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Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
31–40 of 93 posts
Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Are these types of results generally reproducible? How do we know they are valid? It's a new study, so no-one had the opportunity to reproduce their findings yet. Generally in the scientific community, one tries to find the flaw in their argument/methods, rather then presuming them to be faulty. It doesn't seem like a very complicated, time consuming or costly experiment (compared with e.g. the search for the higgs…
> compared with e.g. the search for the higgs boson Understatement of the month, haha. I don't suppose you debate in engineering circles?
I do, but perhaps not very well ;-}
I mentioned the search for the higgs boson only as it leaves me uneasy, that it was so expensive, that I doubt in my lifetime any team will attempt to reproduce the results.
Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
#33the sky is blue regardless whether you agree or not
Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
#34It has a lot of impact on me even if I try to ignore because I see so much sharing of misinformation and sources that are not even close to credible. It is especially troubling when it is from people I trust and respect and it takes a lot of self control to ignore and move along as I know arguing online about these things online hardly ever improves the situation.
It's a pity that there's really no social norm to penalise sharing non-credible information/misinformation.
> penalize???
Due to bad content, I flatly refuse to go to Web sites of ABC, ..., WaPo. E.g., if there is a post at Hacker News from the NYT,
===>> NO WAY will I go there. Same for The Guardian, the BBC, etc. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Bad media has fooled me way, WAY too often, and I will NOT go back. I just conclude, bluntly, fooling people is all they know how to do. But they aren't fooling me anymore.
It's worse than that: For many years I got triple play Internet access -- Internet, landline phone, and TV. And my house had three nice TV sets. But I NEVER used the TV (except for movies on VCR). The triple play was cheaper than just Internet and landline phone access.
What happened was, I clicked through all the TV channels looking for something worth watching and finding nothing once too often and flatly, absolutely, positively, totally gave up on all of TV. All of it. Now I have no TV set at all.
From me, ALL of TV has been penalized, totally. And nearly all of the mainstream media sources have been equally penalized.
What do I pay attention to? Hacker News for one: I get good links to good content and the often good comments on that content from Hacker News readers who post.
For the issue of images and video, notice that Hacker News has none of that! Fine with me!
For more? Sure, a few selected blogs and YouTube channels.
In total, there are a lot of good URLs just on Hacker News!
Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consumers frequently lie that they prefer honest headlines No. "Revealed preference" is exploitation of vice, plain and simple. Addicts might honestly say they would prefer to abstain, but still relapse. The same dopamine systems are being exploited in either case.
That's a distinction without a difference. An addict who says they prefer to abstain but doesn't, doesn't actually prefer to abstain. Where preferences come from is irrelevant. De gustibus non disputandum est.
By that logic, there is no such thing as addiction.
Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it is a market optimal strategy. Since consumers express strong preference for emotional headlines, it is optimal to give them that. Consumers frequently lie that they prefer honest headlines, but that is merely a mismatch between their true beliefs and the identity they wish to project themselves as having. One strategy for success is to be the fall guy for everything. And then be paid for it. Journalism ult…
Consumers frequently lie that they prefer honest headlines No. "Revealed preference" is exploitation of vice, plain and simple. Addicts might honestly say they would prefer to abstain, but still relapse. The same dopamine systems are being exploited in either case.
Revealed preference is just a way to make manipulative marketing sound more noble than just applied behaviorism.
Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
#37The only solution is not to engage with emotionally manipulative content. Even, for example, with nerdy YouTube channels that I love, if a video shows up in my feed: * with a title $villain $unflattering_third_person_present_verb $something * with the format $hero $flattering_third_person_present_verb $something * a person in the thumbnail making an o-face[1] for any reason Then I simply don’t click on it. [1] https:…
That might be a good strategy for dealing with youtube videos but it's not an equally good strategy for dealing with print media. The thing to remember about magazine or newspaper articles is that the author does not typically have any input on what the headline will be. A great article by a great author will quite often get a ridiculous headline from an editor, for all the bad reasons an editor might have: baiting the audience, putting their own spin on the story, or whatever.
You'll miss some things if you just skip a story because of a bad headline, and I think the cited article is just another indicator that we ought to deliberately not give headlines too much thought.
Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
#38"humans have emotions"
Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
#39That's a big reason what makes HN successful: a blanket ban on emotional content.
Edit. I've been thinking of an idea that for us knowledge sharing resembles neuron connections, based on my limited knowledge of that topic. Each of us watches a few channels of information and makes a choice to forward/retweet a piece of information so your subscribers would see it, ignore it or block a channel if it sends you bogus data. Every time we do this, we adjust the rating of the source. So I've been thinking that if we could set up such a network in a more formal way, and if the network would grow to at least a few thousand "neurons" (that are people), would it exhibit some unexpected higher level effects?
Re: Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source
#40This is why we're building a news platform that sets up a different incentive structure than the current status quo. If publishers aren't desperate for clicks, there is no reason to stoop to outrage porn.
https://blog.nillium.com/news-was-never-meant-for-social-pla...