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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

#81

Post by magicalist »

isogon wrote: post #28
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…

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…

> on Reddit I was simultaneously subbed to /r/The_Donald, /r/politics, /r/ChapoTrapHouse, /r/Libertarian, etc

Maybe you were just enjoying reading shitposts? Nothing wrong with that, everyone has their version of tabloids they enjoy, but these are mostly barely thought through hot takes posted to get a reaction (and surfaced because they were successful at it). There's no reason to think their intersection is going to be anywhere near something "true" (let alone usefully true).

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

#82

Post by amanaplanacanal »

isogon wrote: post #63
maroonblazer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ra…

You may think it a very easy task, but it is one that a large proportion of our elected officials failed, or possibly pretended to fail for their own political gain.

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

#83

Post by bilbo0s »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #46
pjc50 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lots of people call stuff they dont like "delusional belief systems" while ignoring the truths, even if nuggets, behind those systems...

I don't know man?

People don't like, a lot of things, they don't call them delusional. We call things delusional because they are, in fact, delusional. What makes it dangerous is that people deeply believe that their delusions are "truth". Belief to the point of fundamentalism, where they will kill non-believers in their delusions.

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

#84

Post by sonotathrowaway »

isogon wrote: post #63
maroonblazer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ra…

I don’t understand the basis by which you think this election was “tight”.

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

#85

Post by fao_ »

Weirdly, I keep getting books I like in the search. It would be nice if I could add more than three authors because my reading is already extremely diverse, like music listening there is very little that I dislike (According to spotify, I listened to over 500 genres of music this year -- although I'm not really sure how useful that is because of how every piece of music seems to be categorized into it's own genre).

For example, I put in:

    Mort - Terry Pratchett
    Mortal Engines - Stanisław Lem
    My Lesbian Experience With
       Loneliness - Kabi Nagata
And Judith Butler was in the search results. So instead I realised that Mort and Mortal Engines are adjacent, genre-wise and tried:

    Mort - Terry Pratchett
    My Lesbian Experience With
       Loneliness - Kabi Nagata
    Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
and in the search results I got:

    The Far Side comics
    "This Book Is Full of Spiders"
    Douglas Adams
    Kurt Vonnegut
    Brian Lee O'Mally
    Calvin and Hobbes
All of these works I have enjoyed quite a lot -- I used to be able to quote the radio show of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy from memory, I own all of the John Dies at the End series, and I'm wondering about getting the special edition of Calvin and Hobbes because there's quite a lot I haven't seen and it's pretty timeless.

The rest, mostly consisting of PG Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde, are works that I consider myself interested in yet unexposed to, but they are hardly opposites of the books I put in?

So I'm not really convinced of the utility of this tool as it stands.

Perhaps it is tailored to a single type of reader that only reads books within their purview (Perhaps, political history books, or purely science fiction books) to the exclusion of many other interesting and worthwhile genres?

----------------------------

Edit : What is especially interesting about this is that when I enter only

    My Lesbian Experience With
       Loneliness - Kabi Nagata
    Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
I get a book by Sappho(!) and a literal deluge of mostly-feminist literature with only a handful of anti-feminist works -- with the touchpoint that those anti-feminist works are trying to sound and look feminist!

I'm not sure how Sappho is directly in opposition to Nagata's work, and it strikes me that anyone who has read both Nagata and Butler would also be familiar with the works of Sappho?

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

#86

Post by sonotathrowaway »

magicalist wrote: post #81
isogon wrote: post #28

Earlier 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…

> on Reddit I was simultaneously subbed to /r/The_Donald, /r/politics, /r/ChapoTrapHouse, /r/Libertarian, etc Maybe you were just enjoying reading shitposts? Nothing wrong with that, everyone has their version of tabloids they enjoy, but these are mostly barely thought through hot takes posted to get a reaction (and surfaced because they were successful at it). There's no reason to think their intersection is going t…

^ 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 extreme political movements and use them as the basis of said balance. I’d wager that those subreddits represent less than 10% of the views of most Americans.

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

#87

Post by diego_moita »

Now I am very confused. In theory it sounds like a very good idea.

But when I tried this site what I got is a lot of books about religion. And I don't want to know anything about religion. I just can't bring myself to have intellectual respect for it.

"Open your mind" can be healthy if you are stuck in dumbness but can be a bad advice if you have sound and valid core beliefs as in "a mind too open doesn't hold anything of value". In which of these states am I?

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

#88

Post by bencollier49 »

It did a good job! I utterly loathe the authors, themes and genres of the books it anti-recommended. Well done!

I've genuinely tried to find one which I think I could read to broaden my horizons, but I can't bring myself to buy any of them.

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

#89

Post by therealx »

sonotathrowaway wrote: post #84
isogon wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ra…

I don’t understand the basis by which you think this election was “tight”.

Either op means that going into it, a lof of America was not firm in their predictions - people were firm last time, and a of them were wrong, so were weary to do it again.

It could also likely be that some states were small margins, and some districts even smaller. Overall, though, I agree with you.

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