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I'm concerned that your frame for this might be off as I don't think the "filter bubble" is rational opposing viewpoints around a particular topic so much as th

I'm concerned that your frame for this might be off as I don't think the "filter bubble" is rational opposing viewpoints around a particular topic so much as there just being so much misinformation and plain weirdness out there. There's a saying about it being 10x harder to refute bullshit than it is to spew it. How do we in the information and technology wing of society build tools to deal with that? Alex Jones had a rant about how Obama and Hillary Clinton both smell like sulfur because they're demons. I'd assert it's a "real story" and exactly the kind of filter bubble issue we're talking about as Alex Jones was personally thanked post election by Trump [1] and when it happened the sitting president of the United States made remarks about it [2]. I had a real conversation with an elderly relative of mine who told me quite straight faced that they read all about this and how it was true - this isn't bubbles it's different realities. 1 - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-alex-jones_us_5829eb21e4b0c4b63b0d9249 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-alex-jones_... 2 - http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/obama-sulfur-smell-alex-jones/ http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/obama-sulfur-smell-al...

harigov 10y ago
I agree. It looks like this problem is multi-faceted. Maybe the problem that you mentioned is 60% prevalent and what I mentioned maybe 30% (random numbers). We should still try to solve these problems. What do you propose? I am genuinely interested because this is getting out of control.
mtberatwork 10y ago
Indeed, if we do not agree to a common set of facts and a shared reality, how then do we proceed with any kind of meaningful debate? To paint a basic picture, how do you debate the feasibility and merits of sending humans to Mars with a person who denies the moon landings? You might say these are extreme cases, but with the rise and "normalization" of Alex Jones-type media outlets, this will only get worse.
- splawn 10y ago
  Exactly, when it comes to reality not everybody gets a trophy. Critical thinking and science are waaaay undervalued in our culture.
  - 551199 10y ago
    Reality is lot of the science is wrong as well. Intentionally paid by special interest or the end result is defined before any science is done. You don't want to look science religiously either.
    - cwisecarver 10y ago
      IIRC one of the main tenants of science, when I was learning it in middle school in the early '90s, was that it's fact until it's disproven. We don't know everything about it which is what makes it different than religion. There's no faith involved. I know a lot of it is corrupt and aiming for a target but good scientists will tell you that they're basing their findings on studies which may have flaws and they'd want you to try and reproduce their studies to tell them if they've gotten something wrong.
      - 551199 10y ago
        Sure but what if it was never a fact. 'Fat makes you fat' or similar falsification that have real impact to society[0] We shouldn't attribute everything to malice, but there are clear issues in science: 'Too many of the findings that fill the academic either are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties. Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In order to safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90% of submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making it onto the page. Conversely, failures to prove a hypothesis are rarely even offered for publication, let alone accepted. “Negative results” now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30% in 1990. Yet knowing what is false is as important to science as knowing what is true. The failure to report failures means that researchers waste money and effort exploring blind alleys already investigated by other scientists.'[1] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193/ https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129... [1] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-re... [2] Alan Sokal - Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Hoax-Science-Philosophy-Culture/dp/0199561834/ https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Hoax-Science-Philosophy-Cultur... [3] How to Lie with Statistics - https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/03... [4] Nassim Taleb 'Incerto', twitter.com/nntaleb
- blipblop 10y ago
  I think the key to solving this is to "branch" off the arguments that depend on a contentious topic such as "denying moon landings". So instead of having to prove moon landings don't exist, there would be one branch that denies moon landings, and the other that accepts moon landings. This modularises/encapsulates different reasoning chains allowing each to be debating on their own. So whether moon landings occurred could be argued on its own. The problem today is the "common set of facts and shared reality" that the two sides of politics share are very separated.
garysieling 10y ago
There is a recent trend in the higher quality side of long-form articles to including primary source materials (videos, documents from trials, etc) in articles, but it's a lot of work.
- nogbit 10y ago
  "it's a lot of work"....of course it is, as it should be! Throwing wordpress postings at the wall to see if a headline will stick is trash journalism...from all sides.
  - garysieling 10y ago
    Yeah, agreed
hga 10y ago
As an Alt Right Trump supporter, I can state without question that the worst thing about 2016 politics so far is that Alex Jones and his InfoWars no longer earns automatic dismissal, i.e. he's been publishing some good stuff, therefore people I follow have been linking more to him, etc. What that says is not specifically clear to me, but it's nothing good, unless he's become significantly more sane as of late.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  What makes someone Alt Right, if I might ask? I've only heard about it via Facebook and it's being painted as fringe extremist stuff there, but absolutely everyone is crazy on Facebook right now. I'd rather hear it from someone who considers themselves part of it.
  - internaut 10y ago
    The alt right is the popular front of the NRX. Scott Alexander has a good overview here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-... This quote is priceless "The good Catholic in medieval Spain doesn’t feel repressed, even when the Inquisition drags away her neighbor. She feels like decent people have total freedom to worship whichever saint they want, total freedom to go to whatever cathedral they choose, total freedom to debate who the next bishop should be – oh, and thank goodness someone’s around to deal with those crazy people who are trying to damn the rest of us to Hell. We medieval Spaniards are way too smart to fall for the balance fallacy!" The tldr is that neoreactionaries believe that many beliefs about modern society are not just wrong, but not even wrong. The follow on header might be more relevant to this particular thread though: "Wait, You Mean The Invisible Multi-Tentacled Monster That Has Taken Over All Our Information Sources Might Be Trying To Mislead Us?"
    - hga 10y ago
      I don't think I can be a member of the NRx without a possessing a thousand times more patience than I have to slog through Moldbug's writings, but you make a great point in your tl;dr, "many beliefs about modern society are not just wrong, but not even wrong.", thanks for noticing that connection/formulation.
blipblop 10y ago
The key is to apply DRY principles to argumentation. If someone makes a claim, you should be able to hyperlink to it where the argument has already been explained. Then each participant can "agree" or "disagree" with each claim in an argument chain. And every time they disagree they need to dive deeper to refine their argument. Eventually all arguments reach a point of "because I say so" and ultimately it becomes a popularity contest. E.g. We should maximise happiness for all, etc. But...the good news is argument reasoning can be objectively validated to some extent. Soundness and validity. And definitions are arbitrary. People have to agree on definitions or there is no point in debating something. I would say that most arguments are about the parties not agreeing on definitions, and wasting time stringing together argument chains where both sides have different conceptions of the words being used. I believe lawyers/politicians should be programmers and instead of arguing and making laws in English prose, they should use a structured programming language.
- ihinsdale 10y ago
  You've described a lot of my vision for Sequiturs (https://sequiturs.com https://sequiturs.com). Check it out! I'd be very interested to get your feedback.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    Now we just need to go through HN an incorporate comment-knowledge into this format :-) Is there good search across questions?
    - ihinsdale 10y ago
      That's an idea! Motivating people to use the argument format has proven a challenge, since it often takes more time to break an argument down into this format than to string sentences together into a paragraph, but I'm confident that is a solvable problem. You can search argument content at https://sequiturs.com/search?q=&page=0&limit=10 https://sequiturs.com/search?q=&page=0&limit=10. The search indexing is pretty decent considering how easy it was to implement--I'm using Postgres's full text search capability. It's high on my to-do list to make comment content searchable as well, and at some point I'd like to switch over to ElasticSearch.

harigov 10y ago

I agree. It looks like this problem is multi-faceted. Maybe the problem that you mentioned is 60% prevalent and what I mentioned maybe 30% (random numbers). We should still try to solve these problems. What do you propose? I am genuinely interested because this is getting out of control.

mtberatwork 10y ago

Indeed, if we do not agree to a common set of facts and a shared reality, how then do we proceed with any kind of meaningful debate? To paint a basic picture, how do you debate the feasibility and merits of sending humans to Mars with a person who denies the moon landings? You might say these are extreme cases, but with the rise and "normalization" of Alex Jones-type media outlets, this will only get worse.

splawn 10y ago
Exactly, when it comes to reality not everybody gets a trophy. Critical thinking and science are waaaay undervalued in our culture.
- 551199 10y ago
  Reality is lot of the science is wrong as well. Intentionally paid by special interest or the end result is defined before any science is done. You don't want to look science religiously either.
  - cwisecarver 10y ago
    IIRC one of the main tenants of science, when I was learning it in middle school in the early '90s, was that it's fact until it's disproven. We don't know everything about it which is what makes it different than religion. There's no faith involved. I know a lot of it is corrupt and aiming for a target but good scientists will tell you that they're basing their findings on studies which may have flaws and they'd want you to try and reproduce their studies to tell them if they've gotten something wrong.
    - 551199 10y ago
      Sure but what if it was never a fact. 'Fat makes you fat' or similar falsification that have real impact to society[0] We shouldn't attribute everything to malice, but there are clear issues in science: 'Too many of the findings that fill the academic either are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 “landmark” studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties. Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In order to safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high rejection rates: in excess of 90% of submitted manuscripts. The most striking findings have the greatest chance of making it onto the page. Conversely, failures to prove a hypothesis are rarely even offered for publication, let alone accepted. “Negative results” now account for only 14% of published papers, down from 30% in 1990. Yet knowing what is false is as important to science as knowing what is true. The failure to report failures means that researchers waste money and effort exploring blind alleys already investigated by other scientists.'[1] [0] https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/0812982193/ https://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sugar-Fat-Giants-Hooked/dp/08129... [1] http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-research-has-changed-world-now-it-needs-change-itself-how-science-goes-wrong http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21588069-scientific-re... [2] Alan Sokal - Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Hoax-Science-Philosophy-Culture/dp/0199561834/ https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Hoax-Science-Philosophy-Cultur... [3] How to Lie with Statistics - https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/0393310728/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Lie-Statistics-Darrell-Huff/dp/03... [4] Nassim Taleb 'Incerto', twitter.com/nntaleb
blipblop 10y ago
I think the key to solving this is to "branch" off the arguments that depend on a contentious topic such as "denying moon landings". So instead of having to prove moon landings don't exist, there would be one branch that denies moon landings, and the other that accepts moon landings. This modularises/encapsulates different reasoning chains allowing each to be debating on their own. So whether moon landings occurred could be argued on its own. The problem today is the "common set of facts and shared reality" that the two sides of politics share are very separated.

garysieling 10y ago

There is a recent trend in the higher quality side of long-form articles to including primary source materials (videos, documents from trials, etc) in articles, but it's a lot of work.

nogbit 10y ago
"it's a lot of work"....of course it is, as it should be! Throwing wordpress postings at the wall to see if a headline will stick is trash journalism...from all sides.
- garysieling 10y ago
  Yeah, agreed

hga 10y ago

As an Alt Right Trump supporter, I can state without question that the worst thing about 2016 politics so far is that Alex Jones and his InfoWars no longer earns automatic dismissal, i.e. he's been publishing some good stuff, therefore people I follow have been linking more to him, etc. What that says is not specifically clear to me, but it's nothing good, unless he's become significantly more sane as of late.

cableshaft 10y ago
What makes someone Alt Right, if I might ask? I've only heard about it via Facebook and it's being painted as fringe extremist stuff there, but absolutely everyone is crazy on Facebook right now. I'd rather hear it from someone who considers themselves part of it.
- internaut 10y ago
  The alt right is the popular front of the NRX. Scott Alexander has a good overview here: http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-in-an-enormous-planet-sized-nutshell/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/03/03/reactionary-philosophy-... This quote is priceless "The good Catholic in medieval Spain doesn’t feel repressed, even when the Inquisition drags away her neighbor. She feels like decent people have total freedom to worship whichever saint they want, total freedom to go to whatever cathedral they choose, total freedom to debate who the next bishop should be – oh, and thank goodness someone’s around to deal with those crazy people who are trying to damn the rest of us to Hell. We medieval Spaniards are way too smart to fall for the balance fallacy!" The tldr is that neoreactionaries believe that many beliefs about modern society are not just wrong, but not even wrong. The follow on header might be more relevant to this particular thread though: "Wait, You Mean The Invisible Multi-Tentacled Monster That Has Taken Over All Our Information Sources Might Be Trying To Mislead Us?"
  - hga 10y ago
    I don't think I can be a member of the NRx without a possessing a thousand times more patience than I have to slog through Moldbug's writings, but you make a great point in your tl;dr, "many beliefs about modern society are not just wrong, but not even wrong.", thanks for noticing that connection/formulation.

blipblop 10y ago

The key is to apply DRY principles to argumentation. If someone makes a claim, you should be able to hyperlink to it where the argument has already been explained. Then each participant can "agree" or "disagree" with each claim in an argument chain. And every time they disagree they need to dive deeper to refine their argument. Eventually all arguments reach a point of "because I say so" and ultimately it becomes a popularity contest. E.g. We should maximise happiness for all, etc. But...the good news is argument reasoning can be objectively validated to some extent. Soundness and validity. And definitions are arbitrary. People have to agree on definitions or there is no point in debating something. I would say that most arguments are about the parties not agreeing on definitions, and wasting time stringing together argument chains where both sides have different conceptions of the words being used. I believe lawyers/politicians should be programmers and instead of arguing and making laws in English prose, they should use a structured programming language.

ihinsdale 10y ago
You've described a lot of my vision for Sequiturs (https://sequiturs.com https://sequiturs.com). Check it out! I'd be very interested to get your feedback.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Now we just need to go through HN an incorporate comment-knowledge into this format :-) Is there good search across questions?
  - ihinsdale 10y ago
    That's an idea! Motivating people to use the argument format has proven a challenge, since it often takes more time to break an argument down into this format than to string sentences together into a paragraph, but I'm confident that is a solvable problem. You can search argument content at https://sequiturs.com/search?q=&page=0&limit=10 https://sequiturs.com/search?q=&page=0&limit=10. The search indexing is pretty decent considering how easy it was to implement--I'm using Postgres's full text search capability. It's high on my to-do list to make comment content searchable as well, and at some point I'd like to switch over to ElasticSearch.