News

 As our whirlwind Rationality-in-July course draws to a close, one of the questions we'll ponder in parting is how our personal media diets contribute to and detract from our overall sense of living rational lives in a world that makes some sort of sense. “The easiest way to increase happiness is to control your use of time," as Daniel Kahneman says. A lot of us these days are aware that we're not making optimal use of our time when we spend too much of it scrolling, updating, tiktoking, and generally absorbing new "content." Are we consuming it, is it consuming us? 

Human flourishing is rationality's ultimate goal. Clear thinking, the primary focus of Pinker's text, is (I hope we all agree) one of its requisite conditions. The sentiment of rationality, William James and I have contended, is another. Following all the applicable inference rules and avoiding fallacious reasoning is laudable, but a right reasoner who never or rarely experiences a "feeling of the sufficiency of the present moment" can hardly be thought to have achieved the flourishing life of eudaimonia. Rational humans reasonably may and do expect the recurrent experience of that feeling as the reassurance that their lives and their world are a good mutual fit.

To sum up: No philosophy will permanently be deemed rational by all men which (in addition to meeting logical demands) does not to some degree pretend to determine expectancy, and in a still greater degree make a direct appeal to all those powers of our nature which we hold in highest esteem... The ultimate philosophy, we may therefore conclude, must not be too strait-laced in form, must not in all its parts divide heresy from orthodoxy by too sharp a line. There must be left over and above the propositions to be subscribed, ubique, semper, et ab omnibus [always, everywhere, and by everyone], another realm into which the stifled soul may escape from pedantic scruples and indulge its own faith at its own risks; and all that can here be done will be to mark out distinctly the questions which fall within faith's sphere. SOR

In other words: logical rationality and "pedantic scruples" are for everyone, idiosyncratic sentimental rationality varies among persons, and a truly good life integrates logic and sentiment in sundry ways that enrich and diversify our pluralistic world for the better.

And so, with that in mind, I ask:

• How do you manage your daily exposure to news? Do you think you have a reasonably-undistorted understanding of events generally? How could your news diet be improved?
• "The media is a click-seeking machine dressed up as a truth-seeking machine," says Elon Musk. Is he right about that?

For my part, I've found it best not to dive into "the news" first thing in the morning. I need to see first what's new with me, what the night's rest may convey, what unexpected "reflections" may have bubbled up from the subterranean subconscious during those hours of outward inactivity. I need to commune with a poet or two, to try and unearth my own articulacy if any is there. Once in a while, the result is a pleasant revelation or recognition. 

I also prefer to precede the day's fresh and often-searing assault of news with historical context. From On This Day I've just learned, for instance, that on 8/1/1774 Joseph Priestly discovered oxygen and the British abolished (nominal) slavery throughout the Empire in 1833. 

And from the archival Writers Almanac I learn that it's Maria Mitchell's birthday, she the undersung 19th-century astronomer who advised: “Mingle the starlight with your lives and you won’t be fretted by trifles.”

And it's Herman Melville's birthday too. His Captain Ahab's monomania was a case study of irrational obsession. “There is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of man.” And, "Heaven have mercy on us all - Presbyterians and Pagans alike - for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.”

Only later, then (on a good day), will I turn to the Times or BBC 4 or some other daily source I've come to trust as generally reliable, to tell me what I "need to know." I more need the wisdom of those  two bright 19th century lights, whose observations provide good armor against whatever our media has in store on this day. So much of it, as Henry said, is gossip and trivia and gratuitous enumeration.

On Mondays I've learned to look for Margaret Renkl's column, where today she makes a strong pluralist statement:

It would be much more convenient if the people we admire were consistent in the way they moved through the world, sharing our values, making all the same choices we make and for all the same reasons. How much simpler and tidier life would if those choices were reflected in some overt, outward sign — a name change, a party affiliation — that reveals a pristine inner truth. But how much more interesting it is that human beings work in no such way.

And so it's rational to admire (for instance) Liz Cheney while repudiating her particular policy preferences. It's irrational to let partisan rigidities and party affiliations block our clear-sighted support of those whose larger commitments we value most. (See Ezra Klein's Why We're Polarized on this and related points.)

As for Elon's Retweet-baiting statement: he's right, much of what we call news is less obviously motivated by a dispassionate search for truth than by an unquenchable thirst for attention. I think he knows something about that. Far better to control one's own attention, than try to compel that of others.