Information Anxiety

[Leo]

In January this year, the former education secretary Nicky Morgan refused to say what seven times eight was while appearing on ITV’s Good Morning Britain to announce a new maths test for 11-year-olds. Labour schools minister Stephen Byers was also famously unable to calculate seven times eight when interviewed by BBC Radio 5 in 1998.

In an interview with the BBC in the runup to the London mayoral election, Conservative party candidate Zac Goldsmith failed to name underground stations on the Central line and to correctly identify Queens Park Rangers as the football team that plays at Loftus Road."

agree with the others you mention but these two are just basic stupidity as opposed to not being up on the latest news and trends, right?

[Corpsey]

a lot of people who seem like they are so much more informed are often just better at appearing that way. this is potentially terrible advice, but maybe work on how you can appear authoritative, rather than actually being 100% authoritative. (though obv not if its a situation where you should genuinely have the knowledge, but as i dont believe you are going to be responsible for any major military invasions, i think this is okay)

I was going to say that I don't want to be informed so that I can appear well informed, but truth be told I do wonder what it is that makes me think I should read all these books. Is it because I want to read them (in which case I'd have a tough time tearing myself away from them to watch Netflix), or is it because I think if I have read them, I'll be a better person?

Partly, I think, it's an aspiration of mine to be a better writer, and I figure that the more I read the better I will get at writing. But then, I also think I plough these books for wisdom, for things that will change and enrich my perspective of life. Listening to music, by contrast, is (as much as it can be for a part-time music critic and Dissensian ) purely pleasurable.

[rubberdingyrapids]

lol anyone whose been near a therapist will tell you its the tyranny of 'i should'.

[Corpsey]

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ning-our-lives

This article made me think of this thread.

[baboon2004]

I loved that article, was reading bits out to people for about a week after reading it`. Inbox Zero (what a genius name) must rank as peak bullshit; someone should make a film about the rise and breakdown of Merlin Mann.

"One of the sneakier pitfalls of an efficiency-based attitude to time is that we start to feel pressured to use our leisure time “productively”, too – an attitude which implies that enjoying leisure for its own sake, which you might have assumed was the whole point of leisure, is somehow not quite enough."
Well, quite. Bane of my life, recently at least.

[sufi]

Inbox Zero

has always seemed to me to be futile and i have taken great pleasure in ribbing diligent colleagues " don't you have better things to do than footling about with emails?

[Mr. Tea]

"One of the sneakier pitfalls of an efficiency-based attitude to time is that we start to feel pressured to use our leisure time “productively”, too – an attitude which implies that enjoying leisure for its own sake, which you might have assumed was the whole point of leisure, is somehow not quite enough."

There's a great Meades quote that goes something like: "An activity is recreational in inverse proportion to its utility" - in other words, if what you're doing has some ultimate point to it, then it's not really recreational, even if you're enjoying yourself while doing it. True recreation is quite literally pointless.

[baboon2004]

has always seemed to me to be futile and i have taken great pleasure in ribbing diligent colleagues " don't you have better things to do than footling about with emails?

As I think he prob says in the article as well, it seems based upon a fundamental failure to understand that the way to defeat anxiety is not to submit with ever greater 'efficiency' to the dictates of the system that is producing that anxiety. Ever greater quantities of work will follow. It's like an anti-Bartleby.

@Tea that's a good quote. Neoliberalism/whatever we want to call it as an all-consuming ideology, so ingrained that it's barely noticed. Always polishing up the CV first and foremost, whether at business or play, Fromm's 'marketing personality'

[Mr. Tea]

All these stupid puzzle game apps that can't be marketed as simply a bit of fun, oh no, they have to be 'brain teasers' and 'mental gym equipment' to make you a faster, leaner, smarter worker.

Fuck that shit. Zapping aliens is its own reward, or should be.

[baboon2004]

Amen to that. And amen to you too, alien scum!

[Mr. Tea]

Baboon is here to kick ass and chew bubble gum - and he's all outta gum!

[firefinga]

For the first time in my life I have subscribed to a weekly news magazine. Printed. I grew up reading news sites/newspaper sites on the web, naturally, but especially with all the social-media-crap-plugins those sites have become unreadable really, and I have wasted too much time in the comments sections, too.

Now, I read this mag at the weekends, it gives me a nice round news update, I am not distracted by links/comments and whatnot. Question is, however, how long will that form of journalism still exists?

[CORP$EY]

I was going to make a thread along the lines of 'How do you believe in anything?' or 'How do you know that what you believe is true?' but I think it's just another manifestation of the neurosis I was describing in post 1 of this thread.

Tree of Knowledge innit!

[john eden]

I was going to make a thread along the lines of 'How do you believe in anything?' or 'How do you know that what you believe is true?' but I think it's just another manifestation of the neurosis I was describing in post 1 of this thread.

Tree of Knowledge innit!

Start with the basics and stop being so hard on yourself.

I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has, because that fits with my (partial) understanding of astrophysics and because I've not seen anything from a credible source that suggests that it won't.

There is a small chance that I am wrong. I acknowledge this, park it - and then get on with my day.

You can scale that up to all sorts of other things.

[luka]

life is a rave never stop dancing