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30 minutes with a stranger

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Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#351

Post by zestyping »

nonethewiser wrote: post #236
mrjay42 wrote: post #145

Just an observation, not a mean critique about the project or even the conclusions. There's 180 participants. There's 26 people marked at "very liberal", which is 14% of the sample. There's 39 people marked at "very conservative", which is 21% of the sample. ----- Then we have 31 people marked as liberal, which is 17% of the sample. And we have 63 people marked as conservative, which is 35% of the sample. That alread…

>There's 26 people marked at "very liberal", which is 14% of the sample. > There's 39 people marked at "very conservative", which is 21% of the sample I think these numbers are off. Where are you getting that from? Is there raw data somewhere? I counted the people on the page and see 39 very conservative and 47 very liberal (not 26). I did not check the other numbers. But with that its 78 liberals which is 43%. And t…

Okay, they messed up something here. The number of little ASCII-art person squares depends on the size of your browser window. The squares get smaller when you make the window narrower, so it looks like it was coded to try to keep the number roughly constant.

If I make the window narrow enough, there are 10 squares in a row and 19 rows, a total of 190 squares. The number that are coloured "very conservative", "conservative", "centrist", "liberal", "very liberal", respectively, are 39, 67, 24, 31, 29.

In percentages, that's 20.5%, 35.3%, 12.6%, 16.3%, 15.3%. Roughly 56% conservatives, 32% liberals.

If I make the window really wide, I see 20 squares in a row and 13 rows, a total of 260 squares. The distribution is now 39, 100, 37, 46, 38.

In percentages, that's 15.0%, 38.4%, 14.2%, 17.7%, 14.6%. Roughly 53% conservatives, 32% liberals.

It's weird that the number of squares increases and decreases when you resize the window, and I would argue it's misleading because there's an animated transition that is obviously meaningless. But it's a lot worse that the proportions aren't consistent! All of us saw exactly 39 in the "very conservative" category, so maybe it is failing to proportionally scale that category while scaling the others?

Conclusions:

1. There's a programming bug that misrepresents the proportions.

2. The sample is significantly skewed toward conservatives.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#352

Post by titanomachy »

paulorlando wrote: post #294
titanomachy wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn’t there a moderately popular audio-only social media startup a couple years ago?

You're thinking of Clubhouse? Raised around $200M. Fast up and down. The behavior our old startup had noticed 10 years earlier was that while people were happy to engage with audio only, retention was tough unless there was something more. For us that meant focusing on the health-related talks. Patients and their doctors and support group leaders took the talks as part of the recovery process. Very different retentio…

Yep, that's the one. I'd totally forgotten about it until this thread.

The mental health support angle makes sense, though.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#353

Post by mcluck »

dolebirchwood wrote: post #310
1970-01-01 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's art. They did it because they wanted it to be seen exactly this way. Accessibility was not the goal.

That's cool, but not all art is good. A lot of it sucks, regardless of the technical acumen involved in its production. This is one of those cases.

This is exactly the kind of negativity that only appears on the internet and that this study sort of shined a light on. Would you really tell this person to their face that their art sucks just because it isn't good for you?

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#354

Post by cruffle_duffle »

AbstractH24 wrote: post #248
alex-moon wrote: post #39

I'm increasingly convinced that social isolation is the single great social ill of our time. I am not one for "respecting others' opinions" at all, make no mistakes, if someone believes something incorrect - or worse - then they need to be corrected. But so much of the hate simmering away like a pot about to boil over is the result of loneliness. The evidence on this is startingly clear. https://www.sciencedirect.com…

Here's an interesting thing to ponder - how would we be different if not for lockdowns making work from home somewhat normal? The overnight disappearance of those loose connections you get in the workplace had a huge impact on my mental health. Life-altering. 5 years later, I split my time between remote tech consulting from an office I rent (to make sure I don't sit home all day) and a union-protected, but completel…

Societies reaction to Covid destroyed so much community it isn’t even funny.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#355

Post by karpovv-boris »

A good conclusion at the end. I'm right now going to therapy, feels good and helpful. But remembering recent experience (before therapy), I can say that I am very similar to the wounded in the sense that even thinking of making a new acquaintance, I evaluated people with suspicion. Now, during therapy, I'm all for new acquaintances and even started taking the first steps towards it.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#356

Post by MaxLeiter »

frizlab wrote: post #8

This is the third time this is posted and the first time this makes it to the front page. I’m glad it finally got some attention! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44443348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44269179

I was surprised I hadn't seen it on HN and saw it had so few upvotes, so figured I'd try again. Sometimes you just need some luck.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#357

Post by hatthew »

marc_abonce wrote: post #333

I'm surprised with how most of the people that felt worse after the conversation seem to be paired with someone that felt better after the same conversation. I would expect any negative feelings to be reciprocal so I wonder what happened in these interactions...

Possibly one-sided conversations where one person got to enthusiastically talk about something that the other person didn't care about.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#358

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

Pretty sure I read somewhere that many people prefer Waymo over Uber because there's no driver, which kinda contradicts these findings.

How about HN users? Do you typically enjoy chatting with an Uber driver?

If this "30 minutes with a stranger" experiment was performed during the pandemic, it could be that people were short on human connection at the time, and that explains why they valued it so much.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#359

Post by chr15m »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #358

Pretty sure I read somewhere that many people prefer Waymo over Uber because there's no driver, which kinda contradicts these findings. How about HN users? Do you typically enjoy chatting with an Uber driver? If this "30 minutes with a stranger" experiment was performed during the pandemic, it could be that people were short on human connection at the time, and that explains why they valued it so much.

People often prefer things that are worse for them.

Re: 30 minutes with a stranger

#360

Post by nonethewiser »

zestyping wrote: post #351
nonethewiser wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's 26 people marked at "very liberal", which is 14% of the sample. > There's 39 people marked at "very conservative", which is 21% of the sample I think these numbers are off. Where are you getting that from? Is there raw data somewhere? I counted the people on the page and see 39 very conservative and 47 very liberal (not 26). I did not check the other numbers. But with that its 78 liberals which is 43%. And t…

Okay, they messed up something here. The number of little ASCII-art person squares depends on the size of your browser window . The squares get smaller when you make the window narrower, so it looks like it was coded to try to keep the number roughly constant. If I make the window narrow enough, there are 10 squares in a row and 19 rows, a total of 190 squares. The number that are coloured "very conservative", "conse…

Great work... I thought I noticed something similar on the resizing. I guess they prioritized looks over accuracy which is kind of fair although its not obvious why they would have to do it this way.

In any case, it would be good to see the actual data for this stuff.

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