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.
Your brain wasn’t designed at all.
Iteratively designed by evolution to maximize survival, I guess
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.
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’
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.
Oh, great… more bad news.
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.
In the past you didn’t get everything on earth reported to you. Now I think, “Do I really need to know 30 people died in a bus crash in Peru? What am I supposed to do with that knowledge?”
That should have prefaced that headline with “I hate to break it to you, but…”
Something that annoys me is the number of people who claim they don’t read/watch the news (except the weather) or use Facebook/social media anymore because it’s all bad news – and yet they still seem to have an opinion on everything that’s happening AND they still vote based on that opinion.
But I suppose that’s also bad news in and of itself, so I apologize for that.
I agree. Following the news is important, but it’s healthier to limit how much negative news we consume and choose reliable sources
I use RSS now for news.
Its been so liberating. I can read offline, save articles for later, no ads or paywalls, no algorithms, no bullshit.
I highly recommend.
I strictly get my news on the toilet
“where we get our news.”
And then they link to Reuters. LOLAnd 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.
Amazing how much history rhymes.
Is Jar Jar the key to all of this?
How high are you
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.
bad news, everyone: bad news is bad for you!
I’ve largely stopped actively following news because
- most of it is stuff we knew already
- I already find out all that I need to know and more involuntarily through occasional social media visits
I’d like to read summaries of a given week’s news on the world, EU, national, and maybe local level once a week, tho. I’ll check if there’s anything like this for the world and EU scale and report back here if there is.
My brain was not designed for anything. It was not designed.
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
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.
