Patachon wrote (my comments infra):
> of course. number of death= event magnitude and spatial distance =
mileage.
Well, yes. But part of the point I was trying to make is that importance is
modified downward proportionately (maybe even exponentially) by distance,
not upward. You were saying something about importance having to do with
"deaths X distance." That would mean that one death on the moon would be
more immediate to the attention than one next door, rather than vice versa.
I was just trying to get the operator right. That's all.
> there goes the following law: if a dog bites some human's ear, it's not
news,
> but if an human bites a dog's ear, that's news. Then What 's the immediacy
or
> value significance factor there ?
Well, importance and newsworthiness are not the same thing, as anybody who
watches CNN or reads the New York Times can tell you. The most important
events (speaking objectively in terms of long term impact on the most
people) only rarely make the news, while very trivial things repeatedly
occupy numerous column inches on the front page or take the most minutes on
Headline News. Newsworthiness can also have a lot to do with unexpected
events and unusual events, even if these events are of essentially no
importance whatsoever (such as "Man bites dog.") That's entertainment (and
politics, for that matter--the two being more or less equal in modern
society), not importance.
Related to this is an interesting observation made by Deborah Tannen in "You
Just Don't Understand: Women and men in conversation." The male equivalent
of gossip is consuming and discussing news. The news serves more as a
social bonding force for men than as an actual functional part of informing
consent in society. If you think about it in those terms, the frequently
bizarre publishing decisions made by news agencies and journalists make a
lot more sense. It puts the whole thing in a much more appropriate
perspective, and explains why so few women seem to read newspapers on a
regular basis.
> same kind of importance factorisation applies to history. only historians
> remember let's say the millions of deaths from bubonic pleague some
centuries
> ago. (You quoted the time factor in your answer: I didn't , purposedly)
Quite right. Historians value past information disproportionately to most
people, so they pay a lot more attention to it. Three thousand years ago,
an entire civilization was wiped out at a stroke in the Mediterranean as the
result of a volcanic event. Nowadays, few could even tell you which
civilization it was, let alone care that it happened. That, as they say, is
human nature.
~g
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> of course. number of death= event magnitude and spatial distance =
mileage.
Well, yes. But part of the point I was trying to make is that importance is
modified downward proportionately (maybe even exponentially) by distance,
not upward. You were saying something about importance having to do with
"deaths X distance." That would mean that one death on the moon would be
more immediate to the attention than one next door, rather than vice versa.
I was just trying to get the operator right. That's all.
> there goes the following law: if a dog bites some human's ear, it's not
news,
> but if an human bites a dog's ear, that's news. Then What 's the immediacy
or
> value significance factor there ?
Well, importance and newsworthiness are not the same thing, as anybody who
watches CNN or reads the New York Times can tell you. The most important
events (speaking objectively in terms of long term impact on the most
people) only rarely make the news, while very trivial things repeatedly
occupy numerous column inches on the front page or take the most minutes on
Headline News. Newsworthiness can also have a lot to do with unexpected
events and unusual events, even if these events are of essentially no
importance whatsoever (such as "Man bites dog.") That's entertainment (and
politics, for that matter--the two being more or less equal in modern
society), not importance.
Related to this is an interesting observation made by Deborah Tannen in "You
Just Don't Understand: Women and men in conversation." The male equivalent
of gossip is consuming and discussing news. The news serves more as a
social bonding force for men than as an actual functional part of informing
consent in society. If you think about it in those terms, the frequently
bizarre publishing decisions made by news agencies and journalists make a
lot more sense. It puts the whole thing in a much more appropriate
perspective, and explains why so few women seem to read newspapers on a
regular basis.
> same kind of importance factorisation applies to history. only historians
> remember let's say the millions of deaths from bubonic pleague some
centuries
> ago. (You quoted the time factor in your answer: I didn't , purposedly)
Quite right. Historians value past information disproportionately to most
people, so they pay a lot more attention to it. Three thousand years ago,
an entire civilization was wiped out at a stroke in the Mediterranean as the
result of a volcanic event. Nowadays, few could even tell you which
civilization it was, let alone care that it happened. That, as they say, is
human nature.
~g
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.317 / Virus Database: 176 - Release Date: 1/21/2002