Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#111

Post by masondixon » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 12:28 AM UTC

hga wrote: post #99

masondixon wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, as a Trump supporter, I find this really scary ("what the alt right is"). I honestly did not know this is what the Alt Right was purporting to be. But, this is not what Trump is about. Trump's policies do not reflect your manifesto here. If you visit The_Donald Reddit, this is what most young Trump supporters are. They are opposed to SJWs, BLM, and third-wave feminists, because they do not think that their actio…

Vox Day's "philosophy", it's not really mine, that's still inchoate. And not much of a manifesto "a public declaration of policy and aims", it's more principles than policies to achieve those, except the essential ones like no "noble and principled defeat". One of the reasons we're so dangerous, sort of like Reagan, the first US president who decided to end instead of "contain" the Soviet Union. Or in some of my rece…

I read the article.

Most people acknowledge the benefits of multiculturalism and enjoy it. Art, music, food, festivals, etc. People enjoy relationships with immigrants because they bring a different perspective. NYC is the best case of this. A true melting pot.

Economies need immigrants for GDP growth.

Its a win-win.

Integration is key though. And because we enjoy the benefits, it is our responsibility.

Controlled immigration is a core part of every country although maybe not so much in Europe at the moment.

We live in a democracy, and everyone gets to vote for what makes them happy.

If people don't enjoy immigrants's culture then that's fine, but they have to respect (via democracy) that most people do.

The article uses a single anecdote of a pensioner who is robbed of her lively-hood by immigrants.

But are the circumstances of this kind of situation exclusively caused by immigrants? Or could the same thing occur with a recession? Or with gentrification?

When you look at one example, it certainly seems bad. But the generalised situation of "feeling like an alien in the town you live in", is not exclusively caused by immigrants. If this is a problem, we should address this problem universally. Anti-immigration is a hammer looking for nails.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#112

Post by grzm » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 12:35 AM UTC

NumberCruncher wrote: post #107

grzm wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I did read the post you linked to. I am also responding to the quote you provided. I should think that you quoted it because you thought it was particularly relevant or representative, did you not? Edited to add: I also found it frustrating that a post arguing against reading the news includes a "You should follow me on twitter here" link at the bottom. Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article.…

>> I should think that you quoted it because you thought it was particularly relevant or representative, did you not? And that's why I started it with "sorry for the offtopic". You do not always read what you want to but what you have to. I just try to correct the bias I am concerned about. Lessons learned: - bias is subjective - there are people who like to stay in their own biased world Am I relevant enough now? Ch…

I understood your "Sorry for the offtopic" to refer to your entire comment. I expected the quote to be relevant or representative with respect to the post you linked to.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#113

Post by hga » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 12:42 AM UTC

masondixon wrote: post #111

hga wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vox Day's "philosophy", it's not really mine, that's still inchoate. And not much of a manifesto "a public declaration of policy and aims", it's more principles than policies to achieve those, except the essential ones like no "noble and principled defeat". One of the reasons we're so dangerous, sort of like Reagan, the first US president who decided to end instead of "contain" the Soviet Union. Or in some of my rece…

I read the article. Most people acknowledge the benefits of multiculturalism and enjoy it. Art, music, food, festivals, etc. People enjoy relationships with immigrants because they bring a different perspective. NYC is the best case of this. A true melting pot. Economies need immigrants for GDP growth. Its a win-win. Integration is key though. And because we enjoy the benefits, it is our responsibility. Controlled im…

I read the article.

It wasn't an article, it was a political speech, per the title and the single introductory paragraph that wasn't his words, and therefore subject to constraints that make some of your complaints irrelevant, like the single anecdote.

Integration is key though.

You mean like the famed US "melting pot"? That concept is stone cold dead, your "integration" is most assuredly not happening.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#114

Post by splawn » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

551199 wrote: post #110

cwisecarver wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC one of the main tenants of science, when I was learning it in middle school in the early '90s, was that it's fact until it's disproven. We don't know everything about it which is what makes it different than religion. There's no faith involved. I know a lot of it is corrupt and aiming for a target but good scientists will tell you that they're basing their findings on studies which may have flaws and they'd want…

Sure but what if it was never a fact. 'Fat makes you fat' or similar falsification that have real impact to society[0] We shouldn't attribute everything to malice, but there are clear issues in science: 'Too many of the findings that fill the academic either are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” stud…

Despite all of your examples, science is still the best way we have for understanding the universe. If you have a better way then by all means enlighten us.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#115

Post by blipblop » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:15 AM UTC

harigov wrote: post #20

rando9000 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how you think this would work. First of all, I'm interested in what you think a news publication free of bias would look like. Would it be a straight recitation of factual occurrences? That would be useless, right? How would you decide which story gets a big headline? Which detail gets included? Second, the USA Right in general has completely broken with the idea that there is any such thing as "fact" tha…

I am not interested in unbiased news sources. I am interested in showing alternately biased news source so that you can develop your own opinion. Even showing snippets of alternate views superposed on the same article can help people a bit. My aim is not to solve the problem in its entirety. If others cannot understand our opinion, we should at least try to understand theirs. The current situation is horrible in term…

Hey this is an awesome idea!

Each side could vote for articles they think are biased or not biased.

Then you are shown the ones where there is the strongest disagreement between each side.

Another idea is to allow each sentence or paragraph to be evaluated on how biased it is. So someone could read through hovering over sentences and maybe pressing a keyboard shortcut to indicate whether they think this sentence is biased.

The goal is not to evaluate bias, but to find areas of contention and allow the debate/comments to hone in on a particular phrase/paragraph or something.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#116

Post by internaut » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:16 AM UTC

hga wrote: post #109

internaut wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, the important thing is that when Peter lit the Beacons of Gondor, the Men (+Elves/Dwarfs/Hobbits) of the West answered the call.

But only if they managed to slog thought the books that far! As far as I know, one of the things Tolkien created was what I call the "long slog" genre of fantasy, which involves the hero(es) traveling great distances, often getting the story bogged down in their travels (yeah, I know it's been done before). I did manage to finish the trilogy, mostly because I had little better to read that I hadn't or wouldn't, back…

Gene Wolfe is better than Robert Jordan and could surpass Tolkien.

He is a currently unrecognized Giant, on the level of our new Shakespeare. Literally every famous author you've heard of says it. Gene Wolfe is what the journeymen read to improve their craft but he is little known outside rarefied circles.

I wrote a piece 10 days ago (so before the election) explaining why a reading of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun explains Peter Thiel's motivations in backing Trump. He was following a thread nobody else saw. So many smart people, yes on the alt right also, are missing a much bigger picture.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884413

It is not an exaggeration that this book changed my life. You don't have to be a neoreactionary to read it but reading it alongside Joeseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies is a wonderful and enriching life experience that will definitely change how you view the world.

In addition I strongly recommend you watch Peter Thiel's videos on Youtube such as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tw-rxtwhzcY

Tainter, Thiel, Wolfe, Moldbug. If you wish to scry deeply into the world, that's how I'd start. Many people reading this will be liberals or progressives. To them I say, this is a rabbit hole nobody else is going to recommend, if you sincerely are interested in the order of the right's thought, here it is.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#117

Post by qwrusz » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 1:51 AM UTC

A different or supplementary approach could be removing the bias from a news item.

Instead of trying to determine which biased side an article is skewed towards and then finding other links to what is determined to be the "alternative view". Scrubbing bias or at least highlighting it is already helpful.

For example: at work we get daily emailed briefs with major business news items summarized to ~3-5 bullet points of facts. Journalist opinions/bias and rhetoric language is mostly removed in the bullet point sentences. It's not a perfect system by any means, not even close, and I would love to see something similar offered that's improved and expanded in what it can do.

This type of bias scrubbing/summarizing is easier in business news and sports news which involve more numbers and figures reporting (+nowadays many of the full articles may also be written entirely by bots - see link below). It would be harder to expand this for longer investigative/politics news articles. But a partial imperfect solution here is better than status quo.

I would be a user of a tool that could summarize key "unbiased facts" from articles and I would be interested in helping build it too.

Link to a NYT story about algos writing/summarizing news: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/opinion/sunday/if-an-algor...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#118

Post by pizza » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 2:48 AM UTC

cwisecarver wrote: post #103

551199 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality is lot of the science is wrong as well. Intentionally paid by special interest or the end result is defined before any science is done. You don't want to look science religiously either.

IIRC one of the main tenants of science, when I was learning it in middle school in the early '90s, was that it's fact until it's disproven. We don't know everything about it which is what makes it different than religion. There's no faith involved. I know a lot of it is corrupt and aiming for a target but good scientists will tell you that they're basing their findings on studies which may have flaws and they'd want…

This is what falsifiability is all about in science.

Mathematics relies upon proofs, but there is no such thing as a scientific proof.. You can find sufficient conditions for a phenomenon and have a wholly water-tight argument as to why it occurs, but you can't use use observation to find necessary condition.

This is because observations are evidence, and if a future observation shows problems with your theory, you should not discard your evidence (unless of course your secondary theory is that your evidence exhibits a model for some reason why it doesn't explain what it seems to explain on the surface, e.g. experimental error), yada yada..

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#119

Post by judahmeek » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 3:51 AM UTC

hga wrote: post #113

masondixon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the article. Most people acknowledge the benefits of multiculturalism and enjoy it. Art, music, food, festivals, etc. People enjoy relationships with immigrants because they bring a different perspective. NYC is the best case of this. A true melting pot. Economies need immigrants for GDP growth. Its a win-win. Integration is key though. And because we enjoy the benefits, it is our responsibility. Controlled im…

I read the article. It wasn't an article, it was a political speech, per the title and the single introductory paragraph that wasn't his words, and therefore subject to constraints that make some of your complaints irrelevant, like the single anecdote. Integration is key though. You mean like the famed US "melting pot"? That concept is stone cold dead, your "integration" is most assuredly not happening.

Except that many generations of immigrants have successfully integrated. Besides European immigrants, Asian immigrants on the West Coast have integrated amazingly well. Latinos have also integrated nicely, although it's harder to tell because we have so many fresh immigrants.

Cultural integration is a multigenerational process, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone interested in building tools for showing bias in news?

#120

Post by alew1 » Thu, Nov 17, 2016, 4:32 AM UTC

What about a tool that allows you to find and start a chat with someone currently reading a differently biased account of the same (or similar) events? I can't count the number of times this election that I wished I could discuss a Times article with a Trump supporter; I am sure there are plenty who wish they could tell me about the contents of a Breitbart article.