Hacker News Reader

Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

> It looks like the author of this is just some random engineer without a lot of backround in marketing or persuasion psychology. That's a shame because he's clearly interested in it.

Little parenthesis: if you're interested in a subject, make the effort to read about it from well established sources (very often, books). The author of the posted article relies on sources like LifeHacker and pop psychology journalism to build his knowledge and make his claims, but those are clearly shallow, insufficient, and inaccurate.

I feel like this is a problem that the internet has created- it makes it possible to feel knowledgeable in certain topics after reading a lot of informal web pages on a given topic, but very often that content is far from being authoritative. Reading less blogs/pop journalism/etc. and more books from established academics is one of the most beneficial moves you can do for the depth and accuracy of your various bodies of knowledge.

View on HN

That sounds nice, but in practice it's extremely difficult because academics have very little incentive to make their rigorous research discoverable, much less accessible, to laymen. I agree that arm-chair theorizing is almost always a waste of time, but a layman probably contributes more by trying to bring his own particular expertise (software engineering or whatever) to bear on the problem -- on the off chance that he makes a novel insight -- than by sinking himself in the literature.

I find introductory textbooks created for those who study the subject at college / university a nice middle ground.

They are not always cheap or in ebook form so libraries are useful. They require more effort to read than popsci books but you learn so much more and they are considerably easier to digest than academic papers.

Influence is maybe a hundred pages, very accessible, and written by one of the foremost persuasion researchers out there.

You're just justifying laziness. Software engineering does not, in fact, qualify you to comment on human minds, which are very different from software. Presumably you wouldn't accept design advice from a doctor because of some claimed way to bring medical practices to bear on software engineering.

I don't do software, I'm an academic. At least in my subfield, I have a pretty good idea how many unnecessary barriers stand between laymen and the expert wisdom, and how how often experts use their expertise as a way to dismiss outside views without consideration. That's true even though, at the same time, most outside views are a waste of time (as I mentioned).

He's writing a blog post, and you don't need to be qualified to do that.

"Influence" is a fine book and I encourage everyone to read it including the OP. But that does't mean OP did something wrong, or was lazy, by using his finite amount of time to write up his thought.

>academics have very little incentive to make their rigorous research discoverable, much less accessible, to laymen

This is sad but true. I wonder, in the end, what is the purpose of the scientific journals where academic papers get published? Long ago I hoped that the purpose was to bring the knowledge created to all those who are interested. Why else would anybody publish anything if not to make it available to others. Then I discovered these journals are all paywalled. And in December the Elsevier vs Academia.edu incident happened. I find the situation disappointing.

Knowledge created in academia should be available to everyone to the benefit of mankind. I think that is part of the academic spirit.

There's an issue with pursuing these kinds of newly-discovered interests: You have no idea what they're called. He's calling it "cultural imprinting", but I learned it as "lifestyle advertising". Neither turns up much on the google (well, his does, but it turns up his own article)

Not to mention that the majority of articles written on subjects like these are pushed to the top of the reading charts because they differ with the authoritative narrative you might learn in a textbook.

I feel it is important to realize that this person is posting an article on this subject (and you are reading it) because it strays from the commonly known, not because it is ubiquitous.

Filling your knowledge base with the exceptions is a good way to make yourself knowledgeable on a lot of incorrect or unsupported theories.

yet he managed to lay the current landscape of how ads are perceived just fine. even if he missed the obvious academic term and coined an awful one instead...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com