When the News Is bad for you

This was originally written in October.

We humans are very clever animals. Like many other creatures, we learn from our experiences. Don't eat those plants with the leaves of a certain shape because the last time you did you got really sick. Like some other clever animals, we learn from the experiences of others. Don't eat them if you saw someone else in the tribe eat some and get sick or die. Where we are really very clever is in learning from experiences we didn't actually witness, through our use of language. After we all crossed the mountains to a new land, the report is that someone in the next village got very sick after eating the plants with the leaves that are shiny, in groups of three and with smooth edges. Our language lets us learn of events that happened in the past or in a different spot so we can do better in life by adjusting our behavior accordingly.

Where our ancestors evolved the total number of people within a person's range of communication was something under a thousand, I would guess, and probably more like a hundred. Whatever happened, for ill or for good, to one of those hundred was worth paying attention to.

Today, there are several billion of us potentially covered by … the News. Any truly unusual event in the lives of those billions can find its way onto our TV screens, newspapers, or internet browsers. We are still as interested in unusual events as ever and adjust our behavior accordingly, but we have made little allowance for the jump from a hundred to a billion. That means the news can be bad for us.

In theory, we humans not only learn from experience, learn from observation, and learn from language, we also learn from statistics and mathematics. In theory. In practice, the use of basic quantitative tools is a recent innovation that is not built in to our feelings, fears and behaviors.

So what's on the news? A tsunami kills thousands. Two teenagers bring weapons to a school and open fire, killing a dozen students. A small child is kidnapped by a total stranger and murdered. A swimmer is killed by a shark. An airliner crashes with the loss of all aboard. An innocent bystander is killed by a stray bullet in a shootout between gangs. A teenager dies after driving too fast when drunk. A number of laptops are stolen from cars that were left unlocked.

Tsunamis are very rare, so when one happens anywhere in the world it is big news. Should we not go to the beach? The statistics suggest we shouldn't worry much because of the rarity and the small fraction of the world's coastline that is likely to be affected by a given tsunami. Should we stop swimming in the ocean for fear of sharks? Certainly not, if the swimmer was swimming in Australia and that is the only fatality reported lately for all beaches and all swimmers worldwide.

On the other hand, should we be more careful about locking our car doors when we leave laptops inside? It's worth considering, because this is a story from Newton [the city where FUSN is located], a small community compared to the domain of contemporary news. Whatever happens here dozens of times is far more relevant than something that happens only dozens of times in the whole United States. With our brains wired for groups of a hundred, we will still overestimate the likelihood of something reported from the group of a hundred thousand that is Newton. We don't publish newspapers on a street-by-street basis, but if there have been a few break-ins on your street, our hundred-oriented brains will serve us well and lead us to take precautions. We will rarely hear of an individual drunk-driving death except in local news, but statistics would indicate it is very much worth doing what we can to keep our sons and daughters from driving drunk. It's obvious that the closer to home some event occurs, the more likely it is to affect our lives, but exactly how much to discount far-away events is not at all obvious.

The problem comes down to probabilities. I have sometimes thought there ought to be a profound way of linking probability and spirituality, but I still haven't figured it out. Life has its ups and downs, and a lot of it is beyond our control. In many aspects of life the best thing to do is play the odds.

I wish there were authoritative compilations of probability estimates that were geared to the practical matter of helping us know how to lead our lives.



Suppose you react to all of these instances above by realistically discounting the likely relevance of a news story and adjusting your actions accordingly. There is a different way the news can be bad for you. It is hard to keep the news stories from affecting your feelings.

It is extraordinarily unlikely that a child will be abducted (let alone murdered) by a stranger, but because of a few well-publicized stories, it's hard to get that picture out of your mind. Even if you go with the probabilities and let your child walk somewhere alone, it can be hard to feel totally relaxed about it because that news story lingers in your mind. It may be hard to swim without looking out for that fin cutting through the waves. When I fly, I find myself a little anxious about the possibility of a crash, even though I know it's not a likely enough eventuality to warrant the concern.

There was a posting to the FUSN list not so long about important safety tips for women. It included this line: "It's always better to be safe than sorry. (And better paranoid than dead)." It sounds reasonable, but is it? Surely a fair measure of caution is warranted. But if you curtail your activities to avoid the highly improbable, you are paying a heavy price. You even pay a price for reading the email (which is a form of news) and thinking about the upsetting anecdotes even if you decide not to follow some of the suggestions.

I have only been considering one aspect of the news. Much news reporting does include an indication of how common something is, and the editors who decide what is worth printing or airing take frequency into account. But there is a tension in news organizations between straight news and sensational stories that grab people's interest. Increasing market share involves increasing the sensational.

Obviously the news is useful in many respects and we need to absorb some of it. Does the medium matter? If we are watching news for its value in guiding our lives, written news may be better than TV, where we both see and hear disasters in a way that is more likely to engage our feelings.

I've considered above news that is bad news. The same arguments apply to good news.

Suppose word gets around that one of the hundred people in your tribe stood in a certain spot with his spear on several days and one time he bagged a large and juicy antelope. It might be worth heading out to that spot yourself. But suppose you hear on the news that John Smith bought a lottery ticket and won $50 million. By the reasoning evolution has endowed you with, it would be worth buying a lottery ticket. But on average, of course, it's not (quip: the lottery is a tax on people who are bad at math).

The news is also full of superstars. Let's consider one of the less glamorous kinds of superstars: successful fiction writers. In an interview, they will sincerely and truthfully describe their own path to success, suggesting that others who follow those steps would succeed too. But there is no accounting for the thousands of others who may have done all the right things but for whatever reasons of talent, character, or just plain luck will never be famous. If going by statistics rather than the news, many aspiring fiction writers might aim for more modest but attainable goals. Of course, there are many ways that writing could be considered a success without the author becoming famous, but where being widely read is part of the definition of success, accurate probabilities are important.

Whether the news is bad or good, we are by nature inclined to overestimate its direct relevance to our lives.