24/7 news makes long-term progress harder to see

Decision-Making

1 Weekly magazines have a different focus from daily papers, which in turn have a different focus from social media. But what if we had a newspaper that came out every fifty years? Roser argued that such a newspaper would be far more likely to discuss long-term positive trends. Instead of celebrity gossip, the front page of a fifty-year newspaper today might report on the global child mortality rate dropping from 14 per cent to 4 per cent, or the fact that services employment now constitutes a majority of all jobs worldwide.

Behavioural principles

Behavioural ideas at play in this post

Short, plain-English explanations of the principles behind this post, with links to related books and examples in the archive.

Availability heuristic

If an example comes to mind easily, we assume it is common or likely.

More quotes

Overconfidence effect

We are often more certain than the evidence really allows.

More quotes

Base-rate neglect

We focus on vivid specifics and ignore the wider statistical odds.

More quotes

24/7 news makes long-term progress harder to see

Behavioural ideas at play in this post

Sharp thinking in your inbox