Quit the News? 15 Thought Experiments That May Change Your Mind

Try these 15 thought experiments to decide for yourself whether you should quit the news, consume less of it, or start following it more.

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Quit the News? Or Acquit the News?

Should you quit the news because it’s the junk food of your information diet? Or is the news necessary for being an in-touch citizen in a democratic society?

I sure as heck can’t tell you the answer. But I think it’s worth asking yourself these questions from time to time.

In my case, that time is now. With the chaos and uncertainty caused by the pandemic, I’ve been following the news more than ever. I even signed up for Twitter.

Worried that my news habit was causing information diabetes, I put down the newspaper, stopped refreshing my Twitter feed, and researched the pros and cons of following the news.

Unsurprisingly, most of what I found was as one-sided as the news itself.

I don’t need someone telling me what to do. You don’t either. So I compiled the following thought experiments to decide whether I should quit the news and help you do the same.

Thought Experiments on Whether to Quit the News

Big earth and small earth
More earth, more news!

The Girthier Earth

(This thought experiment comes from Rolf Dobelli, author of Stop Reading the News.)

Imagine the earth measured twice as much in diameter so that the surface area is four times as large. Assume this bigger earth has the same population density so there would be four time as much happening and four times as much news to keep up with. Would you up your news consumption to keep up?

I definitely wouldn’t consume four times more news. I would barely consume any more at all. So if I could get by knowing one quarter less of what’s going on in this bigger world, I guess I could do the same on the earth I’m on.

This got me thinking: What if the earth were a million times smaller? I wouldn’t consume a million times less news. I’d still want to know a bare minimum of what’s going on around me.

↳ Conclusion: I should focus more on what’s happening closest to me, i.e. my one-millionth of the world, and less on the rest of the world, however big it may be.

Reading the news at breakfast
Big news from the brain surgeon general this morning!

The Brain Surgeon General

Imagine there’s a “brain surgeon general.” This person is responsible for setting guidelines for a healthy information diet. How much news would they recommend as part of that diet?

I feel like the news would be the carbohydrates of an information diet.

  • Whole is healthier. The more you process and simplify, the less healthy it gets. News needs to be full of fiber and hard to digest to be healthy.
  • Measured amounts. Too much becomes unhealthy, even for the healthiest news.
  • Refined snacks are bad. Over-processed and simplified news is addictive and bad for your health. You can devour a lot of it without feeling full.
  • You can survive without it. Maybe even thrive, the cognitive ketogenic community would argue.

↳ Conclusion: No more on-the-go news snacking for me. If I want news, I should find some nutritious stuff and take the time to sit down and make a meal of it.

The $100-a-Time Times

Imagine the only way of getting the news was from a personalized newspaper. It contained all the relevant news (whatever that means to you) between the time that you last read the news up until now. It costs $100. How often would you get it? And how long would you spend reading it?

I’m cheap and I blog for a living, so $100 is a lot for me. I would never buy this paper. Maybe if it were $10, I’d get it once a month. More likely, I’d mooch off of family and friends who want to pay for updates.

↳ Conclusion: If I won’t put my money where my attention is, it’s not worth it.

Me not learning anything taking in the news
Not the most studious position.

The Lazy Learner

To get an A+ at school you can’t just listen to your teacher and skim through your textbooks. You have to study: take notes; summarize; challenge your knowledge with practice tests. So shouldn’t you do the same if you feel the necessity to learn about important topics in the news?

I have little interest in taking notes on or actually learning more about most of what I see in the news. So I guess that means most news I consume is more for entertainment than for knowledge.

↳ Conclusion: I should pull up a notebook and research instead of pulling up the news if my objective is to become an informed citizen.

The Twenty-Fifth Hour

If you were given a twenty-fifth hour every day. You can only use it for unproductive personal entertainment. No studying or socializing. How would you use it?

I would probably watch more TV and movies and read more page-turner fiction. I would definitely not consume any more gossipy news.

↳ Conclusion: I shouldn’t go to the news when I want to relax and be entertained.

David and Goliath
Who would be David and who would be Goliath in a mental battle between a news-follower and non-news-follower?

The Battle of the Brains

Instead of fighting a war, two countries decide to each nominate an intellectual champion for a head-to-head battle of the brains. Whoever wins, wins the war on behalf of their country. Let the most eloquent, intelligent, and erudite win! One champion spends hours a day learning through the news. The other trains their brain news-free. Who do you think comes out on top?

If it’s my country, I’m hoping the news-free brainiac’s on my side.

But maybe there’s an even more optimal middle ground. Maybe a brainiac who takes a minimal daily dose of news would benefit from being exposed to a wide range of topics and researching further on the ones they find important.

↳ Conclusion: Less news and more studying is generally a better way to train to be a mental champion. Smart people may follow the news, but they aren’t smart because they follow it.

The Naive No-Newser

If you quit the news, how will you get timely information like if there’s a traffic accident along your commute, an approaching hurricane or alien invasion, a change in the tax law?

I’m pretty confident that someone would tell me about anything extremely important or that I’d put two and two together. If the beach in front of me is full of people, the quarantine here in South Africa is over. If it’s empty and all my neighbors are packing up to flee, a hurricane or alien invasion is coming.

For smaller things like traffic jams, that’s a price I’m willing to pay to save the time and worry of checking the news. Google Maps will tell me, anyway.

↳ Conclusion: It’s not worth following the news only to be informed of immediate risks and rewards that affect me.

Question within a question: Can you think of instances where you would have seriously suffered had you not known the news ASAP?

Cape Town tour in front of Nelson Mandela statue
“None of you have ever read the news about South Africa, so you have no idea who this is a statue of?”

The Tour Guide

Imagine you’re a tour guide for your home country. Two clients have just landed from abroad. Tourist A had read all about your country in the international section of their newspaper back home. Tourist B didn’t even know your country existed. Assuming the two are of equal intelligence, who do you think you’d be able to help get a more accurate understanding of your country and culture during their visit?

Tourist A probably has tons of preconceptions that would take a long time to fully wipe out. Tourist B’s a blank slate. So I’d go with B.

On the other hand, I could much more easily brainwash Tourist B by only showing them the aspects of my country I want them to see.

↳ Conclusion: If I want a true understanding of a foreign country, I shouldn’t count on the news to give me it. But I should protect myself from being misled. History books, conversations with different people from there, and even Wikipedia are better than the news.

One Chris reading the news, the other relaxing
Who’s really the smart one?

The Outsourced News Source

Imagine you have an identical twin who’s exactly like you but 20 IQ points smarter. They offer to follow all the news for you and report back everything you need to know. Would you accept this offer?

I can’t see why not. And if I really want more, I can read the original source for all the details.

This makes me wonder if I can’t reasonably replicate my smarter identical twin with a carefully curated list of people with newsletters who are smarter than me, read more news than me, and have similar interests. Probably. A lot of people meet those criteria.

↳ Conclusion: I should spend more time curating a list of news curators—newsletters, round-ups, thought-leaders—than digging through the news myself.

Me locked in isolation chamber with no news
“I can’t wait to get out of here and catch up with the news.”

The Return to Reality

Imagine someone kidnaps you and locks you up in an isolation chamber for a month with no access to information from the outside world. When they release you, how much time would you spend catching up with the news you missed? And how would you do it?

I’d first ask Kim what I missed. Then I’d spend time on my favorite sites catching up on things I’m interested in but she isn’t. I’d spend more time than usual reading the news to catch up, but not thirty times more. Maybe two or three.

↳ Conclusion: I should spend more time as if in an isolation chamber and less reading the news.

The Too-Busy-to-Be Concerned Citizens

Imagine a town where everyone stopped following the news and refocused all that mental effort, energy, and money toward positive action. They volunteered, attended community meetings, and/or worked more and donated their additional income to charity. Would this town be a worse or better place than before?

Better. Duh.

And I’d say this is a strong argument against any news defenders who claim if you don’t read the news you don’t care about the world. Caring is nothing more than spectating unless you get out of the stands and jump onto the court, or pay someone else to.

↳ Conclusion: If I really care about something, I should give my time and money. Giving my attention is doesn’t help nearly as much.

The Nearly Perfect Politician

Imagine you’re campaigning to be the leader of your country and a supreme being has given you a foolproof step-by-step guide to exactly what you need to do to improve everyone’s lives. The only problem is this being didn’t tell you how to win the election and you’re competing against a multi-billionaire, maniacal, megalomaniac master media manipulator. How much news would you want the voters to consume?

The less news voters consume, the better my odds. I don’t want them to be manipulated by my opponent. I much rather they get themselves an unbiased education on the key topics so they make the right decisions.

↳ Conclusion: The news does not necessarily help me make the best voting decisions. Media-savvy, big-budget politicians have an advantage. I’ll make better decisions by educating myself away from the news.

The Demise of the Dispassionate

Imagine a town holds a referendum. Exactly 50 percent of the population would benefit from it passing. These people all read the same newspaper. The other 50 percent suffer if the referendum passes. None of them follow the news. What’s the most likely referendum outcome?

The news followers. So if I and people like me quit the news, this may decrease our political power relative to other groups who use it heavily.

↳ Conclusion: I need some way to stay engaged. If not the news, something else.

Journalists with hands up for questions at a press conference
“Excuse me sir, but if everyone stops reading the news what are we all going to do?”

The Endangered Journalist

What if the whole world were to quit the news tomorrow? Would investigative and explanatory journalism disappear? And would this open the door for corruption and abuse of power?

I really don’t know. Without the platforms and salaries that major news agencies give journalists, I wonder how they could continue protecting the public by holding people in power accountable.

I feel the vacuum created by everyone abandoning the news would partially be filled by more long-form journalism. But a lot of news junkies would replace the news with other junk that doesn’t support journalism at all, so the pie may shrink.

↳ Conclusion: Even if I were to quit the news, I should support journalism in other ways. Buying more books and listening to more in-depth podcasts, for example.

Hands putting the puzzle pieces together
Maybe wait until the puzzle pieces have been assembled?

The Truth Puzzle

Imagine the breaking news as a puzzle. When it breaks, all the pieces are everywhere. Journalists and news outlets scramble to collect and assemble them. All the while, pundits look at what’s available and speculate on what the final result will look like. Do you benefit at all from spectating during this puzzle assembly process?

Unless I want to become a puzzle assembler myself one day, I rather wait until everyone’s done to take a look.

It’s fun to speculate along with others, but it’s not too productive. It could even become counterproductive if I were to come to premature conclusions.

↳ Conclusion: No more breaking news for me. I’ll wait until the truth has been assembled before taking a look.

Two firefighters
“Hey, you hear Brad and Jennifer split up?”

The Calamity

Imagine some calamity strikes your city. A terrorist attack, an earthquake, or a pandemic, for example. All the news would reasonably focus on it. But what about the other unrelated news that’s happening? How much time would you spend looking at it relative to non-disaster-related times?

Less.

Partly because nobody would be covering it. Partly because I would be too focused on the bigger news.

↳ Conclusion: Any news that wouldn’t interest me in the time of a disaster shouldn’t interest me in calmer times.

The Indefinite Conclusion

Jeez.

Looking back through these questions and thought experiments, things seem strongly in favor of quitting the news.

It also looks like I’ve been incredibly biased in that direction. Probably. But I swear I tried not to be. If you can balance my thinking with thought experiments that support reading more news, please share them in the comments.

Until then, my temporary conclusion is that I should consume a lot less news. Not nothing, but closer to that than what I’m been consuming.

What are you going to do?

Relevant Resources

  • Be better informed. Regardless on where you stand on quitting the news, consider reading Factfulness by Hans Rosling for a fact-based and balanced understanding of the state of the world.
  • Bad news is good news. This article uses evolutionary explanations and scientific findings to argue that we need bad news in our lives.
  • Good news. There’s reason to believe that reading good news is good for you. If you insist on continuing to follow the news, this site with pretty visualizations of positive news is worth sprinkling on top to keep things healthy.
  • Anti-news maven. If you’re anti-news, you’ll enjoy Rolf Dobelli’s arguments. Start with his paper, Avoid News. It provides 15 points against the news and advises what to do instead. Then read his short book, Stop Reading the News, for his complete takedown.
  • A Rebuttal to Rolf Dobelli. I found tons of reports, blog posts, and studies about how the news is bad for you. This is one of the few rebuttals I found.
About the author

👋 I'm Chris. Everything you read on TheZag.com is my fault. This site is like a gym for your comfort zone, full of challenges to make your status quo sexier. Join my 'Consider This' newsletter for a fun new challenge every 10 days. Try it!

  1. Anon Avatar
    Anon

    I have arrived to the same conclusions and my life now is WAY better.

    Your exposition is AWESOME! Clearer than a Socratic Dialog, and those are incredible.

    Congratulations! I will share with everybody I now!

    1. Chris Avatar
      Chris

      Thanks, Anon! I’m glad you found reading this more helpful than reading the news.

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