Is Consuming Political Information Essential?

Make yourself happier and more productive by intentionally selecting political information

Now that we’re at the end of 2021, I’m thinking over the year and how I spent my resources. I break up my resources into three types: time, energy, and money. I like to think of my resources like a budget and I imagine breaking my expenditures into a pie-chart. I’m fairly happy with how I spent my money. A category I’m less happy with is how I spent my time and energy. When I break up my time expenditures into a notional pie-chart, I didn’t spend as much as I wanted to developing my technical skill, spending time with my kids, and doing personal projects (like writing).

So I want to review my time and energy expenditures pie-chart and look for things to cut. If I’m honest with myself, a fairly large piece of the pie was digesting political information and engaging in political arguments. A lot happened this year. COVID continued, the Copenhagen Climate Conference was held, the capital was attacked, the US withdrew from Afghanistan, and China seems to be gearing up to invade Taiwan, just to name a few. My time and energy in this category was spent in the form of listening to podcasts, reading articles, etc. I also acted on this information by having detailed and sometimes intense arguments on these issues with friends and family. So, when evaluating how I spent my time and energy, I need to find out whether the political information I consumed was worth it.

I like to think about a question by bringing it back to first principles. I started by asking how to determine the value of information. I came up with three reasons why political information might be valuable.

1. It is intrinsically interesting or enjoyable
2. The information improves my actions and their impact
3. I can inform others to improve our collective action

Is politics interesting or enjoyable?

The first reason is tricky for me. I find some political information intrinsically interesting, but it isn’t enjoyable. In fact, political information and discourse usually sours my mood. During weeks with troubling events, I’m often depressed by 8AM after scrolling through news in bed on my phone. But then, why do I feel drawn to political news? I think much of my time spent on politics is motivated by fear and guilt. I feel like I need to know what’s going on in the world so that I can be prepared. I also want to be able to relate to the people in my life who are engaging with this information so that I can understand their perspectives.

Is political information improving our actions?

I think most people believe that the second reason is the what justifies the time we spend on political information. For example, learning new political information might change our vote. But there are more questions we must answer to evaluate whether this is a compelling justification for the time we spend on politics.

• If the political information changes our actions, how much is our impact improved?
• How does the impact of that action compare to what we would have done without the information?
• How does the value compare to something else we could be doing? There’s always an opportunity cost. Any time I spend reading and discussing politics is time I’m not spending on something else.

I’m going to argue that for most of us:

1. The political information we’re receiving isn’t reliably changing our actions for the better.
2. Even if the information changed our actions, the change in the impact of our action is insignificant
3. The opportunity cost outweighs the benefits

I am not a politician. The extent of my political actions are the same as a typical American — voting, persuasion, and possibly public demonstrations. How do our hours spent reading, listening, and conversing on politics affect our political actions and outcomes?

Most people are reading national news which typically only directly discusses the president and possibly one of their senators. The news might also describe some house bill, but they will have to look up how their representative voted. In an emergency, their governor might make national news. The news gives us the most information on these politicians, but our votes carry the least weight at this level. Furthermore, most people know exactly how they are going to vote for the president and their senators without the information they’re getting from the news.

Did following every piece of impeachment news change how anyone voted for the president in November? Did watching and reading details about the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation change how they will vote for their senators? This is all supposing that they are likely to change their vote in the first place. If they are a committed Republican or Democrat, they know how they are going to vote simply based on the party. If they aren’t a party-line voter, they may have some primary issue such as climate change or abortion that all but decides their vote.

But what about the primaries? Maybe primaries are where the news is giving us useful information. Perhaps, but did following the news and watching the “debates” or discussing candidates with friends and family change your vote? If so, was it any better than what you would have learned from a short intentional study of their backgrounds and platforms? Indeed, I would argue that you might have a much clearer picture of the candidates that way. I think all of us know friends who had a misleading understanding of a primary candidate due to misinformation from the news or the “debates”.

News provides a mix of thorough journalism, misleading information, and opinion masquerading as fact. Should we assume that we are good arbiters of this information? Consider the intelligent and outstanding people we all know who disagree with us on some topic. Often we chalk it up to all the bad information they’ve been getting. If many other intelligent people are fooled, what are the odds that we are able to properly sift through the news and get it right. If we can, and how much time would it take?

I had an enlightening experience along these lines two years ago. I have been more engaged in local politics since my vote carries more weight in my district than in a vote for the president. I met with both candidates for my state representative. I was unhappy with the incumbent due to an anti-environmental bill he had co-sponsored. I emailed him about it, and he actually took the time to have an hour long conversation with me about it over coffee.

He explained his reasoning and tried to show me that there was much more nuance than I had been led to believe. He also highlighted that even if we disagreed on this topic, he had been doing other good things for our state and community. I hadn’t heard of any of these other things he had done. Near the end of our meeting, he said that he appreciated me taking the time to talk with him. He shared that it’s disheartening that none of his constituents can be expected to know about the vast majority of what he does. There were nearly 800 house bills that year in my state. How could I possibly take the time fairly evaluate him? That’s just my state representative! Consider trying to be fully informed on every candidate — the president, senators, representatives, judges, school board, and the county-clerk (whatever they do).

What if the information does change our vote? Suppose someone is willing and able to devote the time and energy necessary to parse the news on their candidates. What is the impact? For most Americans, not much. If you live in California or Texas, you know the outcome for your federal senators and the electoral college. If you live in a district with a strong leaning, you also know the outcome for federal representatives and state representatives and senators. This is even more true if your state is gerrymandered like mine.

Suppose that you are one of the few Americans involved in a truly competitive district or state in an election and this information you’ve been learning actually changes your vote and your candidate wins! What’s the impact? Odds are, if your vote was likely to change at all, then the difference between the candidates wasn’t so great. Even if the candidate you’ve changed to wins, they might not do the things you hoped or expected. Research continues to show the disconnect between constituents and their representatives and senators.

Finally, let’s consider the opportunity cost. Look back at the year and consider all the time, stress, and disagreeable conversations. Did they change any of your votes? If they did, what was the impact, and how does the impact compare to what you could have been doing with your time and improved emotional well-being.

Is our political information making us more persuasive?

Maybe changing our vote isn’t what makes the time we’re spending on politics worth it. Maybe the main value is so that we can change the votes of many other people. That could make sense, but most of us don’t have that kind of platform. Also, if we want to be in the business of changing minds, we need to be even more thorough in our research to make sure that have the correct political view.

I have had many deep and considerate conversations on political issues with friends and family. Sometimes they have made some small difference. They might be willing to reconsider an issue or their view of a political figure might slightly improve, but I don’t know if I can point to a single changed vote. If changing minds is our motivation, we should look back and consider how many minds we have changed.

Furthermore, I am actually far more persuaded by the very few political “aliens” in my life. These political aliens are people who do not follow politics at all except when it is directly affecting their life. When one of these friends discusses something political, it seems fresh. They aren’t describing the issue from a familiar narrative. They don’t have the same context or language as everyone else on “that side” of the issue, so their opinion comes off as genuine.

But what if everyone thought this way?

I hear somebody contending that “we must have informed voters!” I’m not suggesting that anyone stop reading about politics entirely, but I don’t think the news, Twitter, most podcasts, or Facebook arguments are giving information that is valuable enough to justify our time. I think that short intentional research on candidates gives us 80% of the information we need with much less than 20% of the effort.

I do think that having “informed voters” is becoming more challenging with modernization. The modern world is too complex for the public to be informed and our primitive biology is too easy to hack and persuade. This makes spending the time to be an informed voter a sucker’s game. This is a problem for any democratic system of government. I have more thoughts on this that I’ll leave for another article.

When I realized how much I had misused my resources on politics, I changed the way I spent my time. This has tremendously improved my life. As an example, one recent morning, rather than scrolling through my World News Twitter list, I read a couple articles from Mr. Money Mustache. I read about teaching my children how to handle money, read an article about how to be a better husband, and came up with an article idea. After getting out of bed, I was optimistic and motivated. I was excited for the day and eager to delve into my projects.

I have made a commitment to remove politics from my news, podcasts, and most conversations for 2022. I don’t think this is right for everyone, but I think many of us can use a reminder to be more intentional in our information consumption and how we use our time and energy.