News is bad for you • Hacker News Board

Re: News is bad for you

#141

Post by oskarth » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

michael_nielsen wrote: post #135

oskarth wrote: post #20

While I agree with the sentiment, Rolf Dobelli himself is a plagiarist. This whole reasoning is basically stolen from Nassim Taleb. http://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm http://blog.chabris.com/2013/09/similarities-between-rolf-do... EDIT: For another take on not reading the news, see http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

I stopped reading at Taleb's first example. I've seen very similar stories from both Richard Feynman and John Littlewood. Here's Taleb: "I was thinking about calling my third cousin Antiochus this morning when the phone rang. Miracle! It was him on the other line; this confirms my developed sixth sense! This is a great omen except that perhaps I should wake up and take into account the number of times when I thought…

Don't you think there's a difference between isolated anecdotes and two dozen paragraphs with very similar content? Not to mention the fact that Dobelli reviewed Taleb's book, and that other authors have noticed similarities.

Also this paragraph:

Note that correspondence of content doesn't imply plagiarism. There is a book EXTREMELY similar to Fooled by Randomness called The Drunkard's Walk. Yet not a shade of plagiarism. Why? the examples and terminology were very different. Some ideas can be rediscovered by two people. And when asked, the author said: Had I known about FBR I wouldn't have written that book. An honorable man.

EDIT in reply to above edit: Note that Taleb isn't saying he's the originator of all the examples. Many are attributed in his footnotes, and he's not claming authorship of them. Many of the examples, as you say, are already in the common consciousness. Taleb is using these examples to drive other points. The only thing he is saying - in this article - is showing how Dobelli is obviously plagiarizing what he has written.

Re: News is bad for you

#142

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 4:58 PM UTC

oskarth wrote: post #110

joecurry wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rebuttal from Dobelli >> http://www.dobelli.com/book-corrections/taleb

That's not a rebuttal. Look at the diffs for Taleb/Dobelli and Chabris&Simons/Dobelli for yourself. This is textbook plagiarism.

[deleted]

Re: News is bad for you

#143

Post by gizmo » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 4:59 PM UTC

oskarth wrote: post #110

joecurry wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rebuttal from Dobelli >> http://www.dobelli.com/book-corrections/taleb

That's not a rebuttal. Look at the diffs for Taleb/Dobelli and Chabris&Simons/Dobelli for yourself. This is textbook plagiarism.

Taleb concedes that Dobelli's work references Taleb 23 + 12 times. The examples I didn't recognize as being specifically Taleb's (and I have read all his books). These popular science examples get regurgitated over and over on websites, blogs and so on. Perhaps Taleb was the first to think of these examples, perhaps he was not.

For example the comparison between wall street investors and monkeys and the subsequent selection bias was featured in A Random Walk Down Wall Street - 1973.

So I'm not convinced there was malice involved here.

Re: News is bad for you

#144

Post by stickydink » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 5:00 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #132

I agree... but I think there are two important caveats. 1) Some news is important, purely for social (not informational) reasons. When you show up to the office, you want to know why everyone's talking about Miley Cyrus! And you need to know who won the Superbowl, even if you have no interest. 2) News does have explanatory power, but mostly in weekly mags like The Economist, New Yorker, etc., and occasionally in anal…

Similarly, I've always dreamed of a service like this. At least one that informs you of world-impact-level events; wars breaking out, major disasters, etc. It'd be nice to find out about these quickly, without stumbling on it later.

Re: News is bad for you

#145

Post by Kluny » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 5:02 PM UTC

Way to devalue yourself, The Guardian.

Re: News is bad for you

#146

Post by leokun » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 5:05 PM UTC

PsychopompPoet wrote: post #77

"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson "Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists." Norman Mailer "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." George Bernard Shaw "In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right pl…

> "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson

To be fair news papers are much different now than they were then. A history of newspapers in America will show you journalistic credibility was hard to come by early on.

Re: News is bad for you

#147

Post by yodsanklai » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 5:05 PM UTC

Totally agree. Actually a few months ago, I blocked the news websites that I was used to reading. I really see news as a form of noise rather than information. Especially all those low quality sites such as the Huffington Post and so on...

Not only they don't provide quality information, but it seems to me they trigger our worst sides (jealousy, hatred...).

Re: News is bad for you

#148

Post by hspain » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 5:06 PM UTC

http://goodnewsgopher.com

I made a news crawler that automatically filters out bad news articles using sentiment analysis.

I like to think it offers a good reprieve from all of the negative, depressing news you get inundated with from the major media.

Re: News is bad for you

#149

Post by michael_nielsen » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 5:07 PM UTC

oskarth wrote: post #141

michael_nielsen wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading at Taleb's first example. I've seen very similar stories from both Richard Feynman and John Littlewood. Here's Taleb: "I was thinking about calling my third cousin Antiochus this morning when the phone rang. Miracle! It was him on the other line; this confirms my developed sixth sense! This is a great omen except that perhaps I should wake up and take into account the number of times when I thought…

Don't you think there's a difference between isolated anecdotes and two dozen paragraphs with very similar content? Not to mention the fact that Dobelli reviewed Taleb's book, and that other authors have noticed similarities. Also this paragraph: Note that correspondence of content doesn't imply plagiarism. There is a book EXTREMELY similar to Fooled by Randomness called The Drunkard's Walk. Yet not a shade of plagia…

I said Dobelli should be embarassed. He certainly should be embarassed by several of those examples.

But Taleb's page is also embarassing to Taleb. He's presenting many of these as his original ideas when, well, they're simply not.

Re: News is bad for you

#150

Post by aaronem » Thu, Dec 12, 2013, 5:11 PM UTC

timbro wrote: post #119

oskarth wrote: post #20

While I agree with the sentiment, Rolf Dobelli himself is a plagiarist. This whole reasoning is basically stolen from Nassim Taleb. http://fooledbyrandomness.com/dobelli.htm http://blog.chabris.com/2013/09/similarities-between-rolf-do... EDIT: For another take on not reading the news, see http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

Of course we can put our heads in the sand. The problem is: if you do this, you should no longer be allowed to vote. Because democracy can only survive if the feedback cycle is encouraged , not sabotaged : (Good|bad) news => critical thinking by the citizen => citizen votes accordingly => corruption (and other problems) are corrected. If you stop reading news, you stop being a responsible citizen. If you feel bad abo…

I love your optimism! Almost as much as I do your boundless naïvete. And I stopped voting years ago. It's an unhealthy habit, and only encourages 'em.