Can't We Just Listen To The Silence

Dear reader, Teenagers today are less likely than ever to use drugs or alcohol. Perhaps they are simply far more responsible than previous generations. Or perhaps it is because smartphones, social media, and the constant influx of notifications we receive have become (by design) so addictive that they have become the new drug of choice: producing similar effects in the brain to cocaine.

The same goes, sadly, for most news today. A 2014 study by the famous Annenberg Public Policy Centre at the University of Pennsylvania showed that viewers of The Colbert Report, a late-night comedy show, were better informed about politics than viewers of mainstream news channels such as CNN and MSNBC.

The zero marginal cost of publishing online, and a shift from a subscription model (such as paying daily for the newspaper) to an advertising-driven model based on page views and clicks, has meant an increasing amount of competition for viewers’ attention and ad dollars: pushing news channels towards “clickbait” and shallow but entertaining and captivating content.

The bottom line is that it is now all about the bottom line for most news channels and newspapers. Pulitzer-prize winning journalists are encouraged to pump out a dozen daily tweets instead of focusing on long-form content that most people are too distracted to read. Drama rules the news cycle: as the saying goes, “If it bleeds it leads.”

“To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.”
– Nicholas Nassim Taleb

The internet has brought with it immense possibilities and immense amounts of data: but also immense amounts of noise. Separating the signal from the noise is key. Statistics misused are downright dangerous.

The more frequently you observe data, the more noise you get relative to signal. For example, if you measure a data set once a year, and it is half noise half signal, it means that only half of the data is meaningful: the rest random. But if you were to observe that same data set on a daily basis, it would become 95% noise, and 5% signal. And if you spend your day glued to a Bloomberg terminal, the ratio of noise can become even higher: 99.5% noise and 0.5% signal means that a data point is 200 times more likely to be random than to be meaningful.

The truth is simply that we are all vulnerable to iatrogenics: when a treatment causes more harm than benefit. We all want to believe that our roles and professions add value to the world. It is far more difficult to counsel inaction than to prescribe something, anything, to fulfil the appearance of knowing what you are talking about. Remember the Hippocratic Oath: “First, do no harm.” Especially when you are unsure as to the second-order effects of your actions.

“What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
– Herbert Simon, father of Decision Theory

Most of what you read or watch on the news today will be irrelevant by tomorrow. Much as with the notifications from our smartphones and social media, however, it gives us the satisfaction of an immediate hit of dopamine. News can really be as addictive as Facebook (which is itself facing controversy over its treatment of news content).

Try this as an experiment: stop paying attention to the news for a week. I suspect that you will find that you haven’t missed much at all. If something is important, I can guarantee you that others will tell you about it. Significant signals have a way of reaching you.

Books on bestseller lists today are, by definition, wildly popular. Today. But what if instead you only read books that have been around for 100 years or more? If a book has lasted that long, chances are that the wisdom is contains is timeless, not topical. The same goes for many of the most powerful ideas.

Yours Sincerely,
Henry Chong