Our obsession with being informed makes it hard to think long-term. We spend hours consuming news because we want to be informed. The problem is, the news doesn’t make us informed – quite the opposite. The more news we consume, the more misinformed we become.
我们对获取信息的痴迷使我们难以进行长远思考。我们花几个小时看新闻，是因为我们想了解信息。问题是，新闻并没有让我们获得信息--恰恰相反。我们消费的新闻越多，我们就变得越不了解情况。
News is, by definition, something that doesn’t last. It exists for only a moment before it changes. As news has become easier to distribute and cheaper to produce, the quality has decreased, and the quantity has increased, making it nearly impossible to find the signal in the noise.
顾名思义，新闻是一种不会持久的东西。它只存在片刻，然后就会改变。随着新闻的传播越来越容易，制作成本越来越低，质量却在下降，数量却在增加，几乎不可能在噪音中找到信号。
Rarely do we stop to ask ourselves questions about the media we consume: Is this good for me? Is this dense with detailed information? Is this important? Is this going to stand the test of time? Is the person writing someone who is well-informed on the issue? Asking those questions makes it clear the news isn’t good for you.
我们很少停下来问自己关于我们所消费的媒体的问题：这对我有好处吗？它的信息量大吗？这重要吗？经得起时间的考验吗？撰稿人是否对相关问题非常了解？问了这些问题，新闻显然对你没有好处。
The information you consume today becomes the raw material of your thoughts tomorrow. If you want to change your thoughts, start with the information you consume.
你今天所消费的信息将成为你明天思考的原材料。如果你想改变自己的想法，就从你所消费的信息开始吧。
[W]e’re surrounded by so much information that is of immediate interest to us that we feel overwhelmed by the never-ending pressure of trying to keep up with it all.
Nicolas carr 尼古拉斯-卡尔
[我们的周围充斥着大量与我们切身利益相关的信息，永无止境的压力压得我们喘不过气来。
Here are a few of the problems with the news:
以下是新闻中存在的几个问题：
- The speed of news delivery has increased. We used to have to wait to get a newspaper or gossip with people in our town to get news, but not anymore. Thanks to alerts, texts, and other interruptions, the news finds us almost the minute it’s published.
新闻传递的速度加快了。过去，我们需要等着看报纸或与镇上的人闲聊才能获得新闻，但现在不一样了。由于有了提醒、短信和其他干扰，新闻几乎在发布的第一时间就能找到我们。 - The cost of producing news has dropped significantly. Some people write 12 blog posts a day for major newspapers. It’s nearly impossible to write something thoughtful on one topic, let alone 12. The fluency of the person you’re getting news from in the subject they’re covering is near zero. As a result, you’re filling your head with surface-level insights.
新闻制作成本大幅下降。有些人每天要为各大报纸写 12 篇博文。就一个主题写出有思想的文章几乎是不可能的，更不用说 12 篇了。从你那里获取新闻的人对所报道主题的流利程度几乎为零。因此，你的脑子里充斥的都是表面的见解。 - Like other purveyors of drugs, producers of news want you to consume more of it. News producers perpetuate a culture of “tune in, don’t miss out, someone knows something you don’t, follow this or you’ll be misinformed, oh wait, look at this!” All the time you spend consuming perishable news comes at the expense of learning something that doesn’t expire.
就像其他毒品贩子一样，新闻生产者也希望你消费更多的毒品。新闻生产者延续着一种文化："收听，不要错过，有人知道一些你不知道的事情，关注这个，否则你会被误导，哦，等等，看这个！"你花在消费易腐烂新闻上的所有时间，都是以学习不会过期的知识为代价的。 - The incentives are misaligned. When the news is free, you still need to pay people. If people aren’t paying, advertisers are. And if advertisers are in charge, the incentives change. Page views become the name of the game. More page views mean more revenue. When it comes to page views, the more controversy, the more enraged you become, the better.
激励机制是错位的。当新闻免费时，你仍然需要付钱给人们。如果人们不付钱，广告商就会付钱。而如果广告商掌权，激励机制就会改变。页面浏览量成了游戏规则。更多的页面浏览量意味着更多的收入。在页面浏览量方面，争议越多，你越愤怒就越好。 - Most journalists are not interested in the search for truth. They’re interested in telling a particular version of a story.
大多数记者对寻求真相不感兴趣。他们感兴趣的是讲述一个特定版本的故事。
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 赫伯特-西蒙
信息的消耗是显而易见的：它消耗信息接收者的注意力。因此，丰富的信息造成了注意力的贫乏，需要在可能消耗注意力的过多信息源中有效地分配注意力。
Most of what you read online today is pointless. It simply makes no difference in living a meaningful life. It is simply filler that won’t help you make better decisions, understand the world, or improve your connections with others.
今天，你在网上读到的大部分内容都毫无意义。它们只是一些填鸭式的东西，无法帮助你做出更好的决定、了解这个世界或改善你与他人的关系。
Like a drug, the news is addictive. Once you get hooked, it’s hard to stop. Not only does it alter your mood, but it keeps you wanting more. Once you start consuming news, it’s hard to stop. The hotels, transportation, and ticketing systems in Disney World are all designed to keep you within the theme park rather than sightseeing elsewhere in Orlando. Similarly, casinos do everything they can to prevent you from leaving.
就像毒品一样，新闻会让人上瘾。一旦上瘾，就很难戒掉。它不仅会改变你的情绪，还会让你欲罢不能。一旦开始消费新闻，就很难停止。迪斯尼世界的酒店、交通和票务系统都是为了让你呆在主题公园里，而不是去奥兰多的其他地方观光。同样，赌场也会想尽一切办法阻止你离开。
We are not innocent. Far from it. We want to be well-informed. (More accurately, we want to appear to be well-informed.) And this is the very weakness that gets manipulated.
我们并不无辜。远非如此。我们希望自己消息灵通。(更准确地说，我们希望自己看起来消息灵通。
To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.
Nassim Taleb 纳西姆-塔勒布
要想彻底摆脱报纸，就花一年时间阅读前一周的报纸。
News is a perspective, not truth. When you realize that news is like a cropped photo and not the full photo, it changes how you see things.
新闻是一种视角，而不是真相。当你意识到新闻就像一张经过裁剪的照片，而不是完整的照片时，你看待事物的方式就会改变。
News doesn’t make you more informed; it just makes you more confident the information you have is all there is.
新闻不会让你了解更多信息，它只会让你更加确信你所掌握的信息就是全部。
News reinforces what we already believe. Rarely do we read things we disagree with, walking away saying, “well that was a good point, I was wrong.”
新闻会强化我们已经相信的东西。我们很少会在读到自己不同意的观点时说："说得好，我错了"。
News substitutes the thinking of others for thinking. Not reading the news shows you how often what you thought was your own thinking belonged to someone else. You simply regurgitate someone else’s thoughts. Real thinking is hard. It’s much easier to let someone else do it for you.
新闻用他人的思维代替思考。不看新闻就会发现，你以为是自己的想法，其实往往是别人的想法。你只是在重复别人的想法。真正的思考很难。让别人代劳要容易得多。
People in the news worry about what the news says about them. Not only does this increase their anxiety, but it changes how they think and act. Instead of getting feedback from reality, they crave validation in the printed opinion of others. Optics trump reality.
新闻中的人担心新闻对他们的评价。这不仅会增加他们的焦虑，还会改变他们的思维和行为方式。他们不是从现实中获得反馈，而是渴望从他人的印刷意见中得到验证。光学胜过现实。
When all you consume is noise, you don’t realize there is a signal. Your attention is valuable. In fact, your attention is so valuable it might be the most important thing you have. Most news expires in 24 hours. If you know your attention is valuable, why would you invest it consuming something that expires tomorrow?
当你接收到的都是噪音时，你就不会意识到有信号存在。你的注意力是宝贵的。事实上，你的注意力非常宝贵，它可能是你拥有的最重要的东西。大多数新闻都会在 24 小时内过期。如果你知道自己的注意力很宝贵，为什么还要把它投入到明天就过期的东西上呢？
The problems with news are likely to get worse, not better. At some point in the future, the news will likely be tailored for you. Just as your search results differ from mine, your headline for the same article and mine will differ. The word “same” is an important one. It won’t be the same article at all. The author might have written several versions, one tailored to people who are lean left and one for people who lean right. Even the URL will be different, with each version having a unique URL so the publisher can track time on the page, headlines that drive clicks, and shareability.
新闻的问题可能会变得更糟，而不是更好。在未来的某一天，新闻很可能会为你量身定制。就像你的搜索结果与我的搜索结果不同一样，同一篇文章你的标题与我的标题也会不同。同样 "这个词很重要。根本不会是同一篇文章。作者可能写了好几个版本，一个版本是为左倾人士量身定做的，一个版本是为右倾人士量身定做的。甚至URL也会不同，每个版本都有一个唯一的URL，这样出版商就可以跟踪页面停留时间、吸引点击的标题以及可分享性。
Stepping back from the news is hard. We’re afraid of silence. We’re afraid to be alone with our thoughts. That’s why we pull out our phones while waiting in line at a coffee shop or the grocery store. We’re afraid to ask ourselves deep and meaningful questions. We’re afraid to say, “I don’t know.” We’re afraid to be bored. We’re so afraid we’ll drive ourselves crazy, consuming pointless information.
从新闻中抽身出来很难。我们害怕沉默。我们害怕独自思考。这就是为什么我们会在咖啡店或杂货店排队等候时掏出手机。我们害怕问自己深刻而有意义的问题。我们害怕说 "我不知道"。我们害怕无聊。我们害怕把自己逼疯，消耗毫无意义的信息。
What can you do differently?
你能做些什么不同的事情？
Part of the answer is to spend less time consuming information and more time thinking. You can also change your information sources by seeking out high-quality sources of information.
答案之一就是少花时间消费信息，多花时间思考。你也可以通过寻找高质量的信息来源来改变你的信息来源。
What makes something a high-quality source of information is worth thinking about. Some questions I ask myself: Are they talking about a first-hand experience? Was it recent or in the past? Are there details, or is it full of abstractions? Are they giving me shortcuts or showing me why?
什么才是高质量的信息来源值得思考。我会问自己一些问题他们谈论的是亲身经历吗？是最近的还是过去的？是否有细节，还是充满了抽象概念？他们是在给我提供捷径还是在告诉我为什么？
If you must read the news, consider yourself a judge listening to an argument. As a judge, you know there are two sides to every argument, and if you are not seeing the other side, you can, at the very least, reserve judgment. Seek the facts and data irrefutably true on both sides of the argument.
如果你一定要看新闻，那就把自己当成一个聆听辩论的法官。作为一名法官，你知道每场争论都有两面性，如果你看不到另一面，你至少可以保留判断。寻求争论双方无可辩驳的事实和数据。
Let’s close with this quote by Winifred Gallagher: “Few things are as important to your quality of life as your choices about how to spend the precious resource of your free time.”
最后，让我们引用威妮弗蕾德-加拉格尔（Winifred Gallagher）的名言："对于你的生活质量来说，很少有事情能像你选择如何度过宝贵的空闲时间资源一样重要"。