To have useful and rational beliefs about the world you need (1) good sources of information and (2) a rational brain. There is lots of evidence that people are not rational, especially about things that are strongly associated with group identity, such as politics, ethics, economics, and some topics in science. This is true regardless of intelligence.
People tend to interpret evidence in a way that supports their prior position and they ignore evidence to the contrary. Politics makes us stupid.
I think factor (1) is a bit more neglected and not well understood by people who are actively trying to have above average knowledge of the world. I know people who read The Guardian who think they should challenge their views by going on the Daily Mail comments section. I know people who watch Newsnight every night, thinking they will learn stuff. This is a bad mistake – worse than doing nothing, it will actually make you stupider than you were when you went in. And this problem is easily solved because there are lots of great source of information.
1. TV
The bad
There are some good programmes on TV about science and history. But I have almost never seen a TV programme that was a good way to learn about politics, economics or philosophy. For the most part, if you want to learn important things about the world, turn your TV off.
Lots of conscientious citizens watch the news and news programmes like Question Time and Newsnight, and think it their duty. You will learn less than nothing by doing this.
- Negative stories. TV news massively over-reports negative stories, which is why people fail to recognise that the world is actually getting a lot better.
- Focus on political intrigue. TV news in the UK is obsessed with psycho-dramas in Westminster rather than understanding complex issues, such as:
- How bad could climate change be and what is the most cost-effective way to deal with it?
- Does foreign aid work?
- What are the merits of a land value tax?
- Is it possible to influence social mobility?
- Why is housing unaffordable in the South East?
- Two disagreeing mouths = objectivity. TV operates according to the principle that if you have two people who take different views on a topic, then if you make them talk at each other, the truth comes out. Newsnight, the premier current affairs show in Britain, tried to inform viewers about addiction by having a debate between Chandler from Friends and Peter Hitchens. This is typical for current affairs on TV.
- Reliance on ‘expert pundits’. TV current affairs often relies on people like Robert Peston, Andrew Marr, Andrew Neill, John Snow, Paul Mason, or Nick Robinson. Phillip Tetlock has shown that the opinions of such people are basically worthless. When they are put to the test and made to give testable predictions, they are no better than the proverbial dart-throwing chimp.
2. Newspapers and magazines
The bad
Almost all newspapers are terrible, including most of the supposedly high-brow ones – The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent and The Guardian. As with TV, the news skews negative. Moreover, these newspapers are all unbelievably politically biased and are pushing an agenda with their news coverage which precludes them from being objective.
Comment writers’ job is to have an interesting opinion once a week that is eye-catching and appealing to their readership. Most of the writers come from a humanities background and so don’t understand stats, which you need to do to understand current affairs. Consequently, the quality of analysis in comment sections is almost always abysmal.
I have smart friends who take seriously comment writes who are leading writers at our flagship right of centre and left of centre newspapers. Most of these guys would be out of their depth in a puddle. Here is Charles Moore talking about grammar schools, liberated from the desire to examine any evidence on the topic, such as selection effects in education. And here is Owen Jones half-understanding his own notes while trying to explain why Venezuela’s economy crashed, even though he had written on the topic for many years and predicted that it wouldn’t. This is what it looks like when someone has bluffed a career.
There is the occasional good article in these papers, but it’s not worth sifting through the rubbish to get to the good stuff.
The same applies to supposedly highbrow political magazines, such as The Spectator and The New Statesman. I read The Spectator for many years and the New Statesman for less. Both are poor. The Spectator has had people like James Delingpole, a bona fide conspiracy theorist, as regular contributors.
The good
I really like The Economist. For the most part, I think it is a well-researched attempt to give an objective view of important issues in politics and economics. Some of the coverage isn’t great – if The Economist had its way they’d be using the Euro in Iraq – but it is mostly good and non-ideological.
I’m told by people I trust that The Financial Times is good.
3. Radio and podcasts
The bad
Many of the criticisms above apply to a lot of radio programmes. Lots of smart and conscientious people listen to the Today programme. Everyone knows that politicians on those programmes act within constraints and are not incentivised to convey accurate information. You don’t learn anything from watching John Humphrys trying to catch them out: that is merely sport. You learn stuff from experts in their field speaking freely, openly and tolerantly with someone who actually understands what they’re talking about.
The good
There are some great radio programmes and podcasts out there. I think this is because the constraints of public opinion are weaker on the radio. We have a public broadcaster, so it is hard for programmes to actually put forward a controversial view with any conviction.
More or Less – Covers statistical claims in the news on the assumption that it is possible to find and communicate the correct answer and the attendant uncertainty. I have learnt so much about statistics from this show. They will even get into very thorny and heated topics, such as whether the Spirit Level is bad social science or not, or the economic effects of the Thatcher government. You could never get away with that on TV.
The Inquiry – Four expert witnesses discuss some defined proposition and try to reach an answer on it. These will be scientific experts in the field or people close to the action, rather than rent-a-gobs from newspapers.
In Our Time – Melvyn Bragg gets three academic experts to talk for 45 minutes about a topic such as utilitarianism or what caused the Industrial Revolution. Again, no rent-a-gobs.
Econtalk – Russ Roberts discusses economics-relevant research with experts for more than an hour. Roberts has his own libertarian biases, but he is open about them, and the guests come from across the political spectrum. Several Nobel Laureates have appeared.
Conversations with Tyler – Similar to Econtalk, conversations from informed and smart people with the polymath Tyler Cowen.
80,000 Hours podcast – Rob Wiblin has >1 hour conversations on philosophy, policy, global catastrophic risk, long-termism and effective altruism. He is a great presenter and you wouldn’t find a lot of the guests anywhere else.
Rationally speaking with Julia Galef – Julia is a brilliant interviewer who gets guests with deep expertise in a topic to explain their view on it.
Freakonomics – This is generally good, but occasionally features things like the Malcolm Gladwell ‘10,000 hours’ nonsense. The presenters are smart and well-informed and the contributors usually good.
You will learn more listening to the back catalogue of these shows than a lifetime’s watching the news or reading newspapers.
4. Blogs and online news
The good
You will learn more about a topic from reading the Wikipedia or Our World in Data entry on it than if you watched the news for a hundred lifetimes.
Some good blogs:
Slatestarcodex. Scott Alexander is brilliant. Thorough investigations of scientific papers related to important topics, and careful analysis of current events.
Econlog. Bryan Caplan and Scott Sumner are worth reading.
Marginal Revolution. Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok are really smart and knowledgeable. They cover a wide range of topics in economics.
Andrew Gelman’s blog. Criticising the use of stats in the media and in science.
Fakenous Michael Huemer is one of my favourite philosophers. On the Fake Nous blog, he provides rational and impartial treatment to philosophical topics and to current affairs.
Effective Altruism Forum. The posts with more than 50 upvotes are usually worth reading.
Overcoming Bias. Robin Hanson is worth reading but a bit of a troll.