A speaker argues that news outlets exploit our brain's negativity bias to drive engagement, making the world seem more dangerous than it is. Firearm homicides dropped 39% since 1993, war deaths are one-twelfth what they were in the 1950s, and Harvard calls this the safest era for humans. He says the antidote is choosing your own content: books, educational videos, podcasts.
Chapters
I've got some bad, bad news for you. You are being brainwashed. And the reason why I say this, because everything that you see, hear and read is influencing the way that you think. Now, if you watch the news, you might think that humans are getting worse. It's getting less and less safe, and everything's getting more dangerous. But nothing can be further from the truth. A Harvard professor actually did a study and found out that this is the safest time to be alive as a human. To give you some statistics from the Bureau of Justice and from the FBI' since 1993, firearm homicides have dropped 39%. Non fatal firearm accidents have gone down 69%. Now, if you watch the news, you'd think the exact opposite of that. You think that it's getting worse. Right? Now, let's talk about the rest of the world. Is the rest of the world getting safer? It absolutely is. The amount of deaths per year per capita from war across the world is one twelfth of what it was in the 1950s. This is the safest time to be alive as a human. Now you might ask yourself, why would the news concentrate on so much negativity if the world is actually getting better? And the reason why is because they understand the way your brain works. Your brain is designed to look for the negative. And the reason why is because your brain wants you to stay alive, so it focuses on the negative. So if the news puts out more and more negative, you're more likely to watch. Your brain is going to get addicted to watching that negativity, which in turn turns into more advertising dollars for the news company that you're watching. So of course it seems more negative. Of course it seems like the getting worse. But there has never been a time where it's been more safe to be a human than right now. So what can you take from this? Instead of watching the news and thinking that the world is negative and allowing them to brainwash you, you can brainwash yourself. You can start reading books. You can watch motivational or instructional or educational stuff on YouTube. You can listen to podcasts. Because here's the deal. No matter what you listen to or watch or read, it's going to brainwash you. So why don't you brainwash yourself with something that's going to be beneficial for you versus what the media continues to feed you? Because if you continue to eat what they feed you, you have to deal with the sickness that's going to happen in your.
