syndrome are awesome
I’m not American, and in my culture it’s ridiculous to “claim a word”. The people on reddit are not half as smart as the people I played with as a kid when I went to moms work like we often did. So excuse me but I’ll say it again
Reddit is full of actual retards
Not nice people like you that respond with correct spelling and in context. No, you are not retarded enough to claim the word in my opinion even if you could claim a word.
Sure it can be a derogatory term. But fuck man we need to be able to use language and have power words. It’s exactly the problem in America where everything is appropriated and nothing is allowed because me me me that culture is going to hell.
Actually I just realized I was completely wrong about the reddit thing, I just made a profile on a different email account and forgot, apparently it was just logging me into reddit automatically and I didn’t realize.
I’d argue that it was never designed for this much stimulation full stop. All the constant noise and things competing for attention all the time around you. Bad news is just the nasty icing on the cake.
The environment we have created is so fast-paced and complex that our brains are often in a constant state of overwhelm. We were never meant to be always available, always aware of everything and always caught in the belief that we have to react to everything at a time.
I remember coming back from a long backpacking trip, totally disconnected from the media. When I got back I couldn’t stand TV, especially commercials, for a while.
One of the reasons I LOATHE advertising. They are legitimately overstimulating all of society and manipulating their thoughts at the same time. They are in actual fact, driving the world into literal psychosis. These people are beyond evil.
Switching from Reddit to Lemmy did wonders for my mental health. Less time doom scrolling, more time to engage with my hobbies
I feel the opposite, my feed is almost entirely people describing how the world is falling apart, how communism is good but not that communism, and Linux
Absolutely, lemmy has such a downer vibe to it, it’s not doing me any good using this platform lately.
We need more jokes around Lemmy, this is all communism this and that gays blahblahblah trump yapyapyap, holy cow. Sometimes I can’t help but doomscroll on Reddit, missing the community and the jokes and the friends I had there.
Voyager has the ability to filter anything you want, the moment you see some toxic bad news you can remove a keyword. The only reason I haven’t banned .world outright is because there are meme channels
Yup. Everything is horrible according to Lemmy.
You have control over what you see in your feeds. I was talking more about the volume in content on my feeds here. Could’ve worded my post better.
I’m spending more time away from social media.
The gaming communities here are somehow even more miserable than reddit. I need different hobbies clearly.
I block the worst offenders from news feeds. Helps a lot.
I agree with you, but I also agree with people commenting. I think reddit and the other corporate social media have really got their algorithms tweaked in such a way to keep you addicted to scrolling their apps. And the addictive stimulation of doom scrolling part makes Lemmy better. But I also agree with the other posters. To paraphrase someone much smarter and funnier than me reality has a real downer bias to it lately.
I don’t engage with algorithmic content. I used Reddit through RSS and I browse Lemmy the same way.
The problem with doing that on Reddit is that there was so much trash in my feeds I ended up developing my own filter system to make scrolling through it manageable. It got to a point where it felt like I was spending more time blocking content than engaging with it. Lemmy’s smaller population means I’m spending less time reading and commenting, and spending more time doing other things with my life.
Title is true even without the last two words.
Honestly it’s true with just the first 5 words.
Right, but that’s not relevant to the point the article is trying to make.
But if you really think about it, only the first two words describe the problem perfectly
Its wild to see people type “this news isnt good for my mental health”. Like ignoring the planet dying is a price well paid for personal mental wellness. I guess we are doomed as a species. Its really humbling to learn our limits to change things.
The cognitive dissonance on display in this article is crazy. The idea that anyone should be concerned by the mental damaged caused by endless bad news before the impact of life in a world of bad news is just about the same as turning off smoke detectors in a fire to limit the stress they cause constantly going off (sorry I guess here it would be like asking people to build “healthier habits” about when they hear the alarm).
I think it would be more akin to your smoke detector going off anytime any other smoke detector in the world went off. Personally I probably would unplug my smoke detector if that’s how it operated. Just because it might one day alarm based on smoke in my house I’d have lost my mind and have no discernible way to tell beyond seeing or smelling the smoke myself at that point anyway.
We are talking about bad news in general. Nothing about this implys bad news world wide that does not effect a person but just bad news in general. So yes the alarm analogy still holds. This whole thing is just saying maybe putting ones head in the sand is better for your mental health, a statement that should be right from a dystopian sci fi novel.
I consciously unplug from the news for a week or two every few months when I can tell it’s getting to me, for my own mental well being. I don’t think that’s burying my head in the sand. I’m no use to anybody if I don’t take care of myself also. The bad news is magnified because it’s at everyone’s finger tips, from all over the world. When I was growing up you’d get most news from a newspaper and the weekend edition would contain more far reaching stuff but for the most part it was local happenings and major national events with the rare content talking about stuff going on around the globe. Now it’s a constant shot in the arm of everything going on everywhere all the time.
You shutting off is quite literally “putting your head in the sand”, but the thing is that is fine for things like a vacation or retreat. Here the idea is that you would control your head in the sand state continuously, effectively siloing your news to only things you want (unhealthy and dangerous) and making a lot of extra work (more stress) for you just to be less informed.
But the news isn’t really like that, though. Like, currently my news feed has multiple items on the aftermath of Trump’s Lincoln Reflecting Pool project. That is something on the other side of the continent with no impact on my life and which I cannot do anything about. Every local murder gets a news story, even though most individuals are much more at threat from other things. Apes together strong, but maybe not this together.
This is a problem I struggle with philosophically. I have lived in the US with a degree of privilege and I feel the price for that should include knowing how the proverbial sausage is made, that is, knowing all the crap that is being done to allow me to live in (meager) comfort.
It’s Poor Things cranked up to eleven. The British empire is holding the beer of the American one. It’s just too much.
The continual rush of news, propelled by the addictive properties of the YouTube algo, have driven me quite mad, albeit, I suffer from behavioral health problems already. I haven’t found a balance to this.
I feel like, between starting to pay attention to politics in 2000 (also starting puberty), 9/11, the ensuing rise of authoritarianism, trump v1 and trump v2, I’ve achieved levels of depression and anxiety that have propelled me into a kind of nirvana.
Ultimately, I don’t want the human race to end, but the human race seems to. Why try fighting that?
I just stopped following a lot of it. Even reputable places resort to hyperbole. I switched off for my own mental health. I still know what’s going on. I do not discuss it on social media.
Ultimately, to handle the fact that things are going to shit, you either choose, despair, ignorance or indifference. The last was my choice.
I find that filtering out where you get your news from, and specifically limiting how much you delve into social media discussions about it, definitely helps.
I find that reading headlines from the news wire services (AP, Reuters, etc) helps a lot in getting simple news that doesn’t delve into the clickbait bullshit of other sites. That and I specifically avoid opinion pieces. I got plenty of my own opinions; I don’t need some other assholes opinions too.
Its about the junkfood. News should be dry and chalky. Not only is it easier to process (rationally), you tend to just stop consuming when you feel done.
I tend to mostly browse my local city/regional news, some of which have comments on the articles, which is the cesspool you expect but sometimes entertaining. I’ll comment on some articles on Lemmy but otherwise don’t really participate in social media discussions of news unless a friend specifically messages me an article.
Ultimately, to handle the fact that things are going to shit, you either choose, despair, ignorance or indifference. The last was my choice.
you’ve missed a important option.
True and that is valid to many. I’ve done my fair share of personal sacrifice. It’s more than reasonable to take a break to preserve your mental health.
didnt say it wasnt. you just missed the option for others. =)
You’re doing a massive disservice to the people all throughout history who have striven to make life better for others.
Choosing to filter out content from your social media feed isn’t necessarily about denial or apathy. For many people, it’s a conscious decision to preserve their mental clarity and avoid being constantly pulled into emotionally charged, tribal, or manipulative discourse. Being well-informed doesn’t require immersing yourself in an endless stream of outrage, nor does stepping back from that mean you’re turning a blind eye to anything.
There’s a difference between ignoring reality and choosing how and when to engage with it. Most of what passes for “news” online isn’t a sober presentation of facts or ideas - it’s performance, manufactured outrage, and algorithm-driven noise. If someone wants to stay sane and focus on things they can actually influence in their immediate life, I don’t see that as sticking their head in the sand. I see it as setting healhy boundaries in an environment that’s often designed to provoke rather than inform.
People aren’t morally obligated to be constantly exposed to negativity just to prove they care. In fact, thoughtful action tends to come from those who can step back from the noise and think clearly, not from those who are perpetually consumed by it.
Why would how I mentally process news have any effect on what others have done previously? The people fucking the world up hold that responsibility.
I could feel the weight of that flail around aimlessly, or end myself, but what is that going to achieve? Its just dumb. Wise folk pick their battles.
Heroes are heroes because they’re extraordinary. No shame in not being extraordinary.
I find my days to be much better overall when I don’t spend a lot of time online over an extended period. I’m more productive, more creative, and less anxious. I still find out all the impactful stuff, anyway.
Its not like knowing the bad news as it happens helps me in any way, genuinely, so why bother wasting all my bandwidth on it?
My dumb monkey brain is meant to tell five kinds of poisonous berries from the one edible kind. What does it do with an international pedophile ring, climate collapse, and rising inequality? Shuts down is what it does.
