Counterpoint 1: this sounds like a deliberate adoption of the bystander effect. The more people know about a problem, the less responsible I am to do anything about it...
Counterpoint 2: many problems require collective action, which requires the problem be widely known.
I don’t know if I’d go as strong as the OP, but, I think you’re being the most pro-social if you have a sense of the scale of other things-worth-doing that aren’t in the news, and consciously checking how the current News Thing fits into that scale of importance.
(There can be a few different ways to think about importance, which this frame can be agnostic on. i.e. doesn’t have to be “global utilitarian in the classical sense”)
The last time I saw someone unconscious on the side of the road with a concussion due to a bicycle crash, there was bystander already attempting to render aid. I stopped to help anyway, and discovered that the bystander in question had failed both to render first aid and to call 911. In this situation, I think I did the right thing getting involved. I produced a trivially observable net positive effect.
That same year, I visited a protest against the current war in the Middle East, and tried talking to the participants. I left with the impression that their desire to act collectively and rebelliously for a righteous cause exceeded their curiosity to find out whether the cause was indeed righteous. This is a result of selection effects. The situation was morally complicated, but the people who protest are angry about it, and to be angry about it, they had to believe the situation was morally simple.
To put things another way, if you’re in a situation that 10 people know about, then there’s a good chance nobody is doing anything about it. However, if 10,000,000 people know about a situation, then it’s statistically impossible that nobody is doing anything about it.
Agreed on both points. I had to say, without reading the news occasionally, I do not realize how much I don’t know about things going on in the world. It does help me to stay informed, and deep concrete stories in particular, help to understand full pictures. Though many times, I also need to do a bit of digging to find more information to avoid bias, but if one stick to news sources that have better quality, this issue will be better. It is very likely the choice of news sources, matters.
The OP had a strong assumption that whatever reported in the news are going to be mainstream; I think it is only partially true, and have some doubts; for “old” news, it is also/very possible they are getting attention bc nothing has been done about them. Things do not have to be new, to be underfunded/under resourced etc.
Counterpoint 1: this sounds like a deliberate adoption of the bystander effect. The more people know about a problem, the less responsible I am to do anything about it...
Counterpoint 2: many problems require collective action, which requires the problem be widely known.
I don’t know if I’d go as strong as the OP, but, I think you’re being the most pro-social if you have a sense of the scale of other things-worth-doing that aren’t in the news, and consciously checking how the current News Thing fits into that scale of importance.
(There can be a few different ways to think about importance, which this frame can be agnostic on. i.e. doesn’t have to be “global utilitarian in the classical sense”)
The last time I saw someone unconscious on the side of the road with a concussion due to a bicycle crash, there was bystander already attempting to render aid. I stopped to help anyway, and discovered that the bystander in question had failed both to render first aid and to call 911. In this situation, I think I did the right thing getting involved. I produced a trivially observable net positive effect.
That same year, I visited a protest against the current war in the Middle East, and tried talking to the participants. I left with the impression that their desire to act collectively and rebelliously for a righteous cause exceeded their curiosity to find out whether the cause was indeed righteous. This is a result of selection effects. The situation was morally complicated, but the people who protest are angry about it, and to be angry about it, they had to believe the situation was morally simple.
To put things another way, if you’re in a situation that 10 people know about, then there’s a good chance nobody is doing anything about it. However, if 10,000,000 people know about a situation, then it’s statistically impossible that nobody is doing anything about it.
Agreed on both points. I had to say, without reading the news occasionally, I do not realize how much I don’t know about things going on in the world. It does help me to stay informed, and deep concrete stories in particular, help to understand full pictures. Though many times, I also need to do a bit of digging to find more information to avoid bias, but if one stick to news sources that have better quality, this issue will be better. It is very likely the choice of news sources, matters.
The OP had a strong assumption that whatever reported in the news are going to be mainstream; I think it is only partially true, and have some doubts; for “old” news, it is also/very possible they are getting attention bc nothing has been done about them. Things do not have to be new, to be underfunded/under resourced etc.