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Take a look at arXiv.org and tell me out of all of them which papers seem to stand out. There's too little time in a day and in a life for anyone to become ind
by rtl49 11y ago
Take a look at arXiv.org and tell me out of all of them which papers seem to stand out.
There's too little time in a day and in a life for anyone to become independently aware of all happenings of personal interest. We rely on other to curate what we see, and it happens that many parties vie for our attention. Hence the development of propaganda and news aggregators, like the one you're on now.
I recommend reading Edward L. Bernay's work Propaganda for a more thorough understanding about the role of "PR" in society. It's a good foundation. I actually remember reading another rather good post by Paul Graham on the subject, which you might find interesting.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoI recommend reading Edward L. Bernay's [sic] work Propaganda for a more thorough understanding about the role of "PR" in society. That's certainly a great book, though for rather unsettling reasons.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoIt seems to be public domain now, so links: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bernprop.html - HTML version https://wikispooks.com/w/images/1/1f/Propaganda.pdf https://wikispooks.com/w/images/1/1f/Propaganda.pdf - PDF version The introduction quote by Noam Chomsky in the fist link is... chilling. Anyway, thanks HN for recommending a free book this time (my Amazon spendings start to feel like HN tax lately).
- rtl49 11y agoMy pleasure. I find many of the works most worth reading are in the public domain.
- rtl49 11y agoI agree it's unsettling. I still haven't formed a strong position on Bernays' normative assertions. If you have any thoughts on the subject, I would be interested to discuss them.
- duaneb 11y agoSure. But if you're posting to hacker news, post the article itself. No reason to haul a writer in to muddy it up. EDIT: And to be clear, the idea of curating arxiv is absurd. But so is the idea that Stanford would have anything interesting to say about their own research.
- rtl49 11y agoEven on HN, where we never tire of self-praise, I think the article is more helpful to the average reader than the paper itself. What percentage of us are in a position to critically examine the experimental methods? I don't know, but my naive assumption is that a conversational presentation of the publication and its consequences is more welcome than the publication itself. Regardless, the primary source is one hyperlink and university subscription away for all who care to read it. Of course it's absurd, that was my point. And obviously I disagree that Stanford has nothing of value to say about its researchers' work: I think they've managed well in this case.
- duaneb 11y agoI think it encourages dogmatic secondary consumption of material, which is very unhealthy for precisely coordinated and presented research.