Highly online life leads to instability. It's like living your life in a packed subway car. Stress response. This is why cities are less healthy for you as well.
I definitely chose my phrasing by design: "less healthy"
I have no doubt there are vigorous academic arguments happening whether there are ways to mitigate the stress of population density and be healthier than would be expected. I'm open to that concept and ideas.
Yet the research on urban living and mental health is overwhelming - your chances of schizophrenia, mood disorders and anxiety skyrocket in cities. I was born in a large metro and lived on both coasts in huge urban areas, and I wish this weren't true because I like the energy of a city.
But you get a couple of whiskeys in me at dinner and I'll flat out say there's almost zero way to make a city healthy. People on top of each other, tremendous noise, light pollution and bad air quality leads to poor health for many people, as well as conflict.
So this is interesting, but I think the claim is overstated, or at least, this doesn't satisfy the claim that cities are less healthy. This show a positive correlation of an increase in specific mental health cases, but that is looking at health only along a single axis.
I'm not saying your claim is wrong, just that this isn't sufficient. There is other evidence that shows that city living is healthier with longer lifespans and reduced obesity.
It's a fascinating subject and one I love to "argue" about when I'm traveling for work and at a bar in the city, people get really fired up! We all dig in to support our life choices.
People in the city tend to be younger and higher income - both skew the numbers. Access to health services - advantage city vs rural. But the stress level is off the charts higher in a city. This is terrible for you.
There is some evidence that suburban or exurban might be the sweet spot, where you get the benefit of access to care and less daily stress.
Walking and movement is important too, so if you can combine income with small town living (community) in an active way you may be way ahead of the game.
I went to school in the Midwest and a good example of this is if you had a hybrid/remote job in Louisville or Cincy, it would likely be much better for your health to live in Madison, Indiana. It's not far away but feels like a different world, much more low key and with a community focus. You could always drive into the city and book a few days if you had that desire.
Why would anyone have "no idea" about this? We're literally surrounded by women - moms, sisters, friends, wives - our entire lives. This is not some secret knowledge that men cannot grasp. Men know the score here, and have even intervened for our sisters or nieces when needed. I see stuff like this all the time online, it's absurd. Who do you think I spend most of my time with? Women. I came from a woman.
Media is and has always been propaganda. All of it. You have to start from there to make sense of the world.
We ran into trouble at some point with critical thinking. I believe prosperity and comfort for three generations in the West may have led to this type of thing by default, unfortunately. To flip it around...you can also make an argument that PR and propaganda itself has led to prosperity and comfort. Or at least it was something to do that filled time and created some cool apps and fashions. Which is awesome until you realize you're not safe from war.
> Media is and has always been propaganda. All of it. You have to start from there to make sense of the world.
How does any amount of critical thinking get around this, assuming it is true? If you hear the same bit of news a dozen different ways from many outlets, it must be true? If all media is propaganda, you can't trust anything that you have not experienced personally.
Propaganda isn't all false, it's all advocacy. You interpret it based on that fact; you don't ignore that fact to make the world feel stable and secure.
Just because it is propaganda doesn't mean it won't have actionable information within it. It just means that you cannot shut off your brain and consume any of it - ever. Every last creator has an angle, even your good guys.
I'll use the Postman questions, because they apply to every piece of media, which is always at its base a technology:
1. “What is the problem to which this technology is the solution?”
2. “Whose problem is it?”
3. “Which people and what institutions might be most seriously harmed by a technological solution?”
4. “What new problems might be created because we have solved this problem?”
5. “What sort of people and institutions might acquire special economic and political power because of technological change?”
6. “What changes in language are being enforced by new technologies, and what is being gained and lost by such changes?”
You can ask these questions about every Wall Street Journal or New York Times article or opinion piece - or Vox or The Verge, wherever. It's not always a clean answer to each question, but the consideration itself is important. What is this person's argument, and how may this person or institution sponsoring this argument benefit from presenting this information this way? And it's not a "wing" thing - these questions need to be asked about your favorite writers and thinkers as well.
> We ran into trouble at some point with critical thinking
I’m more worried about democracy than I am about a seeming decline in critical thinking skills. The latter is more than likely just a flawed perception created by the internet giving the masses a voice they’ve never had before. As for the former: the very fact we perceive “our critical thinking skills” to be in decline based on the musings of the masses is evidence of the perils of democracy.
Does this non-profit media also believe in a technological society? Perhaps with an allergy to challenging the concept of this type of science in the first place?
The non-profit media is made up of the same human beings as every other endeavor on the planet. Just without an explicit profit motive. One of my favorite shows, On The Media, has done a few segments breaking down coverage on controversial topics like lab leak or ivermectin. How they became controversial and how some coverage was overly zealous in dismissing evidence too quickly.
For an easy one (among millions) just compare The New York Times Wikipedia article to the article for The Epoch Times. "Oh, but The Epoch Times is right wing, so..."
How can I compare the Ochs-Sulzberger family to the Falun Gong? Well I just did. They're both made up of humans with opinions.
I'm interpreting your comment as, "Wikipedia isn't far right enough for my tastes." Is that accurate? Do you know of any examples where Wikipedia leans farther right than left?
Or you could see it as "poisoning the well" - an approach so common and accepted that neither of you see it, apparently.
Although clearly a lefty news organization, I don't see the NY Times as a "wing" on that easy left-right spectrum we all seem to love. NYT has had many writers and done some excellent work along the way. In the aggregate their ideology is more in support of population density (cities), industrialism and technology - with some hostility towards more pastoral living, herding animals for food, etc.
I just read through both articles but I don't understand the point you're making. Is it that the NYT article is more fleshed out and talks about their various print products? You can add such a section to the Epoch Times.
Because of a different thread I thought of another subtle, yet similar example. Look at the Wikipedia entry for The Verge. It's a media product, a tech news site, all good. But it's a "left wing" site on the merits. Not a single mention of that in the Wikipedia article. There's a little bit of discussion about tabloid-style content on the Talk page, but it doesn't go anywhere. Even the Vox Media Wikipedia article makes no mention of this being a lefty business. Wild, isn't it?
I'm not sure I really understand. I don't read the Verge (because consumer product journalism is deeply uninteresting and I don't want to rot my brain), but I'll take your word that it is a "left wing" site (I don't know what this means) on "the merits" (I also don't know what this means). I would expect this to show up on the Wikipedia page if it was a notable fact about the site -- if they had broken some "left wing" news story (again, I don't know what this means) or if they staked out some powerful "left wing" editorial (again, I don't know what this means). Overall, whether or not the writers happen to be "left wing", "right wing", or otherwise doesn't strike me as a hugely relevant thing on its face. The other thing is that given that I presume the site is not avowedly "left wing", the characterization of the site as "left wing" would have to involve either original argumentation or secondary sourcing.
I honestly wouldn't imagine the major editorial cleavage in tech websites is partisan at all, but rather the privacy-convenience cleavage. I would expect a consumer goods focused website to likely cater to people who are less privacy oriented. I am not sure this would be remarkable or something I'd put in an article. The "break up big tech" agenda is mostly a liberal consensus versus left+right angle, but even then I find it pretty unlikely that the site's coverage goes beyond relatively mild critical reporting; I know I've never in my life seen someone link a The Verge editorial as a contribution to a political debate. I think they published some of the mistakenly public financial documents from the Epic v. Apple case. I'm not sure which of Epic or Apple is meant to be the "left wing" perspective. I remain flummoxed.
I checked the article on Vox Media. It characterizes Vox Media as a company that was created to combine SB Nation and The Verge, and then added other not obviously related content verticals, all of which are named and linked. The only part of the article that really comments on inner workings is the "Corporate Affairs" section, which seems to be written in a fair and neutral way and notes that the staff of Vox Media unionized. Is this what a "lefty" business is? I'm not sure?
The main takeaway is that they run a bunch of websites I've never heard of and will never read. I did click on the Vox article. Vox is a politics website, and its politics are described as "left-of-center" (I don't know what this means) and progressive, the former citing a Poli Sci 101 textbook I've never heard of and the latter citing a WSJ attack piece. This seems reasonable to me, it seems to be what you're asking for.
I'm not really sure I find this to be wild or surprising. You might be right, again, I have no idea, I don't care about Vox Media and I don't read the Verge. But your point doesn't really strike me as obvious having wasted 20-30 minutes reading Wikipedia articles that are supposed to be evidently biased.
You can argue for this change yourself, if you have sources that are not too fringe. Though you'd probably have to phrase it properly. Who exactly has described these sites as left-wing, and where?
Well, the New York Times (for all it's numerous flaws) is the most prominent newspaper in the United States. Epoch Times is run by a Chinese dissident cult. Obviously there's going to be different treatment.
I'm not even arguing (although I could) that one is more correct. The New York Times prints an order of magnitude more physical newspapers (roughly 300,000 to the Epoch Time's 30,000), and is thus obviously more notable.
Edit: Those numbers are for the English language edition in the US
I made no mention of notability, it's such an obvious point that it doesn't need to be made.
The Shen Yun Performing Arts people are pre-Communism traditionalist Chinese. Which is on the outs culturally, I get it. They're just people though, ultimately.
Do you not see the "weirdos vs normal people" problem that permeates media in essentially all cultures? This technique is on its face illegitimate, as it is designed to get you to not dig deeper into contentious issues. I don't care what side or "wing" is doing it.
It is not an issue of depth. Wikipedia is a hive of mimetic scapegoating, and it doesn't hold the patent on that problem. And this usually, ultimately, leads to real world violence.
Have you heard of negative interest rates? This is so real that it is real.
Also real: the wild "insanity" that is the picture painted by the writer of this Harper's piece is also exactly the same "insanity" that is present in, well, everything that involves the US dollar.
Money is so tenuous worldwide at this stage that entire central bank policy is designed so that you won't want to keep it anyway. You must spend! We really are jacked directly into the machine. It's pretty wild if you compare it to just a blip ago, historically.
