Show HN: An anti-book recommendation tool, to help you escape your echo chamber
abooklikefoo.com
abooklikefoo.com
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.
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.
What do you hope to gain out of going to the effort of consuming media like this? Why not just go on an information diet altogether?
As for why I want to know what happens in the world and particularly where I live (i.e. North America), it is because those events affect me. If I were on an information diet, then I would probably miss, for example, the recent passing of S.386 [0] by the US Senate, which is intimately relevant to me as my long-term goal is to immigrate to the US.
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/386...
1. Being able to hold conversations with people from all political persuasions (eg. Knowing how to reach agreement on things and knowing what pushes their buttons) 2. Entertainment
Tongue in cheek, but I bring this up to point out that while it might be good to expand one's knowledge, it can become a virtue. When that happens, we're all condemned because it'll never be broad enough.
I haven't tried anything outside of US, China (these two being the two major geopolitical players), and Russia (because I am from there and understand the language). I would love to expand that list, but my time is limited.
Another factor is that reading American commentary is entertaining because I live here and am immersed in the culture. The same goes for Russia. I haven't been able to make this work with China: there is a mass of cultural material that I'm not "in" on, so it feels much more like work.
Does your approach not gloss over the nuance? Or are you able to surface the complexities of a given topic simply by examining the extremes?
For example, I read many conflicting predictions concerning the last US election, saw that I could not distinguish bad predictions from good ones, and concluded that I have to remain unconvinced. I was vindicated by it being a very tight race. This doesn't always happen.
On the other hand, I read the recent Texas filing [0] and found that I could confidently argue against it, and the best opposing arguments I could find did not convince me. To my SO, I confidently voiced the prediction that this lawsuit will fail, and articulated why the probability argument in the attached Cicchetti Declaration is misguided. This is arguably a very easy task, so this correct prediction does me little credit, but I think that's the point: even if I only become convinced of things which are obvious, it is important to not accidentally become convinced of things which are not obvious.
[0] https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163048/2020...
It could also likely be that some states were small margins, and some districts even smaller. Overall, though, I agree with you.
The votes would need to be very precisely distributed, though.
What was the minimum number of votes across the minimum number of states needed for him to win in 2020? Again, nobody has actually provided a reason this vote was close - it wasn’t close at all, it was a humiliating rejection, especially for an incumbent.
I don't know the exact number, but afaik less than 1 million. Compared to the size of the electorate, a few hundred thousand votes here or there is really not that much. It only seems so to Americans because they have historically low participation and high polarisation.
Also, turnout set a 50 year high in percentage of eligible population to vote.
The only people who think this election was “close” are the same ones who keep saying that shocking new evidence will be released tomorrow by Giuliani, but only if I send in a check to the committee to save America.
Losing as an incumbent is humiliating, doubly so when you get rejected by so much of your own party. Trump’s loss was a humiliation, particularly because it was because he was such an incompetent president.
Sure, with a geographically optimum shift of votes to maximally leverage the anti-democratic nature of the electoral college, it would take about ~125k votes (37 EVs need flipped, ~40k gets PA for 20, ~31.5k gets GA for 16, and ~3.5k gets ME-1 for 1; at least I think that's the lowest-vote-change scenario, and assumes reversals of votes where every change reduces the margin by 2.)
Of course, that would also be by far the biggest popular vote loss by an electoral college winner since the election of 1824, which had four candidates clearing over 10% of the vote, and the only electoral college defeat of the majority (not merely plurality) winner of the popular vote in US history.
Maybe you were just enjoying reading shitposts? Nothing wrong with that, everyone has their version of tabloids they enjoy, but these are mostly barely thought through hot takes posted to get a reaction (and surfaced because they were successful at it). There's no reason to think their intersection is going to be anywhere near something "true" (let alone usefully true).
I can list plenty of subreddits with worthwhile political discussion, but none of that matters if a persons idea of “balanced” is to find the dregs of fringe and extreme political movements and use them as the basis of said balance. I’d wager that those subreddits represent less than 10% of the views of most Americans.
The hard part is that reddit is majority liberal, so it's very very hard to find a good balance.
Any random non-political subreddit is going to be liberal slanted. In order to find a conservative slant you have to go specifically to a political conservative subreddit.
Center left: /r/neoliberal
Right: /r/neoconnwo
Center right: /r/tuesday
Neutral: /r/neutralpolitics /r/geopolitics /r/politicalfactchecking /r/truepolitics
A spectrum of subreddits across ideological views, all with discussions you may actually learn something from. You’ll notice that none of those subreddits have been suspended because their members and moderators are repeatedly calling for violence against their political opponents, nor are they just recruiting boards for Stormfront. Again, finding the fringe conspiracy theorists repeatedly calling for violence doesn’t actually give you a well informed or balanced perspective.
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.
Statistical aggregates make this worse. You can argue that on average X is more than Y, or you can cherrypick all the examples where Y is greater than X to make your point.
People don't like, a lot of things, they don't call them delusional. We call things delusional because they are, in fact, delusional. What makes it dangerous is that people deeply believe that their delusions are "truth". Belief to the point of fundamentalism, where they will kill non-believers in their delusions.
That said, the bar should be very high for calling other peoples beliefs as such. I disagree with lots of people on lots of things, but one of the things I've learned is that by approaching topics with such a judgemental, holier-than-though attitude, one puts on blinders to truly understanding a persons position, and more importantly, how they got there. The power of empathy is strong in giving the brain more information to work with, but the power of harsh judgement is that it stifles the flow of information prematurely.
That's the most important part, isn't it? Beliefs of humans are path-dependent. Nobody can perfectly rationally re-evaluate all evidence they've encountered and compute a belief to hold. We always start with a belief, and adjust it over time. Some more eagerly than others, some more correctly than others, but it's always an additive shift. Integration of evidence, if you like. That's why when I see someone believing something that's clearly (to me) absurd, I'm mostly interested in how did they get there - something must have convinced them, and I found it useful to discover what it was, because often it's a piece of real evidence I haven't encountered before.
Thats such simple yet profound statement to me. Thank you for the response, it has definitely given me something to ponder. Ugg. Now I'm imagine companies/govs doing path dependent profiling of people for their minority report-esque systems.
I think that is a fallacy. Just because some standpoint is in between two other standpoints, does not make it correct. Each side might look at some facts from a different perspective and might be correct but at the same time contradicting (at least at the first glance), but the 'average' could still be wrong.
This engages System 2, hard. And it's so easy to slip back into System 1 and continue to reject the evidence in front of you, as System 1 does so well when it doesn't like what it's seeing.
I have to constantly remind myself of the possibility that I could be wrong or have an incomplete view of things, but then that allows me to extract the valuable nuances and hidden assumptions that underlie the belief.
Even more importantly, it tends to cast a light on my unconscious biases and assumptions that underlie my beliefs.
After having read books on two sides of various things, I have found that most people don't have firm beliefs at all. Their beliefs don't even have anything to do with how they live. They have everything to do with what they're told will make them look good. So, just because someone says they believe something, I'm not willing to waste any more of my time on learning how it is justified on an intellectual or logical level (which is what books tend to capture). Even the believers most likely don't have any understanding of it themselves or how or why it matters to them. It's simply not worth it.
Or, well, you described it more accurately, it's a bit deeper than disagreement, it's an entirely different epistemology! Like waaayy different
So, if you want to understand what they think they're about, you can just watch the "news" or read other PR material targeted to them. That is now more difficult because it's a bit more targeted because of social media marketing but it is still possible.
But if you want to know what they actually believe without even knowing that they do, you have to look at what they actually do and how they live their lives.
But would you say it makes no sense to read books on evolution just because most people who believe in evolution don't believe in it for the reasons outlined in advanced books?
Why did schools end up teaching evolution? For scientific reasons? To suppress religion in some freemasonry conspiracy?
You can ask the same about the race topics.
I think it has nothing to do with "increasing scientific literacy" or anything like that, for sure. It would be very odd that of all the scientific things you could push to teach kids, the theory of evolution is somehow the most important one. I think it has everything to do with attacking the Christian Right at their homes by forcing their kids to learn something they don't want them to. It's a socio-economic and political tool for war.
When grilled by someone, I remember Richard Dawkins, one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, said that he just wants people to understand that it happens in nature but doesn't want people to live by the idea of natural selection or something to that effect. In other words, he wants people to understand evolution but not "believe" it... i.e. in the sense that he doesn't want people to live by it (I disagree with Dawkins, but more on that later).
Speaking of that, it reminds me of a comment I posted yesterday here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25412712
I know that if one really believes in evolution, there is absolutely no reason to "conserve a species". It makes absolutely no sense. Species come and go. Whatever species remain will evolve to acquire characteristics suitable for whatever changes happen... or perish. So why does everyone believe in conservation and in evolution? Because they don't. But what if they believed in Noah's arc? It would be terrible if one of the species that Noah himself picked to be on a boat were to go extinct because humans did something, wouldn't it? That is exactly the reaction you see from all these westerners who allegedly "believe" in evolution.
I mean people can make use of certain rhetoric for status, or political gains or economic gains, but to actually believe those is a different matter altogether. I think westerners believe in many dogmas of Christianity, no matter how much they deny it or pretend that they are above it. I, as a non-Christian non-westerner who grew up mostly outside of the reach of westerners, see it in many aspects of how they actually live. The things that they actually believe in comes from Christianity. The things they pretend believe in comes from corporate and political PR material that they're exposed to... and some of it they do believe, as long as it doesn't contradict with Christianity.
The reason to conserve a species is because a biodiverse ecology is healthier. There is more competition so any organism (such as a disease-causing bacteria) is less able to cause a pandemic. Monocultures are susceptible to all sorts of problems that diverse ecologies are not.
How this interplays with evolution is that humans are in the position of unintentionally changing the environment drastically so that many species are now 'unfit.' This is because evolution is descriptive, not prescriptive. It doesn't tell you anything is good or bad about 'fitness.' Fitness always refers to an environment. Given another environment, something else would be more fit to survive.
Conservation relies on an understanding of human power over the environment and a desire to maintain an environment that doesn't succumb to the same problems we see with monocultures.
Healthier for who or what or to what end? Whatever changes (because of humans or otherwise), some individuals of a species may evolve to fit better to that... or they'll perish and something else will happen there. Worst case, it will go back to how things were 4 billion years ago.
>There is more competition so any organism (such as a disease-causing bacteria) is less able to cause a pandemic.
And humans are special why? Disease-causing is very human-centered... because of course we are special because God created us in his image. You may deny that because you "believe in evolution"... but I'm arguing is your beliefs make more sense if I go with the assumption that you belive in the Christian dogma and do not believe in evolution AT ALL. You may use your understanding of evolution to justify your Christian beliefs while simultaneously denying that you believe in Christianity... but from the outside, I see right through you.
If you believed that we are not special and that bacteria is running the world as much as we think we are, there is no need to favor humans over disease-causing bacteria.
>How this interplays with evolution is that humans are in the position of unintentionally changing the environment drastically so that many species are now 'unfit.'
>Conservation relies on an understanding of human power over the environment and a desire to maintain an environment that doesn't succumb to the same problems we see with monocultures.
If you believed in evolution, you'd see that humans are just as much part of nauture as anything else. It's your Christian dogma that leads you to believe that the world was created with a certain intent and humans are ruining it (by going against God's will, like Adam did with the fruit).
Again, in absence of Christian dogma, and with knowledge of evolution, you would not see the world as you do now.
Healthier for humans.
> And humans are special why?
Because I am human.
> but from the outside, I see right through you.
You're actually reading something into this that isn't there. I want a world that's good for humans because I'm human and my genes make me want a world that is good for me and my offspring.
> there is no need to favor humans over disease-causing bacteria.
its not a need, its a value.
> Again, in absence of Christian dogma, and with knowledge of evolution, you would not see the world as you do now.
I'd still have a genetic drive for self preservation and a gene based desire to live in an environment that was better for me.
Yet, this idea would not fly in the west. I know other countries where this would be preferred. The western governments put pressure on those poorer governments to "conserve" those species. The only reason this would be unacceptable to Christians is the Noah's arc story. Yet westerners would justify it with completely unsubstantiated "oh there are other imbalances that we can't forsee", at best.
That's just a start. A human-centric approach would see little value in other ecosystems which evolved with humans completely outside of the picture and have nothing to do with humans. Humans are a part of very specific parts of very specific ecosystems. Most of others have nothing to do with humans and at best are a nuisance and potential disease risk, at worst are directly detrimental. It can be argued that some of them may be of medicinal value but it can also be argued that they could be breeding ground for future pandemics.
Yet, even talking about this to westerners who are otherwise "believers of evolution" and "anti-Christianity" will hit deep sentiments and they'll be seen grasping at straws to justify their position... which could be anything... any position is OK as long as it is pro saving all the species that Noah intended to save.
Thats not true, apex predators perform a valuable service by keeping the prey populations in check. Without them, humans would have to go hunt which is additional labor. Also its clear that humans wouldn't be able to hunt the same populations in the same amounts in the same way, which would have effects on the prey population, which would affect the rest of the ecosystem.
> Yet, this idea would not fly in the west.
Any ecologist could explain the above, it has nothing to do with the west.
> Yet westerners would justify it with completely unsubstantiated "oh there are other imbalances that we can't forsee", at best.
This is also a useful heuristic that is borne out of experience when we intervened in the ecosystem and discovered second order unintended consequences that no one could have foreseen. However in the case you mentioned, there are easily identifiable negative consequences that make it unnecessary to rely on the "least affect possible" heuristic.
> That's just a start. A human-centric approach would see little value in other ecosystems which evolved with humans completely outside of the picture and have nothing to do with humans.
There are none, at least not on Earth.
> Humans are a part of very specific parts of very specific ecosystems. Most of others have nothing to do with humans and at best are a nuisance and potential disease risk, at worst are directly detrimental.
This is incorrect. They provide a check on disease by encouraging competitor organisms through biodiversity. They provide a future stock of biological goods and biological inputs for industrial goods that will be used when discovered to be useful. They also interact with our ecosystem because all the ecosystems are connected and make one planet-Earth-sized ecosystem.
> It can be argued that some of them may be of medicinal value but it can also be argued that they could be breeding ground for future pandemics.
They are however the other organisms are busy evolving responses to these potential pandemic-causing organisms and that both keeps them in check and allows us to use those organisms to respond to the pandemics when they (inevitably) arise. Pandemics and plagues are more prevalent with less biodiversity because there is less competition once an organism evolves a means to take advantage of a vulnerability.
> Yet, even talking about this to westerners who are otherwise "believers of evolution" and "anti-Christianity" will hit deep sentiments and they'll be seen grasping at straws to justify their position... which could be anything... any position is OK as long as it is pro saving all the species that Noah intended to save.
You're pursuing this pet idea of yours to the exclusion of the facts and values of the people who address these ideas regularly.
I'm pursuing this idea because it has wide-ranging applications. It explains why otherwise "rational" intelligent westerners make no sense a lot of the time. It is very easily explained if I just refer to the Bible.
>apex predators perform a valuable service by keeping the prey populations in check.
Even that is not true. A apex-predator-less ecosystem can function just as well, albeit differently. Look up bottom-up trophic cascade.
>Without them, humans would have to go hunt which is additional labor.
Not necessarily. Bottom-up trophic cascade takes care of that. However, hunting will be more available, reducing reliance on industrial food farming.
>Also its clear that humans wouldn't be able to hunt the same populations in the same amounts in the same way, which would have effects on the prey population, which would affect the rest of the ecosystem.
There is no need to copy a particular behavior. The species in the environment can epigenetically change to adapt to various predation patterns or lack thereof.
>Any ecologist could explain the above, it has nothing to do with the west.
A Chinese or a Japanese or an Indian or an African can in fact say the same thing, because they most likely studied the same things written by western academics. However, they are not so strictly married to those ideas, unless of course, they have been brought up as Christians.
For example, the ideas behind animal cognition and intelligence have been heavily suppressed in the west because animals are not supposed to have a "soul". They are supposed to be mindless automatons. This is rarely the case with non-western scientists.
>There are none, at least not on Earth.
Sure, in a world where God created Adam and Eve and other animals to accompany them. In the real world, humans co-evolved with very specific eco-systems and have nothing to do with most of the rest of it.
>They provide a check on disease by encouraging competitor organisms through biodiversity. They provide a future stock of biological goods and biological inputs for industrial goods that will be used when discovered to be useful. They also interact with our ecosystem because all the ecosystems are connected and make one planet-Earth-sized ecosystem.
That's a huge leap of faith. Most other animals, which are not Christians, attack other predators which are their competitors all the time. They would happily get rid of them if they had the means. In fact, Europe got rid of a lot of predators before Christianity spread. The rest of the world did too, before the west spread Christianity to them, either as the religion as a part of the imperial era or as the education that came out from it spread to universities everywhere.
>They are however the other organisms are busy evolving responses to these potential pandemic-causing organisms and that both keeps them in check and allows us to use those organisms to respond to the pandemics when they (inevitably) arise. Pandemics and plagues are more prevalent with less biodiversity because there is less competition once an organism evolves a means to take advantage of a vulnerability.
Biodiversity of what? Bacteria and viruses? Or mammals? If we didn't have pangolins, some of which are endangered btw, we'd probably not have COVID-19.
That assumes they aren't making sense and that it needs to be explained. That hasn't been demonstrated.
> Even that is not true. A apex-predator-less ecosystem can function just as well, albeit differently. Look up bottom-up trophic cascade.
The existence of other ways of controlling population doesn't mean that those other ways are the only way. Not all food chains are controlled by bottom-up trophic cascade. some are controlled by apex predators and removing apex predators changes the ecosystem, sometimes in ways that result in collapse.
> Not necessarily. Bottom-up trophic cascade takes care of that.
You're shifting your explanation. Earlier you said that humans could replace apex predators. When I pointed out the problems with that, now you say it can be controlled with bottom up trophic cascade. Is it possible you just don't understand this issue as well as you think?
> However, hunting will be more available, reducing reliance on industrial food farming.
Not if humans aren't able to replace the apex predators functionally. Not if the volume of food produced is different. Industrial food production is less subject to seasonal variations. Have you considered that?
> There is no need to copy a particular behavior. The species in the environment can epigenetically change to adapt to various predation patterns or lack thereof.
Thats basically nonsensical and doesn't respond to my point. Humans wouldn't replace the apex predator therefore the ecosystem would change.
> In the real world, humans co-evolved with very specific eco-systems and have nothing to do with most of the rest of it.
In the real world, the ecosystems are interdependent on other ecosystems and no barriers can be drawn except by choice.
> That's a huge leap of faith.
Not at all.
> They would happily get rid of them if they had the means.
Of course they would, animals have no concept of biodiversity. That doesn't impact on the well-established thesis that biodiversity is healthy and ecosystems with fewer species are more vulnerable to disease and catastrophe.
> Biodiversity of what? Bacteria and viruses? Or mammals? If we didn't have pangolins, some of which are endangered btw, we'd probably not have COVID-19.
Biodiversity of everything. The pangolin theory is interesting but its equally likely that if humans hadn't been destroying species at an astonishing rate over the last 50 years we'd likely also not have COVID-19.
Oh, it has been demonstrated to me over and over again. Unfortunately, you may be too much in it to see it. I am in the position to observe from the outside.
>The existence of other ways of controlling population doesn't mean that those other ways are the only way.
Read this part of your comment again, but slowly.
>Not all food chains are controlled by bottom-up trophic cascade.
And where did I imply that it is?
>some are controlled by apex predators and removing apex predators changes the ecosystem, sometimes in ways that result in collapse.
Not really. The very same ecosystem can adapt to changes in predator population or extermination of predator population altogether.
>You're shifting your explanation. Earlier you said that humans could replace apex predators. When I pointed out the problems with that, now you say it can be controlled with bottom up trophic cascade. Is it possible you just don't understand this issue as well as you think?
Or maybe I understand it thoroughly, much more than your limited religious beliefs allow for. The ecosystem can be regulated with or without apex predators. If we remove apex predators, it will still be regulated automatically. We can choose to hunt if we so desire, and it will work differently but it will still work and work well.
>In the real world, the ecosystems are interdependent on other ecosystems and no barriers can be drawn except by choice.
Ever heard of terrariums? Sure, ecosystems may be related because they're open systems. But they don't have to be.
>That doesn't impact on the well-established thesis
What is interesting is that all these "well established" theses only go so far as to comply with Christianity, never further.
>if humans hadn't been destroying species at an astonishing rate over the last 50 years we'd likely also not have COVID-19
I know, right? The children of Adam and Eve continue to disrupt the harmony of Gods creation, so many thousand years later. When will we learn?
Except coronaviruses have been infecting mammals almost as long as mammals have been around.
So I tried to read the tripe, but the arguments are not persuasive unless you already believe what they are trying to convince you of.
I don't think the author was born thinking those complex thoughts, so clearly they were persuaded by something that didn't rely on previous belief. What could that be? Why isn't that persuasive to you? What sort of person does it persuade and why? Are there other arguments that could persuade you of the same thing? Or of something similar?
Intellectual exchange requires constructing the steel man argument of your counterpart, as impossible as it may seem at times. Underneath, we're all humans, longing for food, shelter, companionship, and stability.
Very often the answer is mundane; 'It's what my parents taught me.' Particularly in the most contentious cases, like religion and politics. It seems like 'born thinking it' vs 'was persuaded' is a false dichotomy, unless you count being steeped in a culture as a child to be a form of persuasion.
Closely related is the "motte and bailey" tactic: depending on the situation you sometimes use the word in an milder sense (new meaning of racist, "we are all a little bit racist", it's just unconscious biases or beliefs about any difference between races), but when people aren't looking you switch definitions (old definition, worst possible thing, "some races must be subjugated and kept away from our social circles as they are subhuman and incapable of participation by their nature and will poison our bloodline").
Indeed many critics of the new social justice movements would have this as the main argument: that SJ uses equivocation in this way as the rule, not the exception.
You might want words to be narrowly defined and used, but that isn't how language works.
This is how Google now ended up being called "white supremacist" for firing a black AI ethicist (it was retweeted by a director of AI at Nvidia).
You can say (with a straight face?) that's just how language evolves, but I would find that deeply cynical.
What the gp describes only works if you are tolerant of other people's errors to some extent. You can't let a few things like you describe derail you. Remember your own beliefs, it may be the case that you are right and the inaccuracy you discovered is a linchpin in their incorrect system of ideas. Or it might be some little piece of information that is accepted as a truism in their bubble so people throw it around when it seems appropriate, but its not an essential part of their argument.
The main thing is that you want to understand the author's perspective. why did they consider the bell curve to be overtly racist? perhaps they are defining racism differently than you (this is almost certainly the case [0]).
It does you no good to read books by people you disagree with in order to understand them better if you're gonna get derailed when they say something that seems obviously false to you.
[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/21/against-murderism/
The thing is, you can try to project something sensible onto them, ie steelman them, but you will end up with something the authors would disagree with.
You may just as well say you should read Scientology, and you will surely find common points to agree on etc. I mean, it's perhaps still useful to try that, I've read some Scientology materials myself and left with more knowledge about the specifics of Scientology, but I didn't get closer to believing it. Perhaps I can empathize with why it can hook people, we could call that understanding in a sense.
I agree with this. However you have then arrived at the basic truth that underlies the distorted version you were originally exposed to. So then you can discuss the issue with the person using a set of shared assumptions and perhaps bring them around to the steel manned version. Now you have changed their mind. If they then say "what about this <more preferred, less supportable version> that I started out with" they are more open to your summarized dismissal "that doesn't work because of w, x, y, and z"
> The more I read such works
You're not justified in labeling a work as this kind of work until the process here has been done. You may have been exposed to a weaker version and dismissed that because of fallacies, while a stronger version exists. You can't dismiss the stronger version without examination merely because it reaches the same conclusions as the weaker version you were exposed to.
> You may just as well say you should read Scientology, and you will surely find common points to agree on etc. I mean, it's perhaps still useful to try that, I've read some Scientology materials myself and left with more knowledge about the specifics of Scientology, but I didn't get closer to believing it. Perhaps I can empathize with why it can hook people, we could call that understanding in a sense.
I think my independent study of scientology was fruitful for my understanding of how someone becomes possessed by ideology. Studying scientology under the supervision of scientologists is dangerous because they prevent you from critically examining the ideas.
I think the idea that there only exists a single spectrum sorted into sides is itself a sort of meta echo chamber shared by people in echo chambers even as they disagree about everything else. In modern politics, even the idea that the opposed party holds opposite views (versus just opposed) is a meta echo chamber idea. In many left/right topics, the disagreement isn't 'pro/anti', but often more fundamental.
Some examples: While conservatives might be anti-abortion, liberals aren't pro abortion, they're pro-choice and that's not just a rhetorical device. While liberals are anti-racism and see conservatives as pro-racism, a conservative rejects the idea out of hand because of a difference in definitions. A third, more nuanced view might even see the average conservative as non-racist (as opposed to anti-racist) which many would still argue is not enough, but it's not 'the opposite' at all.
I don't think recommendations need to necessarily go to the extremes, but I don't think 'a shade to the left' is enough either, because without understanding the fundamental differences, you have a you-can't-get-there-from-here problem.
What if due to their isolation and the lack of diversity in rural areas actually leads to outcomes where certain parts of our country have more racist beliefs than people who grew up surrounded by people of all different colors and religions? Why do we have to keep ignoring studies and evidence in order to ascribe values to conservatives they never demonstrate? What if this isn't a both sides issue, and one side is definitely more wrong? Hint, the side marching with Neo Nazis chanting "The Jews Will Not Replace Us" is the side which is wrong here.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/06/racia...
Data is not the reason you are in a bubble. Data is your excuse. Your view doesn’t gravitate toward data. You gravitate toward data that supports your view. When you find it, I’m rather convinced you’re not particularly critical about it. You seem to be trying to use that data as a club rather than as a tool to fix problems.
Imagine being a conservative who doesn't hold any of those views being told they are essentially a Neo Nazi; or a liberal who is compared with the most violent so-called member of Antifa. My dad is conservative, but doesn't believe any of the things your family members believe, even the bit about welfare queens. This is ironic, because my mother (divorced from my father) used every trick in the book to get money from the government and did it quite well. She did it because she realized it meant she didn't have to work. She claims (to this day) that she did it because she wanted to be home for me and my siblings, but let's just say all four of us will tell you that's a laugh. She was absolutely a welfare queen. Despite that, and although I can certainly find numbers somewhere to back up such a claim, I do not believe this is the case for a meaningful number of welfare recipients. (I do, however, recognize that such people exist.)
(FWIW, my mom—no longer able to claim a lot of the welfare stuff due in large part to her children all becoming adults—hit me up for money. I cut her a check to bail her out of her immediate problems and give her a little runway. I made the 'one-time-thing' part very clear. I also made it conditional on her getting a job. She's just... a much happier person now and is more-or-less supporting herself just fine.)
This is the core of how these bubbles formed:
1. Group all people who disagree with certain ways of thinking in one group. (These ways of thinking need not be at all related.)
2. Assign all people in that group the qualities of the worst elements in that group.
The non-monsters in each group are alienated from each other. They can't ever convince each other of their way of thinking or find a reasonable compromise because each group is convinced they already know what every individual in the other group thinks. It is impossible to disclaim the monsters in your group because you didn't make the group, the other guys made the group. This thinking isn't even completely wrong, since being in a bubble means you're expected to think a certain way.
It's not an effective means of change. It's really quite dehumanizing to everyone involved. It concentrates power at the expense of individuals and allows a handful of people to determine what is proper discourse. This framing colors not only every view, but also every interaction individuals between these bubbles have with each other.
Membership in a such a bubble is obvious from the outside. There are frequent accusations that you belong in the other bubble. There are extreme statements that aren't born out by experience or facts. There are house of cards based sometimes on solid foundations. There are witch hunts for any type of heresy to figure out who to exclude next. The wagons get circle at even a whiff of conflict. Any thought it doesn't recognize as belonging to it immediately gets the label "that other bubble." It honestly must be both exciting and exhausting to be in one.
Popping that bubble I think is an ethical mandate, but it's one that I think people need to do for themselves. Even though the bubble I mostly agree with is right about the problems, and mostly right about solutions, it's not right about everything. It's frequently wrong about people outside itself (myself included) and it's also very very wrong in its approach.
As I said in the beginning, I can't convince you you're in a bubble. I know that. It's something that everyone has to consider for themselves.
Edit: Removed duplicated paragraph.
* Conservatives are mostly from rural areas
* Rural areas are 90% white
* In group / out group dynamics are determined largely by upbringing
* Rural white folk have far less opportunity to have PoC in their in-groups
* Out-group vs in-group is a major factor in discrimination and bias
I spent the first 18 years of my life surrounded by other white Christians and had a completely different experience. It's still not hard for me to accept that happens. What's hard for me to accept is the complete lack of nuance in your reasoning. There's really no room left for discussion after you're through painting a picture, but that picture does not jibe with reality. That's aside from the siege mentality that isn't supported even by the picture but goes along with it.
> From my "outside" perspective, you're obviously stuck in a bubble in which people must go out of their way to pretend both sides of every issue are equally valid.
"Both sides." "Valid." You're framing the argument in terms of your bubble. It's not true, by the way, that I think every argument is equally valid. There's plenty enough bullshit in the world.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281664414_The_Relat...
> Numerous studies suggest that political conservatism significantly correlates with modern racist attitudes. The current findings are consistent with previous studies.
I think part of the problem with just swinging to the absolute other end is, unless you're just interested in psychology, reading the "other side" is only of real value if you're reading quality, or at least good arguments made in good faith.
At the extremes there seems to be a much higher tendency for the authors themselves to be deep in the echo chambers of their respective ideologies, as well as a higher likelyhood that its target audience is more forgiving of poor content as long as it hits close enough to the mark. Blindly selecting content by a strict point of view would seem to result in lower value overall.
Not to say there isn't good reading out there in the extremes, but the level of chaff to sort through to find a decent seed is just too damn high.
The value is ultimately in finding good content and not just an opposing point of view. Whenever I can find both at the same time, those are the real keepers.
However, there is one crucial prerequisite - someone needs to have an open mind, and courage to at least doubt one's own point of view. Compare and contrast with Change my View by Steven Crowder, which is full of fake openness + trolling, not genuine curiosity.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1WB4G83DRI8PV/re...
[1] Underworld, Blood Meridian, The Bluest Eye, Milkman, Pale Fire, Borges, etc...
[2] Chekhov, Ursula Le Guin, Proust, Umberto Eco, etc.
Edit: I scrolled down and read the creators summary of how the search works. And now believe my results really nailed his description: rarest but highly rated by readers of the same books. Which also explains all the Calvin and Hobbes, which I think have a universal appeal.
It's an interesting project, but so far I don't think many of the suggestions are useful for me.
I think it would be more effective for the devs to manually put together a recommended reading list of progressive literature and explain why they feel each book is worth investing time into. I would find that really helpful because even though I'm not part of their target demographic of extremely conservative people, I wouldn't really know which progressive works of literature are considered essential reading.
You give me a novel from a niche author from the middle East, I'm game; you give me a cash grab book signed by a teen youtuber and I'm probably out.
I'm not sure this site can tell the difference.
My point being, I'm perfectly capable of finding books I'd never read by myself - I just have to enter a library or bookshop and grab the first title that makes me frown.
There's only value in giving me books out of my circle of comfort if there's an implication that I might like the book or get something out of it, with more likelihood than mere chance, isn't it?
So it seems that you picked outlier review here.
I got that recommendation too.
Intersections are sourced from public ratings and reviews across the web. E.g. these books are all liked by one person so are can be made to intersect in the db - https://radicalreads.com/noname-favorite-books/
If you can do an Amazon/Audible integration, that would be awesome (and will let you build your recommendation system?).
From experience, I like to read the most populars/iconics books outside my perspective/pov, even though, if I had to grade them, it wouldn't be 5/5.
Maybe though, the most problematic of theses "ideological bubbles" is that people don't generally want to escape it.
I have no affiliation or experience with either, just genuinely curious if you chose one over the other. Affiliate sales seems like a good fit for this kind of service.
Instead, Amazon, Spotify, etc. simply steer me toward the more mainstream genre-media that I already know about.
Oh you like Grandaddy? You'll like the Pixies.
Oh you like the Pixies? You'll like Radiohead.
Oh you like the Radiohead? You'll like Nirvana.
Please, I want to go the opposite direction.
How about a browser extension that tracks the articles, videos, discussion boards, HN threads, etc one reads and in real time suggests other anti-bubble ones?
Not sure if your engine would support it, but I'd use it.
[...] Be careful, though, about your reading in many authors and every type of book. It may be that there is something wayward and unstable in it. You must stay with a limited number of writers and be fed by them if you mean to derive anything that will dwell reliably with you. One who is everywhere is nowhere. Those who travel all the time find that they have many places to stay, but no friendships. The same thing happens to those who do not become intimate with any one author, but let everything rush right through them. Food does not benefit or become part of the body when it is eaten and immediately expelled. Nothing impedes healing as much as frequent change of medications. A wound does not close up when one is always trying out different dressings on it; a seedling that is transplanted repeatedly will never grow strong. [...]
"But I want to read different books at different times," you say. The person of delicate digestion nibbles at this and that; when the diet is too varied, though, food does not nourish but only upsets the stomach. [...]
— Letter 2 ("A beneficial reading program"); translation by Long and Graver"Even in our studies, where expenditure is most worth while, its justification depends on its moderation. What is the point of having countless books and libraries whose titles the owner could scarcely read through in his whole lifetime? The mass of books burdens the student without instructing him, and it is far better to devote yourself to a few authors than to get lost among many."
I think it can be very valuable to go down the rabbit hole sometimes and study the author and read their less popular works. But of course, after a while you will get diminishing returns.
"[...] I am aware that these mental disturbances I suffer from are not dangerous and bring no threat of a storm; to express to you in a true analogy the source of my complaint, it is not a storm I labour under but seasickness: relieve me, then, of this malady, whatever it be, and hurry to aid one who struggles with land in his sight. [...]"
---
Seneca's response to it is equally astounding. (The above quote is from "Dialogues and Essays", Oxford World's Classics; translation by John Davie.)
One of my personal highlights this year: I've spent six contiguous months reading all of 124 letters of Seneca (the University of Chicago Press edition is the way to go) and several of his dialogues and essays. It's amazing how many of his letters try to shape our reading habits.
The first need to focus more, the second need to focus less.
I could write a wide paragraph on how one needs to consume more than one kind of thing, how it's healthy to to challenge oneself, like the unknowable forces in the wild nature, etc etc. Something majestic and grandiose like that.
Point is, wise advice is directional, and you cannot know from it which side you are on. It doesn't give you a target, it gives you a direction. Which may not apply to you.
Almost all of these books are written by a lay person who basically parrots back interpretations or speeches from bishops, preachers, etc. They literally add no value to the system. They just milk an audience to be frank. You wouldn't read "The simple of of not giving a Fuck" would you? Likewise now, if you say on the title "Turning the other cheek" and put a picture of Jesus walking with a child on a beach and now you've got 99.99% of the christian self help books.
The funniest thing that comes to mind is it's no different than the South Park episode "Christian Rock Hard" where Cartman starts a christian rock band. All he does is rewrite already made songs but add some christianic sayings or phrases. That is entirely that industry. They don't tell you anything new or something you can't just search on some forums anymore.
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.
For example, I put in:
Mort - Terry Pratchett
Mortal Engines - Stanisław Lem
My Lesbian Experience With
Loneliness - Kabi Nagata
Mort - Terry Pratchett
My Lesbian Experience With
Loneliness - Kabi Nagata
Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
The Far Side comics
"This Book Is Full of Spiders"
Douglas Adams
Kurt Vonnegut
Brian Lee O'Mally
Calvin and Hobbes
The rest, mostly consisting of PG Wodehouse and Oscar Wilde, are works that I consider myself interested in yet unexposed to, but they are hardly opposites of the books I put in?
So I'm not really convinced of the utility of this tool as it stands.
Perhaps it is tailored to a single type of reader that only reads books within their purview (Perhaps, political history books, or purely science fiction books) to the exclusion of many other interesting and worthwhile genres?
----------------------------
Edit : What is especially interesting about this is that when I enter only
My Lesbian Experience With
Loneliness - Kabi Nagata
Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
I'm not sure how Sappho is directly in opposition to Nagata's work, and it strikes me that anyone who has read both Nagata and Butler would also be familiar with the works of Sappho?
Just a random couple of highly appreciated titles from my collection:
Hyperion, Gormenghast, Lolita
And it suggests The Farside (well yeah, if you want something completely on the opposite side of well-written prose), Tintin, and Shakespeare (huh?).
As for breaking any bubble I might live in: I grew up reading Tintin.
Interestingly enough it throws up Preacher as well, a comic written by Garth Ennis. Again not really breaking any bubble there: I love his works and have read Preacher, The Boys, Battlefields, and all his Punisher stories (that man is the only comic writer who truly groks Frank Castle).
Been looking for a similar tool but for music. I love Spotify's recommendations for the most part, but sometimes I want to dive out of my music bubble and explore new genres or new anything really. Basically what I'm looking for is a tool that can give me recommendations of the music that is the opposite of what I usually listen to, or something like that. Anyone know of any?
Would also like something similar but for _knowledge_. Take a look at my knowledge graph and interests, and fill in the gaps.
In the meantime, I always recommend The Quietus [0] for music recommendations—always 'out there', but always quality.
P.S. Are you sure this thing isn't pushing people from one echo chamber to another?
One usability tweak based on how I interacted with it would be to add a 'I already like this' button to suggested books to save me from re-adding them. It also suggested another H.P. Lovecraft novel despite me already marking At the Mountains of Madness as a liked book, I'm pretty sure that if you like one Lovecraft book, you'd like the rest.
The one recommendation I had a strong negative reaction to was by Jeffrey Archer which I guess means that its the book I should read next.
Out of the 90 books I get, 53 either have the word "Dragon" in the title, or a dragon on the cover of the book. Clearly, a majority of the results also fall in the Fantasy genre, so have my doubts this counts as escaping the echo chamber.
On the other hand, there are a lot of books in that list that I have never heard about, and that look interesting (insofar as you can judge a book by its cover). When I'm done with my current series of books, I'll have a good look at this :-)
One interesting note is that there are several books on the list I absolutely would read, I just didn't know they existed or hadn't sought them out. One of Stephen Hawking's books, some American military books, a few biographies, etc.
My bubble very much includes both Dune and The Far Side and I'm not certain how these are supposed to be in different bubbles. Are most Dune readers snobs who wouldn't stoop to reading a cartoon?
Game of thrones, Bernard Corwell books Isaac Asimov
I've read these and I would put them in the same camp as the input books so I'm not sure exactly what it's supposed to be doing.
Nice idea but, unless I'm missing something, not the expected behaviour.
I would more have expected "the old man who climbed out the window and disappeared", Clarkson's biography and maybe a Jack Reacher type stuff (which I also enjoy but on the other end of the spectrum from the input books)
https://www.literature-map.com
I found some of my all time favorite authors this way.
Recommending someone from the left to read a book by Solzhenitsyn, or someone from the right to read a book by Maya Angelou is a hefty time commitment with little promise of proportionate intellectual gain for the time invested.
But to have recommendations on good counterpoint short form content (short stories, journal articles, essays) might get someone who is busy with life and career to spend a few minutes. Harder to ultimately monetize, since the business model for the online book market is pretty mature at this point but no one directly directly pays for that single essay. So where are micro transactions?
Anyone who has been in the position where their time was truly valuable instinctively protects their free time from “long form” intrusions. It the book is worthwhile, the essays on the essence of the ideas will be even more valuable (per minute). Most pop books or ideological rants might only need a paragraph. Condensing into short form might lead to the embarrassing disclosure that the emperor has no clothes.
The idea that you have to read a long form text to understand a different perspective sets off alarm bells in my head. I seem to remember that cults would always want prospective recruits to stay at the Center the whole weekend.
It's one book.
A related problem is of exploitation vs exploration (being recommended something one likes vs recommended new but with high uncertainty if it will be enjoyable or not)
some of my work on this related topic of active learning in recommender systems:
presentation: https://www2.slideshare.net/nrubens/active-learning-in-recom...
book chapter: http://machinelearning202.pbworks.com/f/Rubens-Active-Learni...
a more basic primer (aimed at startups) https://www2.slideshare.net/nrubens/1-of-40-recommender-syst...
am happy to answer any questions
It's been eye-opening at times, disturbing at others; but often educational and useful for my intellectual health and development.
Out of curiosity, what kind of recommendation system has been used here?
There are a couple of books I've read in the past few years that I actually didn't fully agree with. Sometimes they were badly sourced or made some arguments I didn't think were sound, but there was also a ton of interesting and good material in them; which I think made some good points. Based on that, I guess my recommendations for breaking bubbles would be:
"The Strange Death of Europe" (Murray, Davies, et al.)
"The War Against Boys" (Sommers)
"The Fountainhead" (Ryand)
Yet, I got Go Forward with Faith: The Biography of Gordon B. Hinckley" and a lot of religious books. I can understand why this happens. Yet, a bit disappointing.
I do not want to find books I know I will hate, I want to find books around axis I have not even considered.
FWIW my sample trio were Dune/Starship Troopers/Sword of Destiny and results included a bunch of graphic novels (Preacher mostly) and mangas that I consumed in the past, a Harry potter series and a bunch of crime books that I also tried (and, often, didn't find interesting). But there were some genuinely interesting picks too so, again, more data will probably help.
The latter is particularly strange to me, since Douglas Adams was a huge fan of Wodehouse, used very similar humour, and even wrote forewords for Wodehouse re-printings.
I don't know if I've just confused it or I don't have an echo chamber.
I did find some proximate reading that I hadn't heard of that sounds interesting, though!
Aside from the obvious necessity of bubble-breaking, it has the nice side effect of retraining the recommendation engine without rampant confirmation bias.
I'd like to add a suggestion, when we pick a book, you propose two links, one is Amazon and the other one is Goggle. Could you replace those links by DuckDuckGo and maybe Goodreads (or any other website that doesn't almost control the market)? It's just to avoid those big companies.
Assuming this is still under development, I thought my experience might be of use.
I input The Three-Body Problem (Cixin), Sapiens (Harari), Leonardo da Vinci (Isaacson), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway), Bluebeard (Vonnegut), and On the Shortness of Life (Seneca) and received in return...children's books!
Age-gating the recommendations might be something to look into.
This book perfectly describes what caused radical leftism to seep into Bay Area (Portland, Seattle, etc.) software culture. If you have leftist activist employees or coworkers, I highly suggest this book for them.
- "The Sovereign Individual" by James D. Davidson
- "How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World" by Harry Browne
I got suggested The Bible NIV and a bunch of other Christian books. Is it trying to tell me that the western totalitarian tendencies come from their Christian heritage or am I reading too much into it?
First result: The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck
Not sure what to make of that...
Is there any way you could bring in a synopsis without me having to leave the site? It would be nice to keep browsing there rather than have to link out to Amazon just based on the title and cover.
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.
You could ask people to provide the metadata if their book/author isn't present.
"Demon-Haunted World" Unable to find that title
"Richard Dawkins" Unable to find that title
"The Selfish Gene" Unable to find that title
I think it needs some work.
I put "The Selfish Gene" and "The Demon-Haunted World" and I got "Women, Race and Class" by Angela Davis and "The Feynman Lectures".
- The Brothers Karamazov
- Infinite Jest
- Asterix the Gaul
I get a bunch recommendations for Spanish books (which I can't read).
But when I tried this site what I got is a lot of books about religion. And I don't want to know anything about religion. I just can't bring myself to have intellectual respect for it.
"Open your mind" can be healthy if you are stuck in dumbness but can be a bad advice if you have sound and valid core beliefs as in "a mind too open doesn't hold anything of value". In which of these states am I?
Usually, when you exercise careful judgement and have a broad culture you don't jump from one belief system to it's complete opposite. Usually you slowly evolve it along time.
>I made a tool that allows you to discover what books you are least likely to have come across or enjoyed, but are nonetheless highly rated.
I think this is a natural result of the system as designed. There may be some value in understanding what other people like, even if you don't enjoy it yourself. Personally, I wouldn't buy any (or even check out from the library) 95% of the books it listed for me, but I think that means it is working correctly. I guess one issue is that it I really like non-fiction, so I get mostly fiction or personal memoirs -- it's a genre thing that has nothing to do with viewpoint.
The whole point of this is to show you stuff you wouldn't normally read. You don't need to have "intellectual respect" (whatever that means) for a topic to read a book about it.
Unlike what most people do in social networks I am not preaching or doing advocacy for a belief. I am just expressing my confusion and contradiction.
Terms used:
- 1984
- Zero to one
- A Promised Land
So, I guess I've got that going for me.
Seriously though, I think the Bible is a bad book recommendation given its a diverse collection of books (statutes [eg Leviticus], erotic poetry [Song of Songs], apocalyptic predictions, communist idealism, segregationist supremacy, creation, etc.) written across a couple of millennia.
I've genuinely tried to find one which I think I could read to broaden my horizons, but I can't bring myself to buy any of them.
Let's escape the woke bubble:
1. How to Be an Antiracist
2. White Fagility
3. Between the World and Me
Or how about the Trump bubble:
1. Time to Get Tough
2. Righteous Indignation
3. Going Rogue
1. Letter to a Christian Nation
2. God is Not Great
3. The God Delusion
I think... I've got a lot of reading to do. I LOVE this tool.
But apparently I need to read Twelve Steps. That's rather disconcerting.
cricket
Did I win or what?
Not "Secret lives of Millionaires". C’mon man.
I added Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and got Shakespeare.
10/10
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 leftist bubble it seems.
Cool tool though, I think I might try doing just that ^