Anyone attempting to keep up with the day-to-day missteps and offenses of the Trump administration has realized the toll this effort takes. You are always one step behind. This is because media companies are literally paying hundreds or more employees to stay one step ahead. You will never out compete the media in the information game. This is the essential fact of the Fast Media. So you must change the game.
I think I found out how you can change the game and stay ahead of Fast Media. It requires a return to and focus on Deep Media. It requires changing from the information game to the principles game. Deep Media resources are the type that dig a mile deep instead of a mile wide. Choose a broad concept (say, Socialism) and go deep. Read several books within a tight time frame (1 month is fine). When you come into contact with names or events that you’ve never heard of, do a quick Wikipedia search and read for trends. Listen to a podcast episode on the topic. Youtube a debate. The key is to start building a general sense of historical trends and extracting durable political principles. Do not try and memorize the name General Videla, instead read about Argentina and South American Socialism in the late 20th century. Then decide how you feel about it. Form a unique opinion. Repeat this for more cases of Socialism and you will have a pretty solid understanding the next time someone wants to debate Venezuela and the Maduro regime with you. Even if you don’t know the details before the conversation, you arrive with the Deep Media knowledge by your side. This is key.
When you decide to focus on Deep Media (books, documentaries, podcasts) instead of Fast Media (push notifications, Twitter, reading headlines, watching Facebook videos), you will be making the transition from superficial and reactionary to real and principled thinking. This eliminates the need to stay hyper-current because principles are timeless. This doesn’t mean principles can’t be changed, but that any possible change will happen slowly. For any new story you encounter out in public, you will have history and concepts to rely on. Details come out in conversation, but concepts must be studied. A Deep Media orientation values questions over straight forward answers. You never enter into Deep Media with something to prove, but rather something to discover. From your experience you extract principles.
The urge to be up to date has several sources. You may genuinely want to know as many facts as possible. Perhaps you are a so-called Dreamer, and worried Trump’s reliable volatility will reverse DACA and send you out of the U.S. That is the best reason to consume Fast Media, but happily there seems to be a bulit-in mechanism for staying current on news of this type: the more drastic the consequences, the higher likelihood the news will find you instead of you finding it. And more importantly, the less likely a policy change will happen quickly. Thanks to our system of Checks and Balances, controversial bills will take longer to become law. And if some malicious tyrant wishes to radically change the law by way of Executive Order, the Supreme Court will surely be involved. Recall the notorious “Travel Ban” from earlier this year. It no doubt caused immediate confusion and chaos, but was quickly challenged in courts. That news would have certainly found you on one side of the Atlantic or the other.
Many well known thinkers avoid or avoided news all together. You can try this: for a week just stop reading all news. No Twitter, Facebook, New York Times, Phillip DeFranco, etc. You really won’t miss much and may even gain some peace from being out of the loop. This is why the famous angel investor Chris Sacca moved out of Silicon Valley and into the mountains. He switched his mode from unfiltered noise to curated Deep Media. He talks of deeper relationships, ones he intentionally cultivates by inviting people to his house. Even Mark Twain would retreat to a cabin on his property to write. It was so far from his main house that his family would blow a horn to summon Twain for dinner. These are forms of going deep instead of plugging into the fast channels of constant stimulus. Generally speaking, I wouldn’t block out all news. But I wouldn’t make it your focus either.
The main reason most people want to keep up with the media feeding line is less noble. Most people simply wish to seem intelligent amongst friends and acquaintances when politics inexorably comes up. We want to nail down our little talking point and sit back nodding in agreement. These interactions are the most common and very easy to identify.
Signs are as follows: one ambitious political dissident states his or her informed and edgy opinion (typically vague and uncontroversial). BUT! They say it as if it were extremely polarizing and novel. This is the “Hot Take” meme. Then someone adds a non-sequitur usually started with a phrase like, “exactly, it’s just like…” (it isn’t just like…) And finally everyone agrees and nods along feeling informed and morally superior.
Here is a sample Fast Media conversation:
“Trump is totally incompetent. Republicans need to impeach him. Democrats would only need to convince a few key conservatives.”
“Exactly. I mean he literally just fired the head of…um..I forget what it’s called but it’s basically the main governmental body who protects our rivers and forests.”
“So messed up. And he made Devos the Head of Education, someone who literally has never been to public school.”
Fast Media conversation is boring. It relies on the recitation of facts or “almost facts” loose with detail. It relies on shared information (or lack of) to “fill in” the gaps of real knowledge. Everyone knows Trump is awful and that the head of whatever department is probably incompetent. It was on Trevor Noah. Although we use details and recite the facts we saw on Twitter or the newest “Now This” video, we don’t need to deeply understand anything. The group knows what we mean, even if we don’t. And Vice Versa. Most of the talking points were heard before they were thought of. And most importantly, they are not conversations at all. They exclude anyone present who isn’t on your same Twitter Feed or hasn’t downloaded the news to their brain that day.
Meaningful conversations should use facts to defend their claims, not rely on shared information to support the entire discussion. Otherwise we are just reading an encyclopedia or newspaper aloud. Questions should be asked that summon deeper questions. Anyone should be able to contribute because the discussion touches on broader concepts. It should be an exchange of information, not a collective info check with your political circle. Here is a Deep Media version of the previous “conversation.”
“Trump is totally incompetent. He should be impeached.”
“But is his incompetency impeachable?”
“Don’t know. He is clearly an imbecile, but would a Conservative congress ever impeach a Republican president?”
“If it really got bad enough. Didn’t Clinton get impeached by his own party?”
“No Republicans had both sides of congress I think. It doesn’t even matter though. What would the state of our country be if we impeached our president?”
“Why would that matter? Should we really not stop this real insanity for fear of a potential insanity? That’s just the sunk cost fallacy applied to the president!”
And on and on it goes. This isn’t a particularly exciting version but it makes you think a little more.
Noam Chomsky (who I exalt and detest depending on the topic) was once reportedly having tooth pain. His dentist asked him if he grinds his teeth during sleep. He said he didn’t. They couldn’t figure it out. Until Noam’s wife realized that once every day he was in fact grinding his teeth. Every morning while reading the New York Times! Fast Media outlets are usually just other people reacting to the real information. Sometimes we want to know what others are thinking. Christopher Hitchens once said he read the Times only to see what inane arguments he would encounter that day. The Fast Media real time reaction reel is the reason outlets like BuzzFeed can simply screenshot Trump’s tweets and get a million plus clicks.
Instead of adopting other peoples’ reactions, go and investigate for yourself. Find out more about the history and cultural trends of the thing. And if anyone who values Truth needs reminding after 2016, read sources that you disagree with. My favorites in the disagree category are the snooty Ben Shapiro and exhausting Abby Martin. I usually disagree with them but they directly attack my own ideas, generally liberal and pro-American respectively (though Abby and Chomsky would say I am pro-Empire).
Deep Media and antithetical opinions create an informational political strategy that is what Nasim Taleb calls Antifragile. When you are confronted with damaging information, you grow stronger not weaker. If I believe Socialism is the best mode of governance, reading deeply about the Cuban revolution will force me to confront this belief. Regardless of my position after that confrontation, it will be more strongly defended. I won’t be caught on my heels by the Cuban question when a Capitalist challenges me. And I won’t rely on or need to memorize the latest “10 things you need to know about Che Guevara.”
The unending inundation of Fast Media is partly to blame for the new desire for black and white thinking. In all areas of the political sphere, nuance is becoming less appreciated. If you dislike Nazism and the “Anti-Facism” cadre, you are now considered a Nazi sympathizer. Fast Media wants clear answers. These are the facts. Full stop. I find it telling that my circle on Facebook routinely end comments with phrases like “end of story” or “end of discussion.” So not only does Deep Media have the utility of circumventing memorization of facts, it also encourages nuance. I will relay the warning from mathematician Eric Weinstein: becoming a nuanced thinker requires a lifetime of wasted effort repeating the phrase, “No I didn’t say that at all.”
The fact is most people have a pretty bad memory. You will forget the name Jared Kushner or the current President of Venezuela (Maduro, think Mad). So the trick is to circumvent this faulty memory and cut down to first principles. Learn about trends and movements instead of snippets of information like years and names. Have a general idea of the Venezuela government and opposition. But don’t make the cities and names your focus. Instead think about big concepts. When is political violence acceptable, if ever? What are the limits of the First Amendment? The trade offs of Security vs. Freedom.
Where do you fall? You can outsource information, but you can’t outsource thinking (yet). Make a point to be less reactionary. Trump benefits every time we react to his insane Tweets or latest “joke.” Bring art, culture, history, and philosophy to your conversations. Ask tougher questions of your friends. Recite the opposite of your true beliefs and see how your friends defend their points. Write your own posts and create your own phrases. Admit you don’t know often. Share books and podcasts with each other and spend less time online. Most videos under two minutes that are shared on Facebook aren’t worth your two minutes. Use the Fast Media as one resource. As Chris Sacca might put it, stop playing defense and start playing offense. Be less Reactionary.
polymathematics 
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