The stuff in the news does not equal the stuff that’s actually most important to learn and talk about. Instead, it’s some combination of (a) stuff that sells clicks/eyeballs/retweets, and (b) the hobbyhorses of journalists and editors. Note that journalists usually have an extremely shallow understanding of what they write about, much more shallow than you’d like to believe. (See: Gell-Mann amnesia.)
(Think about the incentives. If there was an organization that was dedicated to sifting through all the world’s problems and sorting them by their all-things-considered importance to the world, and then writing primarily about the problems judged to be maximally important… are you imagining that this organization’s front page would be wildly popular, would become the new New York Times or Fox News or whatever and have hundreds of millions of viewers? No, it would be a niche thing. People would disagree with its conclusions about what’s important, often without even having given them more than two second’s thought, and even the people who agree with its conclusions might be bored and go read other publications instead.)
The stuff on the agendas of governments, unfortunately, also does not equal the stuff that’s actually most important. Politicians have arguably less of an understanding of most things than journalists.
The stuff in the news does not equal the stuff that’s actually most important to learn and talk about. Instead, it’s some combination of (a) stuff that sells clicks/eyeballs/retweets, and (b) the hobbyhorses of journalists and editors. Note that journalists usually have an extremely shallow understanding of what they write about, much more shallow than you’d like to believe. (See: Gell-Mann amnesia.)
(Think about the incentives. If there was an organization that was dedicated to sifting through all the world’s problems and sorting them by their all-things-considered importance to the world, and then writing primarily about the problems judged to be maximally important… are you imagining that this organization’s front page would be wildly popular, would become the new New York Times or Fox News or whatever and have hundreds of millions of viewers? No, it would be a niche thing. People would disagree with its conclusions about what’s important, often without even having given them more than two second’s thought, and even the people who agree with its conclusions might be bored and go read other publications instead.)
The stuff on the agendas of governments, unfortunately, also does not equal the stuff that’s actually most important. Politicians have arguably less of an understanding of most things than journalists.