新闻有毒

News is bad for you – and giving up reading it will make you happier

新闻有毒--戒掉新闻会让你更快乐

News is bad for your health. It leads to fear and aggression, and hinders your creativity and ability to think deeply. The solution? Stop consuming it altogether.

新闻有害健康，它能引发恐惧和好斗，阻碍创造力，并抑制你深入思考的能力。解决方案是啥？彻底不看新闻。

原文作者：Rolf Dobelli

Fri 12 Apr 2013 on The Guardian 2013年4月12日发表于英国《卫报》

虽是8年前的旧文，如今再看依然觉得振聋发聩，值得深思

原文链接如下，也可点击文末左下角的“阅读原文”：

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli

In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites oftrivial matter,tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking. That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

过去几十年里，我们之中的部分幸运者，及早地意识到了食物过剩带来的危害(肥胖、糖尿病等)，并改变了饮食习惯。但大多数人却并不知道，新闻之于思想，正如糖分之于身体。新闻容易消化，媒体用鸡毛蒜皮、以及与我们生活无关并且无需思考的花边新闻填入我们口中，所以我们从来没感觉到饱。不像读书以及阅读长篇杂志文章(这些需要你去思考)，我们能吞下无尽的新闻，而它们对于思想就像闪闪发光的糖果。今天，我们与信息的关系，正如20年前我们与食物的关系一样。我们正逐渐认识到，新闻可能有毒。

News misleads. Take the following event (borrowed from Nassim Taleb). A car drives over a bridge, and the bridge collapses. What does the news media focus on? The car. The person in the car. Where he came from. Where he planned to go. How he experienced the crash (if he survived). But that is all irrelevant. What's relevant? The structural stability of the bridge. That's the underlying risk that has been lurking, and could lurk in other bridges. But the car is flashy, it's dramatic, it's a person (non-abstract), and it's news that's cheap to produce. News leads us to walk around with the completely wrong risk map in our heads. So terrorism is over-rated. Chronic stress is under-rated. The collapse of Lehman Brothers is overrated. Fiscal irresponsibility is under-rated. Astronauts are over-rated. Nurses are under-rated.

新闻有误导性。以下面的事故为例（引用自纳西姆·塔勒布）。一辆轿车路过某座桥，桥塌了。媒体会聚焦于什么？汽车、车里的人、他来自哪里、要到哪里去、他在事故中的体验如何(如果能生还的话)，但实际上这些都是无关紧要的。紧要的是什么？是这座桥的结构稳定性。这是隐藏的潜在风险，也是其他桥梁可能遇到的。但这辆汽车引人注目，事故有戏剧性，牵扯具体的人(非抽象)，这些可以轻松地用来制造新闻。新闻导致我们的大脑遵循错误的风险思维。因此，恐怖主义是被高估的，慢性的压力反而被低估了；雷曼兄弟倒闭的影响被高估，财政部的失职被却被低估；宇航员被高估，护士被低估。

We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press. Watching an airplane crash on television is going to change your attitude toward that risk, regardless of its real probability. If you think you can compensate with the strength of your own innercontemplation, you are wrong. Bankers and economists – who have powerful incentives to compensate for news-borne hazards – have shown that they cannot. The only solution: cut yourself off from news consumption entirely.

面对媒体，我们总是不够理性。在电视上看见飞机坠毁，会影响你对这一风险的态度，不论其真实概率高低。如果你觉得可以通过自身的深思抵消这种影响，那你错了。银行家和经济学家有很强的动力去消弭新闻衍生的危害，但事实证明他们做不到。唯一的解决方案是：让你自己完全不碰新闻。

News is irrelevant. Out of the approximately 10,000 news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business. The point is: the consumption of news is irrelevant to you. But people find it very difficult to recognise what's relevant. It's much easier to recognise what's new. The relevant versus the new is the fundamental battle of the current age. Media organisations want you to believe that news offers you some sort of a competitive advantage. Many fall for that. We get anxious when we're cut off from the flow of news. In reality, news consumption is a competitive disadvantage. The less news you consume, the bigger the advantage you have.

新闻没什么用处。过去12个月中，你读到的大约1万条新闻里，试试举出让你在生活、事业或生意等正事上作出更好决定的一个例子？事实是：新闻对你毫无用处。人们总是很难认清什么是“有用”，却很容易识别什么是“新的”。“有用” 与“新的”之间的PK，是当代最基本的冲突。媒体忽悠你相信，新闻让你获得某种竞争优势。很多人上了这当。当接触不到新闻时，他们会感到焦虑。而实际上，看新闻是一种竞争劣势。新闻看得越少，优势越大。

News has no explanatory power. News items are bubbles popping on the surface of a deeper world. Will accumulating facts help you understand the world? Sadly, no. The relationship is inverted. The important stories are non-stories: slow, powerful movements that develop below journalists' radar but have a transforming effect. The more "news factoids" you digest, the less of the big picture you will understand. If more information leads to higher economic success, we'd expect journalists to be at the top of the pyramid. That's not the case.

新闻没有解释力。新闻只是深度世界表层冒出来的泡泡。看新闻攒了很多事实，能否助你理解世界？很不幸，不能。这一关系本末倒置了。重要的事情都没有故事性：缓慢、有力的变化，吸引不了记者的关注，但却能改变世界。你消费的“新闻快餐”越多，对宏观格局的理解就越少。如果掌握的信息越多意味着经济上越成功，那么记者应当处于社会金字塔的顶端。但现实并非如此。

News is toxic to your body. It constantly triggers the limbic system. Panicky storiesspur the release of cascades of glucocorticoid (cortisol). This deregulates your immune system and inhibits the release of growth hormones. In other words, your body finds itself in a state of chronic stress. High glucocorticoid levels cause impaired digestion, lack of growth (cell, hair, bone), nervousness and susceptibility to infections. The other potential side-effects include fear, aggression, tunnel-vision and desensitisation.

新闻对身体有毒. 它们持续触发大脑的边缘系统。耸人听闻的故事会刺激肾上腺皮质醇的分泌，这会紊乱你的免疫系统，并抑制生长激素的分泌。换言之，令你的身体处于慢性压力状态。高皮质醇水平会导致消化不良，生长变慢(细胞、头发和骨质)，紧张以及易感染性。其它潜在的副作用包括恐惧、暴躁、视觉狭窄以及感觉迟钝。

News increases cognitive errors. News feeds the mother of all cognitive errors: confirmation bias. In the words of Warren Buffett: "What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact." News exacerbates this flaw. We become prone to overconfidence, take stupid risks and misjudge opportunities. It also exacerbates another cognitive error: the story bias. Our brains crave stories that "make sense" – even if they don't correspond to reality. Any journalist who writes, "The market moved because of X" or "the company went bankrupt because of Y" is an idiot. I am fed up with this cheap way of "explaining" the world.

新闻增加认知偏误. 新闻助长所有认知偏差之母——确认偏差。用巴菲特的话来说：“人类最善于做的是解读所有新信息，以便他们先前的结论不受影响”。新闻加剧了这一缺陷。我们变得易于过度自信，甘冒愚蠢的风险，误判机会。新闻也会放大另一认知偏差：故事偏见。我们的大脑渴望“有意义“的故事，即便它们与事实不符。任何写“市场因X而波动”以及“公司因Y而破产”的记者，都是白痴。我已经受够了这种随意“解释”世界的方式。

News inhibits thinking. Thinking requires concentration. Concentration requires uninterrupted time. News pieces are specifically engineered to interrupt you. They are like viruses that steal attention for their own purposes. News makes us shallow thinkers. But it's worse than that. News severely affects memory. There are two types of memory. Long-range memory's capacity is nearly infinite, but working memory is limited to a certain amount of slippery data. The path from short-term to long-term memory is a choke-point in the brain, but anything you want to understand must pass through it. If this passageway is disrupted, nothing gets through. Because news disrupts concentration, it weakens comprehension. Online news has an even worse impact. In a 2001 study two scholars in Canada showed that comprehension declines as the number of hyperlinks in a document increases. Why? Because whenever a link appears, your brain has to at least make the choice not to click, which in itself is distracting. News is an intentional interruption system.

新闻阻碍思考。思考要求专注，专注需要不受打扰的时间。而新闻正是专门用来打扰你的。它们就像病毒一样蓄意窃取注意力。新闻让我们变成肤浅的思考者，而且不止于此。新闻严重影响记忆力。记忆力包括两种：长期记忆的容量几乎是无限的，而动态记忆则限于一定量的模糊数据。从短期记忆到长期记忆的路径，是大脑的一个瓶颈，但也是你理解任何事情的必经之路。如果这一通道受影响，什么都过不去。新闻扰乱注意力，进而减弱理解力。网络新闻的危害更大。在2001年的一份研究中，两名加拿大的学者指出，随着一份文档中超级链接数量的增加，读者对这份文档的理解能力也在减弱。为何？因为当超链接出现时，你的大脑就至少要作出决定不点击的决定，这本身就扰乱注意力。总之，新闻就是一个蓄意的扰乱体系。

News works like a drug. As stories develop, we want to know how they continue. With hundreds of arbitrary storylines in our heads, this craving is increasingly compelling and hard to ignore. Scientists used to think that the dense connections formed among the 100 billion neurons inside our skulls were largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. Today we know that this is not the case. Nerve cells routinely break old connections and form new ones. The more news we consume, the more we exercise theneural circuits devoted to skimming and multitasking while ignoring those used for reading deeply and thinking with profound focus. Most news consumers – even if they used to be avid book readers – have lost the ability to absorb lengthy articles or books. After four, five pages they get tired, their concentration vanishes, they become restless. It's not because they got older or their schedules became more onerous. It's because the physical structure of their brains has changed.

新闻就像毒品。随着故事的发展，我们希望知道它们会如何继续。随着数百个任意的故事情节涌入我们的脑海，这种渴望变得愈发强烈，难以忽视。过去科学家们认为，我们大脑中1000亿个神经元之间形成的紧密联系，会在成年后基本固定。如今我们知道，事实并非如此。神经细胞经常会打破旧有联系，形成新的联系。我们读的新闻越多，我们就越锻炼了用于略读和多任务处理的神经回路，而忽略了用于深度阅读和深度思考的神经回路。大多数新闻消费者——即便他们曾经是忠实的书籍阅读者，已经丧失了消化长篇文章或书籍的能力。读了四五页之后，他们会感到疲惫，注意力消散，坐立不安。这不是因为他们年纪变大，或者事务繁忙，而是因为他们的大脑物理结构已然改变。

News wastes time. If you read the newspaper for 15 minutes each morning, then check the news for 15 minutes during lunch and 15 minutes before you go to bed, then add five minutes here and there when you're at work, then count distraction and refocusing time, you will lose at least half a day every week. Information is no longer a scarce commodity. But attention is. You are not that irresponsible with your money, reputation or health. Why give away your mind?

新闻浪费时间。如果你每天早上看15分钟新闻，午饭时间读15分钟，睡前再读15分钟，工作期间这看看那看看花5分钟，算上分心和重新集中注意力的时间，你每周至少要浪费半天时间。信息不再是稀缺品，而注意力是。你不会随意浪费你的钱财、声誉和健康，那么为何要浪费自己的注意力？

News makes us passive. News stories are overwhelmingly about things you cannot influence. The daily repetition of news about things we can't act upon makes us passive. It grinds us down until we adopt a worldview that is pessimistic, desensitised, sarcastic and fatalistic. The scientific term is "learned helplessness". It's a bit of a stretch, but I would not be surprised if news consumption, at least partially contributes to the widespread disease of depression.

新闻让人消极。绝大多数新闻报道都是关于你无法影响的事情，每日重复而我们无能为力的新闻，让我们变得消极。它把我们打磨得很沮丧，最终形成悲观、麻木、尖酸和宿命论的世界观。对应的科学术语是“习得性无助“(learned helplessness)。这样可能有些夸大，但如果说新闻消费至少在一定程度上导致了普遍的抑郁症，我不会感到惊讶。

News kills creativity. Finally, things we already know limit our creativity. This is one reason that mathematicians, novelists, composers and entrepreneurs often produce their most creative works at a young age. Their brains enjoy a wide, uninhabited space that emboldens them to come up with and pursue novel ideas. I don't know a single truly creative mind who is a news junkie – not a writer, not a composer, mathematician, physician, scientist, musician, designer, architect or painter. On the other hand, I know a bunch of viciously uncreative minds who consume news like drugs. If you want to come up with old solutions, read news. If you are looking for new solutions, don't.

新闻扼杀创造力。最后一点，我们已知的东西限制了我们的创造力。这也是数学家、小说家、作曲家和企业家通常在年轻时产出他们最有创造力作品的原因之一。那时，他们脑中有广阔的无人区，这使他们有勇气提出并追求新奇的创意。在我认识的真正有创造力的人当中，没有一个着迷于新闻，不管是作家、作曲家、技师、医生、科学家、音乐家、设计师、建筑师还是画家。另一方面，我也认识很多严重缺乏创新思维的人，他们像吸毒一样沉迷新闻。如果你想提出旧的解决方案，去读新闻。但如果你想寻找新思路，请不要。

Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don't have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too.

社会需要新闻业，但应该是以另一种方式。调查性新闻一直都是有用的。我们需要那种监督社会机构和揭露真相的报道。但重要的发现并不一定要以新闻的形式呈现，长篇期刊文章以及深度书籍也是不错的形式。

I have now gone without news for four years, so I can see, feel and report the effects of this freedom first-hand: less disruption, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more time, moreinsights. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

我已经四年没有看新闻了，因此我能够直接看见、感受并分享这种自由带来的效果：更少的干扰、更少的焦虑、更深入的思考、更多的时间、更多的洞察力。这并不容易做到，但值得。