Together with Bayes’s formula (which in practice is mostly remaining aware of base rates when evidence comes to light), another key point about reasoning under uncertainty is to avoid it whenever possible. Like with long-term irrelevance of news, cognitive and methodological overhead makes uncertain knowledge less useful. There are exceptions, like you do want to keep track of news about an uncertain prospect of a war breaking out in your country, but all else equal this is not the kind of thing that’s worth worrying about too much. And certainty is not the same as consensus or being well-known to interested people, since there are things that can be understood. If you study something seriously, there are many observations that can be made with certainty, mostly very hypothetical or abstract ones, that almost nobody else made. Truth-seeking is not about seeking all available truths, or else you might as well memorize white noise all day long.
Together with Bayes’s formula (which in practice is mostly remaining aware of base rates when evidence comes to light), another key point about reasoning under uncertainty is to avoid it whenever possible. Like with long-term irrelevance of news, cognitive and methodological overhead makes uncertain knowledge less useful. There are exceptions, like you do want to keep track of news about an uncertain prospect of a war breaking out in your country, but all else equal this is not the kind of thing that’s worth worrying about too much. And certainty is not the same as consensus or being well-known to interested people, since there are things that can be understood. If you study something seriously, there are many observations that can be made with certainty, mostly very hypothetical or abstract ones, that almost nobody else made. Truth-seeking is not about seeking all available truths, or else you might as well memorize white noise all day long.
When I realized that most news did not influence me, i.e., change my behavior or let me update my world model, I stopped reading it.