So politicshome got launched yesterday. My first visit gave me the distinct sensation of having the entire collection of Sunday papers dropped on my head. It was neither pleasant nor enjoyable.

I have nothing against the people behind politicshome, and if they think they can make money out of collecting together the outpourings of all the pontificators and savants of British political journalism, fair play to them. It might make it easier for me to be irritated by Simon Jenkins smug, self satisfied banalities.

That said, my immediate sensation on seeing their collection of top ten columns to read, plus another ten “if you have more time” (After reading ten thousand words of verbiage already? How much time do we have to spare here?), their collection of 100 political observers, their tracking of the top blogs, their aggregation of well, everything… was to want it all to go away.

When confronted by such a dense barrage of opinion, reaction, comment and views, my response was “Please, shut up already”. When concentrated like this, distilled into its essence of assertion and prognostication, it becomes clear that collecting together political commentary just increases the noise to value ratio to an unbearable extent.*

I’m biased perhaps, because I’m just finishing ‘Black Swan’, the book on probablity by  Nassim Nicholas Taleb. At one point in the book he says he refuses to read newspapers, insisting that they merely give the illussion of understanding current events, when in actuality they merely work as any other self confirming, self propagating organism (like hedge fund managers, or movie reviewers, all pulling each other in the same direction, until some completely unexpected event causes them to change direction together).

Seeing politicshome made me realise that Taleb is right. There’s little actual value in trying to absorb all the views out there, because you can do better things with your time. Most of what politicshome will collect (Maybe even this blog, if it ever becomes a “top 100? blog- another century of waffle right there!) will be of almost nil value.

Now, that doesn’t mean politicshome is a bad site, or that you shouldn’t visit it. I suspect it’ll be useful as a way of seeing what the conventional wisdom of the day is. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that knowing the conventional wisdom is in any way helpful in anticipating events. It’ll only help you understand the way the market is moving, not what will happen next. For that, you have to think for yourself.

In the end, you’re better off trying to develop your own theories. After all, if there’s one thing the cacophony of opinion should make easy to hear, it’s that your voice is as valuable as that of anyone else.

* PH say thay have a “dedicated team of professional political observers paying constant attention from 730am to midnight every day… …an intelligent filter, picking out everything that is newsworthy, provoking controversy or of long term significance“. The poor sods have my sympathy.

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This is a guest post. Hopi Sen blogs here.
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