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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

#221

Post by watwut »

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 would point out, that there are also many positive reviews of the same book on the exact same amazon. As in, this guy gave it two stars, but the books overall rating is much much higher.

So it seems that you picked outlier review here.

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

#222

Post by bonoboTP »

kashyapc wrote: post #163

I realize, the site's aim is to help you escape the "echo chamber". But I've recently been mulling over this other idea from Seneca (writing 2000 years ago!) on limiting the number of books you read, hard as it is, for an avid reader: [...] Be careful, though, about your reading in many authors and every type of book. It may be that there is something wayward and unstable in it. You must stay with a limited number of…

This is directional advice. Some read too diverse, scattered stuff, and some read just the same thing and lock themselves into confirmation bias and echo chambers.

The first need to focus more, the second need to focus less.

I could write a wide paragraph on how one needs to consume more than one kind of thing, how it's healthy to to challenge oneself, like the unknowable forces in the wild nature, etc etc. Something majestic and grandiose like that.

Point is, wise advice is directional, and you cannot know from it which side you are on. It doesn't give you a target, it gives you a direction. Which may not apply to you.

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

#223

Post by stared »

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…

I think that it is hard to beat r/ChangeMyView (https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/), as the arguments are usually much more detailed than "left vs right".

However, there is one crucial prerequisite - someone needs to have an open mind, and courage to at least doubt one's own point of view. Compare and contrast with Change my View by Steven Crowder, which is full of fake openness + trolling, not genuine curiosity.

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

#224

Post by michaelbrave »

So my initial thought when it said anti-recomendation was the idea that you give it a list of books and then it removes the ones that are "too mainstream", or "written by a journalist" or "proven false". In a way kind of want that more than what's proposed.

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

#225

Post by watwut »

sol_invictus wrote: post #20

Put some of my own favourite books (maths, business and Japanese fiction) onto the engine and got recommended african-american and feminist literature (and a cookbook.) Then I sampled three of these recommendations and put them into the engine (Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou and Carol Anderson) and again got recommended feminist, african-american and anti-capitalist literature. One does not simply escape the leftis…

Martin Luther King was quite sexist himself. So feminist literature would antithesis to some of his convictions.

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

#226

Post by kqr »

bonoboTP wrote: post #217
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the idea here is to understand why people believe something that is (consider by you to be) wrong.

That can have lots of reasons,like they grew up with it, were indoctrinated in school/college when they had little experience or critical thinking skills and stay due to sunk cost fallacy or tribalism, or it satisfies some deep psychological need to feel superior or virtuous etc. Plenty of reasons besides them analytically arriving at a position through a lot of thinking.

Sure, but all of those things could apply to your thinking too, maybe even just as much. Figuring out who suffers more from those kinds of biases is often harder than just saying, "yeah, it's definitely the other guy."

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

#227

Post by tstrimple »

cgriswald wrote: post #113
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…

> I think there is a genuine need for escaping echo chambers but every attempt is usually aimed just showing the opposite side/narrative. I think the idea that there only exists a single spectrum sorted into sides is itself a sort of meta echo chamber shared by people in echo chambers even as they disagree about everything else. In modern politics, even the idea that the opposed party holds opposite views (versus jus…

> A third, more nuanced view might even see the average conservative as non-racist

What if due to their isolation and the lack of diversity in rural areas actually leads to outcomes where certain parts of our country have more racist beliefs than people who grew up surrounded by people of all different colors and religions? Why do we have to keep ignoring studies and evidence in order to ascribe values to conservatives they never demonstrate? What if this isn't a both sides issue, and one side is definitely more wrong? Hint, the side marching with Neo Nazis chanting "The Jews Will Not Replace Us" is the side which is wrong here.

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

#228

Post by arolihas »

bbddg wrote: post #157
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…

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

That’s not racist according to HN though :/

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

#229

Post by arolihas »

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…

The Bell Curve is filled to the brim with shoddy pseudoscience and clearly supports racist ideas that have been thoroughly debunked as summarized here https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo. If you want to nitpick on how “overt” it was, fine, but that’s not a charitable way to read an argument you disagree with at all. It honestly sounds like you just found one detail that you disagreed with to call the book tripe.

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

#230

Post by sonotathrowaway »

superduperuser wrote: post #141
sonotathrowaway wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ A person studying their daily bowel movements for political commentary would be better informed than someone who read those subreddits looking for accurate political news, and they’d have a more honest assessment about the worth of their news sources. I can list plenty of subreddits with worthwhile political discussion, but none of that matters if a persons idea of “balanced” is to find the dregs of fringe and extr…

Would you mind sharing those subreddits with constructive political discussions?

Left: /r/progressives

Center left: /r/neoliberal

Right: /r/neoconnwo

Center right: /r/tuesday

Neutral: /r/neutralpolitics /r/geopolitics /r/politicalfactchecking /r/truepolitics

A spectrum of subreddits across ideological views, all with discussions you may actually learn something from. You’ll notice that none of those subreddits have been suspended because their members and moderators are repeatedly calling for violence against their political opponents, nor are they just recruiting boards for Stormfront. Again, finding the fringe conspiracy theorists repeatedly calling for violence doesn’t actually give you a well informed or balanced perspective.

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