‘Have we just lived through one of the best years in human history? As we look at 2023 through the rearview mirror, I think that’s a defensible claim. In fact, the same thing could have been said at the end of pretty much every year since the beginning of the millennium (with the exception of the disastrous pandemic years of 2020 and 2021). Never before have so many people lived in affluence, safety, and good health.
And yet, it doesn’t feel that way. There’s so much horror and misery in the world—look at the situations in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and Yemen alone—that it is hard to believe that, on average, this past year was probably the best year ever. So, if life is better than ever before, why does the world seem so depressing?…
…there are more fundamental reasons why almost all news outlets display a negativity bias. To understand why news is almost invariably depressing—and why Rolf Dobelli is right that you probably shouldn’t read it—I’ve drawn up a list of Seven Laws of Pessimism. Some of the underlying principles will be familiar to anyone who has read the work of progress thinkers like Steven Pinker, Hans Rosling, Hannah Ritchie, and Johan Norberg, while others are more obscure. Hopefully, this list will work as an antidote whenever excessive news consumption makes you feel despondent:
1. The Law of the Invisibility of Good News: Progress happens gradually and imperceptibly, while regress happens all at once and immediately grabs our attention…
2. The Law of The Velocity of Bad News: Nothing travels faster than the speed of light, except bad news…
3. The Law of Rubbernecking: The more gruesome the news, the more we lap it up…
4. The Law of Conservation of Outrage: No matter how much progress the world is achieving, the total amount of outrage remains constant…
5. The Law of Awful Attraction: If you don’t find bad news, bad news will find you…
6. The Law of Self-Effacing Solutions: Once a solution has been achieved, people forget about the original problem (and only see further problems)…
7. The Law of Disinfecting Sunlight: The freer a society, the more ugly things will surface…’ (Maarten Boudry via quillette.com)
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