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Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
61–70 of 264 posts
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#62I tried for Ayn Rand and about 30% of the books were precisely the kind of book fans of Rand adore, stuff like productivity,self-help, sales. The other 20% or so were books written by black authors, because apparently according to the author being a Randite is being a racist, that is not the case, the problem with Randites was nailed by John Rogers years ago: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
My own experience is that it works quite well for a certain kind of person: on Reddit I was simultaneously subbed to /r/The_Donald, /r/politics, /r/ChapoTrapHouse, /r/Libertarian, etc (while those were still around). I'd also drop by voat occasionally to get my weekly sample of virulently antisemitic takes. I think looking at extremes is the most realistic path. Purportedly balanced sources are dangerous because thei…
Balanced sources tend to give you what the extremes don't, which is nuance. Does your approach not gloss over the nuance? Or are you able to surface the complexities of a given topic simply by examining the extremes?
It does often gloss over the nuance. I ultimately try to estimate how bad I am at assessing the veracity of arguments concerning the topic at hand, which I think is most valuable.
For example, I read many conflicting predictions concerning the last US election, saw that I could not distinguish bad predictions from good ones, and concluded that I have to remain unconvinced. I was vindicated by it being a very tight race. This doesn't always happen.
On the other hand, I read the recent Texas filing [0] and found that I could confidently argue against it, and the best opposing arguments I could find did not convince me. To my SO, I confidently voiced the prediction that this lawsuit will fail, and articulated why the probability argument in the attached Cicchetti Declaration is misguided. This is arguably a very easy task, so this correct prediction does me little credit, but I think that's the point: even if I only become convinced of things which are obvious, it is important to not accidentally become convinced of things which are not obvious.
[0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163048/2020...
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#64I like the idea a lot. In terms of the results, it seems to me that many more data points are needed. My bubble escape route contained a lot of authors and titles I know of, I've read, or I'm very familiar with.
FWIW my sample trio were Dune/Starship Troopers/Sword of Destiny and results included a bunch of graphic novels (Preacher mostly) and mangas that I consumed in the past, a Harry potter series and a bunch of crime books that I also tried (and, often, didn't find interesting). But there were some genuinely interesting picks too so, again, more data will probably help.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#65I put in SevenEves (my favour book) by Neal Stephenson and Leviathan Wakes by JSA Corey and the recommendations include:
Game of thrones, Bernard Corwell books Isaac Asimov
I've read these and I would put them in the same camp as the input books so I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
Nice idea but, unless I'm missing something, not the expected behaviour.
I would more have expected "the old man who climbed out the window and disappeared", Clarkson's biography and maybe a Jack Reacher type stuff (which I also enjoy but on the other end of the spectrum from the input books)
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#66I put in SevenEves (my favour book) by Neal Stephenson and Leviathan Wakes by JSA Corey and the recommendations include: Game of thrones, Bernard Corwell books Isaac Asimov I've read these and I would put them in the same camp as the input books so I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to be doing. Nice idea but, unless I'm missing something, not the expected behaviour. I would more have expected "the old man who c…
Apropro of nothing but started to read Seveneves for the first time this year and had to tap out - decidedly a poor book to read for escapism from being trapped inside while the world burns and people die around you.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#67Interesting tool.
I put Intro to Algorithms by Cormen & Surely You're joking Mr. Feynman and got lots of autobiographical books that I wouldn't really pick up :).
Though there are others which pique my interest somewhat.
Out of curiosity, what kind of recommendation system has been used here?
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#68I'll give you this, I had no idea how much Christian self-help literature I was missing out on.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#69Hi HN. I made a tool that allows you to discover what books you are least likely to have come across or enjoyed, but are nonetheless highly rated. These books will likely challenge you if you tend to read quite narrowly. Briefly, for each book entered we find the rarest but highest rated intersections and provide those to you. The query can be summarised as: which highly rated books are least read (and enjoyed) by pe…
I added a few of my favorite books (mostly 20th century lit) and depending on the set got mostly children's books or non-English books. Not terribly helpful.
Had a similar experience, most of my recommendations are childrens books.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#70I 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…
The problem with delusional belief systems is that they tend to be coherent and self-supporting, just not rooted in reality. Statistical aggregates make this worse. You can argue that on average X is more than Y, or you can cherrypick all the examples where Y is greater than X to make your point.
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.