It's true that there's big problems and it's true that things should change.

The issue is that the solution that is proposed to the problem is to have more attention to the problem. This result in a virtuous circle where things have to address the problem more and more. It does help address the problem though, it's not falling on deaf ears and it is educational.

This then becomes a kind of noise drowning out other signals. It's the signals that listeners want not the noise.

Is anything actually improved, do people benefit? I would say yes!!

But it's a move away from signal and information towards problem education and political or social messaging.

The virtuous circle can get reinforced by objections to the changes. Objections or "discomfort" are often proof that more changes need to be made. The signal is further reduced and those in change become blind in their virtue. Metrics in how good they are doing are perceived in terms of the messages that are put out not in quality productions. A kind of seige mentality makes it hard to determine the difference between criticism of the content or format and political objections of the added messaging to the content. Both positions become opposition and encourage more of the same.

To me, the change to add more unbiased views or thoughts from the other side seem artificial and miss the actual change in content. It makes things more political and less about life.

> Is this discomfort with the state of the world?

There are two separate critiques going on:

1. There is a lot of bias in the news coverage.

2. There is a lot more to a radio station than covering the state of the world (news, social issues, etc). There's stuff like entertainment, humor, etc.

A lot of people are arguing about 2 above.

There's always malnutrition somewhere in the world (and yes, in the US). But we don't criticize the existence of movie theaters.

I mean, I listen to a lot of NPR for entertainment/humor/etc... WWDTM, PCHH, This American Life, Planet Money.

If the complaint is about #2, then I don't see it in these NPR shows. So I'm assuming they must be talking about #1. OR, they're complaining cause not all of the newscasters are white (they sampled Garrison Keillor, and the Car Talk guys as their examples)? Either way, feels like more of a problem the listener is grappling with than a problem with the actual content, to me.

> The state of the world isn't... all good

That's true it's fucking amazing! It's so much better then any point in history it's hard to image how far we've come.

Steven Pinker? Is that you?

I guess we can call it then. This is good enough. No reason to improve from here.

We should definitely just live with a perpetual war in the middle east. That seems fine. World Hunger is good enough. Racism is more or less solved. At least it's solved enough for my purposes as a white guy. Climate change will probably be fine as it is.

I'm sorry but "this is better than it's ever been" is less of a defense of the current time period, and more of an indictment of human history.

The Middle East has been in a state of perpetual war for millennia. That's not "fine", but trying to bring long term peace there is utterly futile. When a problem has no solution then it's not really a problem, just a fact to be accepted.

I would actually argue it's strictly worse, because we have gotten terribly effective weapons in the last century.

No one in the ME was killing each other as effectively as they are now. That's a way things are demonstrably worse than "there was war a millenia ago."

I also don't think it's fair to say that the ME has been in a "perpetual war for millenia." Was the ME at war during the crusades? Or was Europe conducting Sieges on them.

The Middle East was at war when the Assyrian Empire conquered its neighbors in the 14th century BC. The Middle East was at war when the Achaemenid Empire conquered its neighbors in the 5th century BC. The Middle East was at war when Jewish tribes rebelled against the Roman Empire in the 1st century AD. The Middle East was at war when the Umayyad Caliphate expanded in the 8th century AD. The Middle East was at war when the Ottomans captured Turkey in the 15th century AD. And so on. Some of those groups managed to commit horrific genocides despite having only primitive weapons. This is all terrible but nothing has really changed and unfortunately there is no realistic prospect of breaking the cycle of violence.

As for outside invasions, the same thing has happened to almost every area of the world. Often multiple times. The Middle East is hardly unique in that regard.

I don't think it's the media's place to make us feel inclined to take action. What action, exactly? Progressive, conservative, green, techno-optimist, religious, etc? It's their job to report on whatever is news-worthy, and it's up to viewers what they want to do with that information. I don't agree with pushing agendas disguised as news. That used to be mainly a Fox News and AM-talk radio thing. It's dissapointing to see the rest of media follow suit.

I think I have some bad news for you. The media is incredibly biased with their own agenda. I think the only way you can truly account for that is to make up for it with multiple viewpoints. Maybe LLMs can write truly "unbiased" news articles when they stop hallucinating, but until then I think the best thing we can have is "transparent agendas."

> Maybe LLMs can write truly “unbiased” news articles

“bias” only exists relative to a desired result. There is no such thing as “unbiased”.

(Also, and closely related, LLM’s reproduce the biases of those creating them, and the more control we have over LLM’s, the more closely they will do so.)