I put about 18 titles into it.
cricket
Did I win or what?
Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
241–250 of 264 posts
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 believe…
I'm genuinely sorry about your experiences. I know there are people who think that way. I have had some in my own family. I believe their numbers have grown and they are certainly vocal. I think those numbers have grown as a consequence of people living in bubbles; both because their own bubbles encourage it, but also because the presence of other bubbles incentivizes people to choose a side an hunker down regardless of what they would otherwise believe. I also think the media is hugely responsible here for pushing total bologna.
Imagine being a conservative who doesn't hold any of those views being told they are essentially a Neo Nazi; or a liberal who is compared with the most violent so-called member of Antifa. My dad is conservative, but doesn't believe any of the things your family members believe, even the bit about welfare queens. This is ironic, because my mother (divorced from my father) used every trick in the book to get money from the government and did it quite well. She did it because she realized it meant she didn't have to work. She claims (to this day) that she did it because she wanted to be home for me and my siblings, but let's just say all four of us will tell you that's a laugh. She was absolutely a welfare queen. Despite that, and although I can certainly find numbers somewhere to back up such a claim, I do not believe this is the case for a meaningful number of welfare recipients. (I do, however, recognize that such people exist.)
(FWIW, my mom—no longer able to claim a lot of the welfare stuff due in large part to her children all becoming adults—hit me up for money. I cut her a check to bail her out of her immediate problems and give her a little runway. I made the 'one-time-thing' part very clear. I also made it conditional on her getting a job. She's just... a much happier person now and is more-or-less supporting herself just fine.)
This is the core of how these bubbles formed:
1. Group all people who disagree with certain ways of thinking in one group. (These ways of thinking need not be at all related.)
2. Assign all people in that group the qualities of the worst elements in that group.
The non-monsters in each group are alienated from each other. They can't ever convince each other of their way of thinking or find a reasonable compromise because each group is convinced they already know what every individual in the other group thinks. It is impossible to disclaim the monsters in your group because you didn't make the group, the other guys made the group. This thinking isn't even completely wrong, since being in a bubble means you're expected to think a certain way.
It's not an effective means of change. It's really quite dehumanizing to everyone involved. It concentrates power at the expense of individuals and allows a handful of people to determine what is proper discourse. This framing colors not only every view, but also every interaction individuals between these bubbles have with each other.
Membership in a such a bubble is obvious from the outside. There are frequent accusations that you belong in the other bubble. There are extreme statements that aren't born out by experience or facts. There are house of cards based sometimes on solid foundations. There are witch hunts for any type of heresy to figure out who to exclude next. The wagons get circle at even a whiff of conflict. Any thought it doesn't recognize as belonging to it immediately gets the label "that other bubble." It honestly must be both exciting and exhausting to be in one.
Popping that bubble I think is an ethical mandate, but it's one that I think people need to do for themselves. Even though the bubble I mostly agree with is right about the problems, and mostly right about solutions, it's not right about everything. It's frequently wrong about people outside itself (myself included) and it's also very very wrong in its approach.
As I said in the beginning, I can't convince you you're in a bubble. I know that. It's something that everyone has to consider for themselves.
Edit: Removed duplicated paragraph.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 believe…
I'm genuinely sorry about your experiences. I know there are people who think that way. I have had some in my own family. I believe their numbers have grown and they are certainly vocal. I think those numbers have grown as a consequence of people living in bubbles; both because their own bubbles encourage it, but also because the presence of other bubbles incentivizes people to choose a side an hunker down regardless…
Not all conservatives are racist bigots. Not all racist bigots are conservative. The vast majority of racist bigots are conservative and conservatives haven no problem supporting racist bigots. I'm struggling to understand what about the above statements you'd actually disagree with. It all follows logically.
* Conservatives are mostly from rural areas
* Rural areas are 90% white
* In group / out group dynamics are determined largely by upbringing
* Rural white folk have far less opportunity to have PoC in their in-groups
* Out-group vs in-group is a major factor in discrimination and bias
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#244Earlier 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.
This is all true for everyone. The point is to get a better understanding of those reasons and why those reasons led this person to these beliefs. Plenty of people grow up and change their minds and then have different opinions than their parents indoctrinated them with. Plenty of people rely on the reasons you mentioned above to dismiss other people's views without critically examining their own views, which are subject to the exact same reasoning process.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So I tried to read the tripe, but the arguments are not persuasive unless you already believe what they are trying to convince you of. What the gp describes only works if you are tolerant of other people's errors to some extent. You can't let a few things like you describe derail you. Remember your own beliefs, it may be the case that you are right and the inaccuracy you discovered is a linchpin in their incorrect…
The more I read such works and try to abstract away from their exaggetared use of words, the more I find it to be like those inflatable air "houses" or potemkin villages. Once you take away the punch, the urgency and the strength of the words themselves, there's little left. The thing is, you can try to project something sensible onto them, ie steelman them, but you will end up with something the authors would disagr…
> The thing is, you can try to project something sensible onto them, ie steelman them, but you will end up with something the authors would disagree with.
I agree with this. However you have then arrived at the basic truth that underlies the distorted version you were originally exposed to. So then you can discuss the issue with the person using a set of shared assumptions and perhaps bring them around to the steel manned version. Now you have changed their mind. If they then say "what about this that I started out with" they are more open to your summarized dismissal "that doesn't work because of w, x, y, and z"
> The more I read such works
You're not justified in labeling a work as this kind of work until the process here has been done. You may have been exposed to a weaker version and dismissed that because of fallacies, while a stronger version exists. You can't dismiss the stronger version without examination merely because it reaches the same conclusions as the weaker version you were exposed to.
> You may just as well say you should read Scientology, and you will surely find common points to agree on etc. I mean, it's perhaps still useful to try that, I've read some Scientology materials myself and left with more knowledge about the specifics of Scientology, but I didn't get closer to believing it. Perhaps I can empathize with why it can hook people, we could call that understanding in a sense.
I think my independent study of scientology was fruitful for my understanding of how someone becomes possessed by ideology. Studying scientology under the supervision of scientologists is dangerous because they prevent you from critically examining the ideas.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm genuinely sorry about your experiences. I know there are people who think that way. I have had some in my own family. I believe their numbers have grown and they are certainly vocal. I think those numbers have grown as a consequence of people living in bubbles; both because their own bubbles encourage it, but also because the presence of other bubbles incentivizes people to choose a side an hunker down regardless…
Not all conservatives are racist bigots. Not all racist bigots are conservative. The vast majority of racist bigots are conservative and conservatives haven no problem supporting racist bigots. I'm struggling to understand what about the above statements you'd actually disagree with. It all follows logically. * Conservatives are mostly from rural areas * Rural areas are 90% white * In group / out group dynamics are d…
> Why is it so hard for you to accept that people who spend the first 18 years of their life surrounded by other white Christians are more likely harbor racist beliefs than someone who grows up surrounded by people of many different colors and religions?
I spent the first 18 years of my life surrounded by other white Christians and had a completely different experience. It's still not hard for me to accept that happens. What's hard for me to accept is the complete lack of nuance in your reasoning. There's really no room left for discussion after you're through painting a picture, but that picture does not jibe with reality. That's aside from the siege mentality that isn't supported even by the picture but goes along with it.
> From my "outside" perspective, you're obviously stuck in a bubble in which people must go out of their way to pretend both sides of every issue are equally valid.
"Both sides." "Valid." You're framing the argument in terms of your bubble. It's not true, by the way, that I think every argument is equally valid. There's plenty enough bullshit in the world.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not all conservatives are racist bigots. Not all racist bigots are conservative. The vast majority of racist bigots are conservative and conservatives haven no problem supporting racist bigots. I'm struggling to understand what about the above statements you'd actually disagree with. It all follows logically. * Conservatives are mostly from rural areas * Rural areas are 90% white * In group / out group dynamics are d…
> Why is it so hard for you to accept that people who spend the first 18 years of their life surrounded by other white Christians are more likely harbor racist beliefs than someone who grows up surrounded by people of many different colors and religions? I spent the first 18 years of my life surrounded by other white Christians and had a completely different experience. It's still not hard for me to accept that happe…
You'll have to forgive me if I don't find a guy from white rural Christian America's claim that white rural Christians don't have a problem with racism very compelling. In addition to ranting about welfare queens, my mom is quite happy to assert that she "doesn't see color" and she "doesn't have a racist bone in her body". Racists will never admit to being racist. You also completely fail to address the actual data showing the correlation between conservative beliefs and racism. I guess all the scientists who study race and politics, and all of the people of color I interact with are in the same bubble as me. Meanwhile in centrist land, you're both bubble and data free.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281664414_The_Relat...
> Numerous studies suggest that political conservatism significantly correlates with modern racist attitudes. The current findings are consistent with previous studies.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’ve pretty actively read stuff in that vein for years trying to connect the religious tie to right in America. It’s fascinating
How familiar are you with religious-right people in real life? I can't stand reading about it b/c I grew up in the thick of it: brings back bad memories.
I somewhat grew up around it and escaped it before I had the chance to understand it. Now that I’m older and effectively live in an echo chamber it’s so foreign
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Chr…
> 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.
The reason to conserve a species is because a biodiverse ecology is healthier. There is more competition so any organism (such as a disease-causing bacteria) is less able to cause a pandemic. Monocultures are susceptible to all sorts of problems that diverse ecologies are not.
How this interplays with evolution is that humans are in the position of unintentionally changing the environment drastically so that many species are now 'unfit.' This is because evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell you anything is good or bad about 'fitness.' Fitness always refers to an environment. Given another environment, something else would be more fit to survive.
Conservation relies on an understanding of human power over the environment and a desire to maintain an environment that doesn't succumb to the same problems we see with monocultures.
Re: Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
#250I 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.
Yes, because I thought the review title was so apropos that it was funny.