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

abooklikefoo.com

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

#191

Post by djsumdog »

I dunno. I seem to see a lot of the same titles for different searches. Non-fiction books are also more difficult to read than fiction; so these types of books tend to be a big time investment (a lot of them feel like extended essays).

There are a couple of books I've read in the past few years that I actually didn't fully agree with. Sometimes they were badly sourced or made some arguments I didn't think were sound, but there was also a ton of interesting and good material in them; which I think made some good points. Based on that, I guess my recommendations for breaking bubbles would be:

"The Strange Death of Europe" (Murray, Davies, et al.)

"The War Against Boys" (Sommers)

"The Fountainhead" (Ryand)

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

#192

Post by Qision »

Hi, thanks for this website, I'm goinng to use it a lot I think!

I'd like to add a suggestion, when we pick a book, you propose two links, one is Amazon and the other one is Goggle. Could you replace those links by DuckDuckGo and maybe Goodreads (or any other website that doesn't almost control the market)? It's just to avoid those big companies.

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

#193

Post by padolsey »

samlents wrote: post #47

Interesting idea. Assuming this is still under development, I thought my experience might be of use. I input The Three-Body Problem (Cixin), Sapiens (Harari), Leonardo da Vinci (Isaacson), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway), Bluebeard (Vonnegut), and On the Shortness of Life (Seneca) and received in return...children's books! Age-gating the recommendations might be something to look into.

Hi Sam. Thanks for pointing out this oddity. I've now implemented a "children's book" anchoring score which I can now promote or demote results based on. Please try your search again and see the difference. Here's the URL: http://abooklikefoo.com/escape?q=Rl0ZOz,Q6g65q,LY5PZp,PVK1,j...

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

#196

Post by vzaliva »

I remember attending a presentation from Pandroa many years ago and one thing struck me as very interesting. I am rephraizin from memory: "It is of little value to recommend obvious things. For example if you like Duke Ellington there is no point to recommend you Ella Fitzgeral d. You probably already aware of her. But if we recommend you a song by Madonna, whom you would not normaly consider listening, which happens to be very much in jazzy style you like, you will be pleasantly surprised." This is how you break a bubble.

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

#197

Post by [deleted] »

gcatalfamo wrote: post #26

I think there is a genuine need for escaping echo chambers but every attempt is usually aimed just showing the opposite side/narrative. If I am conservative I won’t be open to be shown the most leftist content, and viceversa, while instead I might be open to be shown more balanced views that might gradually carry me out of my echo chamber instead of reinforcing it. edit: this an OT comment more related to the echo ch…

[deleted]

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

#199

Post by cwp »

Ok, this is fascinating. Even beyond escaping my own echo chamber, it's really neat to escape other echo chambers.

Let's escape the woke bubble:

  1. How to Be an Antiracist 
  2. White Fagility 
  3. Between the World and Me
The books it recommends are pretty diverse - Maya Angelou to Peter Drucker to Plato.

Or how about the Trump bubble:

  1. Time to Get Tough 
  2. Righteous Indignation 
  3. Going Rogue
Lots of religion here. What if we escape atheism?

  1. Letter to a Christian Nation 
  2. God is Not Great 
  3. The God Delusion
Hmm. Not so much religion here... but we got Aldous Huxley, Bruce Li and Richard Feynmann.

I think... I've got a lot of reading to do. I LOVE this tool.

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