“The News is Never Neglected” by lsusr

Dear Lsusr,

I am inspired by your stories about Effective Evil. My teachers at school told me I should watch the news so I could be a good civic participant. Should I reverse this advice? Or should I watch the news like everyone else, except use what I learn for evil?

Sincerely,

[redacted]

Dear [redacted],

If you want to make an impact on the world, then you should put your effort into solving problems that are important, neglected and tractable.

Mainstream news often reports on events that are important. Mainstream news sometimes reports on events that are tractable. But mainstream news approximately never reports on events that are neglected. Why? Just think about it for ten seconds. It's practically a tautology; events in the mainstream news are the events getting massive attention.

Whenever the mainstream news says "nobody is talking about <whatever>", the mainstream news is lying. Here's a [...]

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First published:
February 11th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/MmxtzkXLDWnyicQpF/the-news-is-never-neglected

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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