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

abooklikefoo.com

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

#21

Post by padolsey »

Kye wrote: post #19

I tried three authors: Mary E. Lowd Kyell Gold / Tim Susman Rukis Croax Does this database not have books from small/independent publishers? edit: One of Kyell Gold's books pops up when I type his name in search after I clicked one of the examples. Still nothing on the others.

Unfortunately there will be some books missing, either because of lacking data on them or lacking intersections with other books, or because they're too new. There's also a difficulty in where to draw the line as every book added can slow down querying (each query traverses a database of over ten million relationships and around 400,000 books). This is a point of improvement that I'd like to work on though.

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

#22

Post by padolsey »

sol_invictus wrote: post #20

Put some of my own favourite books (maths, business and Japanese fiction) onto the engine and got recommended african-american and feminist literature (and a cookbook.) Then I sampled three of these recommendations and put them into the engine (Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou and Carol Anderson) and again got recommended feminist, african-american and anti-capitalist literature. One does not simply escape the leftis…

Indeed. It's a real struggle as the nature of how this operates on intersections ("people who like Foo also like Baz") mean that escaping a "bubble" really just means moving to its fringes. The more inward and consolidated a bubble is, the harder it will be to escape it (with the current approach) because there'll be almost no intersections that reach beyond its borders. :/ And grabbing random books from beyond its borders is as useful as walking into a bookstore and pointing blindfolded at a shelf.

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

#24

Post by padolsey »

Neputys wrote: post #15

This is quite fun actually! Tried different philosopher combinations. Get Alcoholics Anonymous recommendations for quite a few until I add Schopenhauer. And if you are a Rand, Rowling reading techie, apparently, you should read more Eddo-Lodge, Baldwin and Chomsky... Brightened my day, thnx. P.S. Are you sure this thing isn't pushing people from one echo chamber to another?

Glad it's brightened your day! Baldwin is wonderful to experience. Re: moving people from one chamber to another, one hopes that enough chamber-hopping might give people the broad perspective we hope for. Tribal ideology is always a trap but maybe it becomes less tempting as you experience more diverse echo chambers.

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

#25

Post by Rumperuu »

Very interesting—I certainly wouldn't have expected the antithesis of Mein Kampf and Revolt Against the Modern World to be Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking. Honourable mentions include the Bible (NIV) and The C Programming Language.

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

#26

Post by gcatalfamo »

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 chamber topic than the submission itself. Interesting project, OP.

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

#27

Post by pjc50 »

Kye wrote: post #19

I tried three authors: Mary E. Lowd Kyell Gold / Tim Susman Rukis Croax Does this database not have books from small/independent publishers? edit: One of Kyell Gold's books pops up when I type his name in search after I clicked one of the examples. Still nothing on the others.

I think that community is too small to even count as a bubble.

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

#28

Post by isogon »

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 their bias is subtle; extreme sources typically have very clear bias that is easy to keep in mind as you. You can read many extreme sources and sort of take the intersection of what they show you to guess at some minimal amount of what must be really true.

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

#29

Post by jbjbjbjb »

Rumperuu wrote: post #25

Very interesting—I certainly wouldn't have expected the antithesis of Mein Kampf and Revolt Against the Modern World to be Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking . Honourable mentions include the Bible (NIV) and The C Programming Language .

The results remind me of wordtovec examples where the opposite of Hitler, -1*Hilter, is Plantar fascia.

Which is the total opposite but it might be perfect for not just getting out of an echo chamber but just entirely taking a break from the topics we obsess about.

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

#30

Post by postingpals »

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…

Actually this tool seems to solve that problem by showing you multiple books, and not just direct opposites in terms of content. If you don't believe me search for 'Mein Kampf' and something similar, it doesn't spit out books you would consider opponents of Hitler's worldview necessarily.

Now whether the books it spits out are even going to help you break out of your worldview, who knows, but I'm sure reading Shakespeare is going to loosen up a fascist to other ideas at least a little bit.

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