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Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

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Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#251

Post by airstrike »

username90 wrote: post #241
airstrike wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse. In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking a…

> In a recent interview, Michelle Obama said... I always wondered why USA places so much focus on the Presidents wife? I'm not an American but I know more American leaders wives than I know spouses for all other country leaders together... Isn't that insane? I've never heard anyone talk about spouses of leaders in other countries. Do you know who Merkels husband is? Did you ever hear about David Cameron's wife? So wh…

She's in the spotlight because she's an amazingly accomplished person. A 54-year-old black woman from the South Side of Chicago who went to Princeton despite her high-school career advice telling her "she wasn't really Princeton material".

It also helps that she wrote a #1 NY Times best-seller that everyone is talking about[0]. Maybe if you read it you will understand what makes her so special.

––––––––––

⁰ https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Michelle-Obama-ebook/dp/B079...

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#252

Post by czardoz »

gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

That has always been the case with humanity in general. Think of book authors, there are few of them, but they've been influencing our thinking for hundreds of years. The problem now is, the barrier for entry has become incredibly low (although, this would have been true when the printing press was invented too).

I stopped using reddit because of this. I've no idea about the credibility of the authors, their intentions and their motivation. When I'm listening to someone's opinion, I'd like to know more about them, so I can decide for myself how seriously to take it.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#253

Post by adrianN »

tokyodude wrote: post #202
airstrike wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse. In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking a…

It certainly feels plausible and yet we have that issue. All our media tells us we should all carry guns and shoot people and yet gun violence is down. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-... We have some of the sexyist media around telling us we should all be sleeping around and yet apparently sex is down too. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex... Are we sure it's an…

Sperm count in men is declining as well.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#254

Post by sizzle »

airstrike wrote: post #199
gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

A related phenomenon I've been thinking about is the impact of traditional entertainment media (TV, Movies and Music) and the inherent bias in the sample of worldviews that the people who work in those businesses espouse. In other words, we only hear and watch stories from those people who chose storytelling as their career, and if you assume we are inevitably influenced by their views then we're effectively taking a…

I've always wondered in the back of my mind how judges and elected officials are influenced by movies and television.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#255

Post by adrianN »

redwards510 wrote: post #214
cholmon wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This parallels civic/political engagement in real life. It's tough to get lurkers (like me) to speak up and shift the discussion when the emotional cost of doing so - arguing, being downvoted, getting defensive, being ridiculed - seems to make the effort simply not worthwhile for the individual. Not only on the web, but also in the office, at Thanksgiving dinner, at a cookout, etc.

This reminds me of when I attempt to send a Snopes link to someone who just forwarded me a chain email. They don't thank you, you get silence or worse.

Silence from people who forward chain mails seems desireable.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#256

Post by mark-r »

I used to contribute quite a bit on the MyFonts.com WhatTheFont forum. Then one day someone called Tecnotronic showed up and started dominating the board. He probably makes about 90% of the posts now.

Just another anecdote to support the premise of the article.

Edit: The link said "outliers" not "insane" when I first saw it. I did NOT mean to imply that my example was someone insane, far from it.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#257

Post by rjf72 »

Joeri wrote: post #223
tokyodude wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It certainly feels plausible and yet we have that issue. All our media tells us we should all carry guns and shoot people and yet gun violence is down. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-... We have some of the sexyist media around telling us we should all be sleeping around and yet apparently sex is down too. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/the-sex... Are we sure it's an…

Media is dominated by news, and news is unavoidably carrying a bias. The things that matter are long term and commonplace, the news is novel and unusual. Major long term trends are not something that gets reported on because they’re not news. What gets reported are outliers and contrarian views. That’s why if you want to be informed about the world you shouldn’t watch the news and just read books.

A nice saying that sums up what you're saying more clearly: Dog bites a man is not news. Man bites a dog is news. Rely on the news for information and suddenly there seems to a rampant culture of men biting dogs! Is YOUR pet safe!?

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#258

Post by d1zzy »

chrisco255 wrote: post #6
keithwhor wrote: post #4

Yes. Most of the content you watch on TV was written and acted by outliers. The products you use and consume were crafted, marketed and even distributed by outliers. First, when zoomed out, outliers in all possible tasks become more common — internet commenting is just a subset for silly folks like me. Secondly, the emergent human social fabric is built to recognize and amplify outspoken and / or talented outliers, v…

I still think it's surprising that there are so many lurkers who literally never engage in the discussion, considering the barriers to do so are so low.

Maybe more of us should apply the following before speaking up:

* is it true?

* is it necessary?

* is it kind?

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#259

Post by gniv »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #228
gniv wrote: post #157

Most of the comments here are either elaborating on the OP, or justify lurking. I am a mostly-lurker myself, but I felt the need to comment here, since I was hoping to see the discussion go into a different direction. The OP uses the word "insane", not outlier. It's clickbaity, and used in jest, but I think it better captures a subtlety of this phenomenon: The prolific commenters are molding every discussion in their…

> That would be an argument for lurkers to make an effort, even if, like this comment, it's just a barely-formed idea. The content is there, by lesser known figures and lurkers alike. It’s just hard to discover. You need to stumble upon it by accident, instead of by a deliberate process like consuming the top upvoted posts.

That's a good point. It could be that since we don't know how to scale curation (and use upvotes as a proxy), we exacerbate the problem of lurkers not having their (few) comments discovered.

As a counter-example, I find the "editor's picks" comments on some New York Times articles to be high quality and quite diverse. But that model, of course, doesn't scale.

Re: Most of What We Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People

#260

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Dowwie wrote: post #125
sokoloff wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that limiting downvotes to accounts with X karma is a significant contributor to the problem of getting attention to a new high-quality post on a fairly high-volume site.

I'm not suggesting changing the rules on downvoting as a solution. I've considered far more drastic measures!

some hacks I think could increase quality:

  - mandatory 60 second re-click to submit a comment, without edits
  - mandatory 60 second re-click on votes after a rate threshold is exceeded
  - multiple choice votes to express motivation, intention, feedback
  - do not publish karma numbers
  - publish "example threads" that show values being practiced, including dead links/comments examples
  - randomly assign usernames every 12 months
  - tags and tag feeds
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