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William_Quixote comments on Open thread, Sept. 29 - Oct.5, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Society as a whole benefits from an informed public. Some news isn't really informative, but some is. The levels of wealth across countries strongly associate with their political systems and the level of really terrible stuff that happens correlates with how knowledgeable / active people are. Now correlation isn't causation, but consider that there could be a link.
If so, then you as an individual could benefit from being less informed. You could also privately benefit from not voting. Or you could benefit from cheating on taxes in a difficult to detect way, or littering instead of carrying garbage and looking for a trash can. Someone can always privately benefit from defecting in a prisoners dilemma or participating in a tragedy of the commons. An informed public is a public good.
The take away isn't don't cut news reading. A lot of news is of no value to you or anyone else, but at least some news is probably of negative value to you personally but socially positive. So when cutting a subject, at least briefly consider what would happen to the commons if all informed people didn't read it.
This is a (the?) standard challenge to the idea of adopting an information diet for personal gain, and it's presented lucidly.
Another implication: The threat imposed by a news reading public (who are itching to be frenzied), is a powerful incentive for prominent (and usually powerful) individuals to act in accord with public sentiment. Perversely, if the threat is effective, then the actual threat mechanism may appear useless (because it is never used).
This isn't always good, because the public can be wrong, but there seem to be morally mundane cases.
An example: If you live in California, should you read a story about a corrupt and powerful mayor in a small town in Iowa? It really does seem like the "media frenzy" is a primary vector for handling this type of situation, which may otherwise continue because the actors directly involved don't have enough power.
This also justifies the seeming capriciousness of the news cycle: Why this particular outrage at this particular time? Why not this other, slightly more deserving, outrage? Because this is a coordination game, and the exact focal point isn't as important as the fact that we all agree to coordinate.
A quote about education (attributed to George Pólya, although I can't find the source): "It is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five different problems one way". I would guess that similarly, if one wants to educate oneself about world affairs, one should (regularly) take a few of the most important (current) issues/events and learn about them as in-depth and from as many angles as one can, synthesizing everything into a big picture, rather than pay attention to every non-issue. Of course, in order to be able to do that, one should try to learn history, economics, statistics, game theory, public choice theory, geography, biology, etc (curiously, in some cases reading something about the past might be more beneficial to understanding the present than reading something about the present itself). Of course, in some situations this "issue/event centered" (vs "news as they appear") approach could also have some drawbacks, for example, if, for some reason (e.g. (non-)availability of relevant literature, ideological reasons, etc.), one approaches events only from one or two angles ("hedgehog", as opposed to "fox") one could easily fall prey to confirmation bias.
I categorically reject the notion that news is relevant to being informed. A single reading of an economics text book for example will make anyone who I should want to be able to vote more informed than the same amount of news. Further news is completely irrelevant for being informed as only the exceptional things are news worthy and not trends against which one could act, like climate change or shifting balances of power.
Thus the proposition is to be informed on some topic one cares about. Again there I suggest to not read "news" as most people will get more out of reading comprehensive articles on the topic or even a text book to better understand it.
In short: No, this is not just a prisoner's dilemma and I dislike political systems where governance is one.
For context, there are about eight econ textbooks in my line of sight at this very moment. I've even read some of them. The kind of knowledge you get from consuming such a textbook is certainly useful, but for practical purposes it's highly contingent on what kind of world you're living in. The textbook probably won't tell you that, but an equivalent amount of news almost certainly would.
I doubt that regular reading of a popular news paper will make ones opinion more relevant than a good understanding of supply and demand, judging by the average comments section.
I think you're taking a narrow reading about what sort of information you can glean from a given story.
Reading the average comments threads on a news item is very very terrifyingly informative, just not about the subject at hand. (Or course, you hit the point of diminishing returns quickly)
I think sixes_and_seven's point (though I may have misunderstood) is that your understanding of supply & demand (and everything else in the econ textbook) still has to be applied to concrete cases to prove useful, and following the news furnishes you with concrete cases, and allows you to practice recognizing where the models in the textbook are most applicable.
I'm sympathetic, but surely this rejection is contingent on certain facts about your local environment. If you lived in a area experiencing rapid and chaotic change, following the news would be very valuable, even if the news was presented poorly or had significant bias. Consider Syria.