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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

#231

Post by sonotathrowaway »

leadingthenet wrote: post #135
sonotathrowaway wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The number of overall votes it would take to change the outcome of the election, compared to the total size of the electorate, is small. The votes would need to be very precisely distributed, though.

Donald Trump won 2016 because he had a 70k vote majority across three states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

What was the minimum number of votes across the minimum number of states needed for him to win in 2020? Again, nobody has actually provided a reason this vote was close - it wasn’t close at all, it was a humiliating rejection, especially for an incumbent.

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

#234

Post by cgriswald »

tstrimple wrote: post #227
cgriswald wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 conservativ…

It's not up to me to break you out of your bubble. Your comments are deeply out of touch with reality and I know that nothing I say will convince you.

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

#235

Post by tstrimple »

cgriswald wrote: post #234
tstrimple wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 conservativ…

It's not up to me to break you out of your bubble. Your comments are deeply out of touch with reality and I know that nothing I say will convince you.

Yes, it's my belief in data that's the problem here.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/06/racia...

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

#236

Post by AntiImperialist »

bonoboTP wrote: post #218
AntiImperialist wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is most people don't have those perspectives. Their beliefs don't come from their life experience or that of their family handed down to them. It comes from marketing material. Therefore they're highly inconsistent in their beliefs and what they believe they believe does not have anything to do with them or how they actually live their lives. So, if you want to understand what they think they're about, yo…

And that's also true of most high brow, abstract school stuff. Like evolution. Even in countries where creationism isn't a thing and everyone "believes in" evolution, most of them couldn't describe a logically workable mechanism of evolution, they know a cartoon version but believe it because they "know" that "evolution" is true. But would you say it makes no sense to read books on evolution just because most people…

>Why did schools end up teaching evolution? For scientific reasons? To suppress religion in some freemasonry conspiracy?

I think it has nothing to do with "increasing scientific literacy" or anything like that, for sure. It would be very odd that of all the scientific things you could push to teach kids, the theory of evolution is somehow the most important one. I think it has everything to do with attacking the Christian Right at their homes by forcing their kids to learn something they don't want them to. It's a socio-economic and political tool for war.

When grilled by someone, I remember Richard Dawkins, one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, said that he just wants people to understand that it happens in nature but doesn't want people to live by the idea of natural selection or something to that effect. In other words, he wants people to understand evolution but not "believe" it... i.e. in the sense that he doesn't want people to live by it (I disagree with Dawkins, but more on that later).

Speaking of that, it reminds me of a comment I posted yesterday here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412712

I know that if one really believes in evolution, there is absolutely no reason to "conserve a species". It makes absolutely no sense. Species come and go. Whatever species remain will evolve to acquire characteristics suitable for whatever changes happen... or perish. So why does everyone believe in conservation and in evolution? Because they don't. But what if they believed in Noah's arc? It would be terrible if one of the species that Noah himself picked to be on a boat were to go extinct because humans did something, wouldn't it? That is exactly the reaction you see from all these westerners who allegedly "believe" in evolution.

I mean people can make use of certain rhetoric for status, or political gains or economic gains, but to actually believe those is a different matter altogether. I think westerners believe in many dogmas of Christianity, no matter how much they deny it or pretend that they are above it. I, as a non-Christian non-westerner who grew up mostly outside of the reach of westerners, see it in many aspects of how they actually live. The things that they actually believe in comes from Christianity. The things they pretend believe in comes from corporate and political PR material that they're exposed to... and some of it they do believe, as long as it doesn't contradict with Christianity.

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

#237

Post by leadingthenet »

sonotathrowaway wrote: post #231
leadingthenet wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of overall votes it would take to change the outcome of the election, compared to the total size of the electorate, is small. The votes would need to be very precisely distributed, though.

Donald Trump won 2016 because he had a 70k vote majority across three states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. What was the minimum number of votes across the minimum number of states needed for him to win in 2020? Again, nobody has actually provided a reason this vote was close - it wasn’t close at all, it was a humiliating rejection, especially for an incumbent.

> What was the minimum number of votes across the minimum number of states needed for him to win in 2020?

I don't know the exact number, but afaik less than 1 million. Compared to the size of the electorate, a few hundred thousand votes here or there is really not that much. It only seems so to Americans because they have historically low participation and high polarisation.

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

#238

Post by conception »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #125
conception wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah man, don't read that book until the pandemic is over and you're in a good place. I encourage you to go back to it when you can though, I love it, the only book I have read twice.

Yeah, I had to quit during Part 2. Just... too depressing. My friend kept telling me Part 3 is really interesting but the world will need to be a lot happier of a place to jump back in. I've considered just skipping the rest of Part 2 and going to 3 but seems like cheating.

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

#239

Post by cgriswald »

tstrimple wrote: post #235
cgriswald wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not up to me to break you out of your bubble. Your comments are deeply out of touch with reality and I know that nothing I say will convince you.

Yes, it's my belief in data that's the problem here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/06/racia...

I haven’t analyzed your source at all. But even if I stipulate the data was correctly gathered and the conclusions made are reasonable, it doesn’t support your comments.

Data is not the reason you are in a bubble. Data is your excuse. Your view doesn’t gravitate toward data. You gravitate toward data that supports your view. When you find it, I’m rather convinced you’re not particularly critical about it. You seem to be trying to use that data as a club rather than as a tool to fix problems.

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

#240

Post by tstrimple »

cgriswald wrote: post #239
tstrimple wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's my belief in data that's the problem here. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/06/racia...

I haven’t analyzed your source at all. But even if I stipulate the data was correctly gathered and the conclusions made are reasonable, it doesn’t support your comments. Data is not the reason you are in a bubble. Data is your excuse. Your view doesn’t gravitate toward data. You gravitate toward data that supports your view. When you find it, I’m rather convinced you’re not particularly critical about it. You seem to…

Both the data and my personal observations growing up in a conservative family in rural Oklahoma and Iowa back up my position. You say I'm in a bubble, but I've been surrounded by conservatives 31 out of the 37 years I've been alive. It's not that I don't understand their motivations, or arguments, or sentiments. My father believes every Muslim wants to kill or convert us. He has never met a Muslim. My mother believes welfare queens pick up their welfare checks in Cadillacs. My sister believes Donald Trump was delivered by God to save this country. My brother believes transwomen just want to molest his daughters. This is just my immediate family. My extended family gets even more colorful and overtly bigoted. Quite frankly, I'm tired of being told I just don't understand conservatives when I've been dealing with these people my entire life. Perhaps it's your perception of conservatives which needs to be adjusted.
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