Information, Actually

One of my big pet peeves is when someone says 'net zero information' on posts where a claim is made and then refuted in a subsequent response. In fact there is often a lot of information in these posts, it's simply that what that information communicates about the world may not be what it says it communicates about the world.

Also, if any of the information in either the original post or refutation is correct, that is not only information, but information that is communicating what it says it does about the world.

When Good News is Not

I dislike a lot of 'good news' type things because a lot of times they just feel like deflection rather than actually relevant to the worry in question. Like it doesn't actually tend to promote optimism in me, which I gather is supposed to be the point? And it's just that a lot of 'good news' is actually either untrue or beside the point if someone is actually concerned about a given issue that is not going well.

For me, improving my mood is better accomplished through self-care and taking time to focus on things besides the anxiety in question. Overstating the impact of something on a problem or lying about something outright isn't going to make me feel better about it, and I tend to not take things at face value regardless of whether they're good news or bad. So if something seems implausible to me, it's just going to distress me more that people believe that. Because there's a real difference between 'I need to not be thinking about this all the time' and 'oh, well it looks like this problem can be easily solved so no one needs to worry about it' when in fact it very much cannot be easily solved and needs people to attend to it.