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Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

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Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

#151

Post by bigbubba »

Bodell wrote: post #142
lambdatronics wrote: post #93

I think it works: I put in "Zero to One", "The Idea Factory" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" -- one of the top results was "We Are Never Meeting in Real Life." This was reviewed on Amazon as "Not For a White Male Forty-Year-Old Software Engineer." https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1WB4G83DRI8PV/re...

I tried various combinations of the books I’ve read over the last couple of years[1]. And either I got stuff already on my bookshelf or sphere of reference[2], or a lot of Calvin and Hobbes (seriously every result had at least one, sometimes several), or children’s books, or adult comic books. Which I guess is by some definition the opposite of adult novels. But a fun and interesting tool to play around with either w…

I see the same; Neuromancer,Anathem gives me a Far Side comic anthology. If I add The Name of the Rose then I get Scrooge McDuck and Game of Thrones. For The Name of the Rose and Cat's Cradle, 9 of the first 12 suggestions seem to be kids books.

It's an interesting project, but so far I don't think many of the suggestions are useful for me.

Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

#152

Post by chevill »

lambdatronics wrote: post #93

I think it works: I put in "Zero to One", "The Idea Factory" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" -- one of the top results was "We Are Never Meeting in Real Life." This was reviewed on Amazon as "Not For a White Male Forty-Year-Old Software Engineer." https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1WB4G83DRI8PV/re...

It does not seem to work well IMO. If you start over and type in the books that it recommends for readers of the books that the dev obviously thinks are "bad", it still recommends more of the books that the devs think are "good" instead of giving you the "opposite" of those.

I think it would be more effective for the devs to manually put together a recommended reading list of progressive literature and explain why they feel each book is worth investing time into. I would find that really helpful because even though I'm not part of their target demographic of extremely conservative people, I wouldn't really know which progressive works of literature are considered essential reading.

Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

#153

Post by kqr »

kevinpet wrote: post #137
kqr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in order for the opposite thing to work, you have to approach the material with the understanding that "There are people who believe this stuff as firmly as I believe the complete opposite. If you asked them, they say, with absolute conviction, that I'm nuts. How might that happen? What if they're right? What could I have missed?" This engages System 2, hard. And it's so easy to slip back into System 1 and co…

I tried to read "The End of Policing". I got half way through chapter 1 before the author stated, as support for his argument, that The Bell Curve was "overtly racist". Now, you could argue that lots of racists like that book, that the authors might be motivated by bias, etc etc, but no credible reviewer at the time it came out would call it "overtly racist". This is retroactive moving of the goal posts, and the word…

I know very little to nothing of the works you cite, so my ideas are to be taken with a grain of salt, but...

I don't think the author was born thinking those complex thoughts, so clearly they were persuaded by something that didn't rely on previous belief. What could that be? Why isn't that persuasive to you? What sort of person does it persuade and why? Are there other arguments that could persuade you of the same thing? Or of something similar?

Intellectual exchange requires constructing the steel man argument of your counterpart, as impossible as it may seem at times. Underneath, we're all humans, longing for food, shelter, companionship, and stability.

Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

#154

Post by bigbubba »

kqr wrote: post #153
kevinpet wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to read "The End of Policing". I got half way through chapter 1 before the author stated, as support for his argument, that The Bell Curve was "overtly racist". Now, you could argue that lots of racists like that book, that the authors might be motivated by bias, etc etc, but no credible reviewer at the time it came out would call it "overtly racist". This is retroactive moving of the goal posts, and the word…

I know very little to nothing of the works you cite, so my ideas are to be taken with a grain of salt, but... I don't think the author was born thinking those complex thoughts, so clearly they were persuaded by something that didn't rely on previous belief. What could that be? Why isn't that persuasive to you? What sort of person does it persuade and why? Are there other arguments that could persuade you of the same…

> I don't think the author was born thinking those complex thoughts, so clearly they were persuaded by something that didn't rely on previous belief. What could that be?

Very often the answer is mundane; 'It's what my parents taught me.' Particularly in the most contentious cases, like religion and politics. It seems like 'born thinking it' vs 'was persuaded' is a false dichotomy, unless you count being steeped in a culture as a child to be a form of persuasion.

Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

#155

Post by azeirah »

AntiImperialist wrote: post #112
kqr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in order for the opposite thing to work, you have to approach the material with the understanding that "There are people who believe this stuff as firmly as I believe the complete opposite. If you asked them, they say, with absolute conviction, that I'm nuts. How might that happen? What if they're right? What could I have missed?" This engages System 2, hard. And it's so easy to slip back into System 1 and co…

> There are people who believe this stuff as firmly as I believe the complete opposite. If you asked them, they say, with absolute conviction, that I'm nuts. How might that happen? What if they're right? What could I have missed? After having read books on two sides of various things, I have found that most people don't have firm beliefs at all. Their beliefs don't even have anything to do with how they live. They ha…

I believe that it's important to understand the perspective of someone you fundamentally disagree with.

Or, well, you described it more accurately, it's a bit deeper than disagreement, it's an entirely different epistemology! Like waaayy different

Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

#156

Post by not2b »

kevinpet wrote: post #137
kqr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in order for the opposite thing to work, you have to approach the material with the understanding that "There are people who believe this stuff as firmly as I believe the complete opposite. If you asked them, they say, with absolute conviction, that I'm nuts. How might that happen? What if they're right? What could I have missed?" This engages System 2, hard. And it's so easy to slip back into System 1 and co…

I tried to read "The End of Policing". I got half way through chapter 1 before the author stated, as support for his argument, that The Bell Curve was "overtly racist". Now, you could argue that lots of racists like that book, that the authors might be motivated by bias, etc etc, but no credible reviewer at the time it came out would call it "overtly racist". This is retroactive moving of the goal posts, and the word…

I suspect that the author is using the term "racist" differently than you use it. The Bell Curve explicitly argues that some racial groups are inherently, biologically less intelligent than others. In the author's view, that in itself is overtly racist (because it argues that one racial group is genetically inferior to another racial group), no matter how much intellectual argument is presented or how gently it is stated. Perhaps you use the word differently, and believe that something is only racist if the author hates people on the basis of race.

Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

#157

Post by bbddg »

kevinpet wrote: post #137
kqr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in order for the opposite thing to work, you have to approach the material with the understanding that "There are people who believe this stuff as firmly as I believe the complete opposite. If you asked them, they say, with absolute conviction, that I'm nuts. How might that happen? What if they're right? What could I have missed?" This engages System 2, hard. And it's so easy to slip back into System 1 and co…

I tried to read "The End of Policing". I got half way through chapter 1 before the author stated, as support for his argument, that The Bell Curve was "overtly racist". Now, you could argue that lots of racists like that book, that the authors might be motivated by bias, etc etc, but no credible reviewer at the time it came out would call it "overtly racist". This is retroactive moving of the goal posts, and the word…

Isn't the core conceit of The Bell Curve that Black people have lower IQs than white people?

Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

#158

Post by bigbubba »

chme wrote: post #92
ironmagma wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Averages are one kind of truth though, and if your worldview is based on averages it has some amount of accuracy to it. The trick is that there are more averages than just the mean, such as standard deviation, so to have a correct view you must care about all averages.

> Averages are one kind of truth though, and if your worldview is based on averages it has some amount of accuracy to it. I think that is a fallacy. Just because some standpoint is in between two other standpoints, does not make it correct. Each side might look at some facts from a different perspective and might be correct but at the same time contradicting (at least at the first glance), but the 'average' could sti…

Here is the way I think of it, if a cylinder passed through two perpendicular planes, flatlanders living on those two planes, with different perspectives on life, might call each other to discuss their observations. One flatlander might report the observation of a circle, while the other might say they saw a rectangle. Both have observed part of the truth, but different parts of it, and to a flatlander it may seem these observations are irreconcilable. A third flatlander who decides to simply average the observations together into a rounded rectangle is more wrong than either of the others. The key to resolving the apparent contradiction is recognizing that the truth exists in a dimensional space higher than the flatlander is capable of perceiving.

Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber

#159

Post by ironmagma »

chme wrote: post #92
ironmagma wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Averages are one kind of truth though, and if your worldview is based on averages it has some amount of accuracy to it. The trick is that there are more averages than just the mean, such as standard deviation, so to have a correct view you must care about all averages.

> Averages are one kind of truth though, and if your worldview is based on averages it has some amount of accuracy to it. I think that is a fallacy. Just because some standpoint is in between two other standpoints, does not make it correct. Each side might look at some facts from a different perspective and might be correct but at the same time contradicting (at least at the first glance), but the 'average' could sti…

Well what I'm claiming is not that averages can be used to arrive at all truth, or to observe all things. Many things however are distributions and averages can be accurately used to characterize them in a way that works. In that example, one might say that the mean viewpoint is correct within the error bars that encompass the two observations, which could be quite large if they are opposite observations.
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