The Meaning of Life 78
we should be is simple: We read newspapers both offline
and online and watch the news on television. “The daily
news media tends to focus on the worst thing occurring
in the world at any given point,” Elon said. “It should be
called ‘What is the worst thing on Earth today?’ There is
something in the human psyche that tends to place a weight
on negative stuff, more than positive.”^357
Rolf Dobelli released the reportAvoid News – Towards
a Healthy News Diet. The idea behind the report is that
human beings are still cavemen. Our brains are optimized
for our original hunter-gatherer environment where we
lived in small groups with limited sources of information.
We now live in a world where news is available in abun-
dance, and we can’t handle it. Dobelli argued that news
media focus on the visible. While they display whatever
information that include dramatic stories and pictures, they
ignore the less dramatic stories, even if that material is
more important. They show when an airplane has crashed,
but we don’t hear anything about our bodies increased
resistance to antibiotics, which is much more dangerous
but doesn’t feature any dramatic pictures.^304 It’s not strange
that journalists have a saying: “If it bleeds, it leads.”
What’s often forgotten is what we may discover when
we begin living on other planets. The cure for cancer? The
solution to the food crises around the world? “We set sail on
this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained,
and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used
for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear
science and all technology, has no conscience of its own.