Comment by komali2

This is a pretty cool way to tackle this problem, but I don't think there's any "easy" solution to this problem space, which I visualize as:

News media needs to make money. To do so it needs eyeballs. Eyeballs, despite our best efforts and intensions, can't help but be drawn to sensation (and blood). The news media thus selects for sensation and blood.

The add-on effect of this that makes it all matter: recency bias as well as some other cognitive quirks we all have mean that when the news media selects for sensation and blood, we start to believe the universe is a lot more sensational and bloody than it really is.

This is demonstrable: publish a story about a freak one in a million train accident and people stop riding the train and start taking their cars, despite risk of accident in car being by every way of measuring it drastically higher.

I'm not saying that news media shouldn't talk about train crashes, I'm saying I'm not sure we've figured out yet how to remind people that the world is actually mundane. People watch the news to "be informed," but in actuality their perspection of reality is being warped.

The news would have you believe crime is going up or down based on whether it makes a good story, when (depending on where you live) the relatively minor adjustmens in these statistics really don't affect you, every walk to work statistically speaking will leave you unmolested.

The media would have you believe that there are riots across the country in response to the cops killing an unarmed person, again. When in reality, most protests are really quite boring, just a lot of people walking around and maybe occasionally chanting. If there even is a local protest.

I don't know what it will take to remind people that the world is boring, but right now the news media is motivated against this, because the angrier and more scared we all are, the more we click in.