5 ms·

In general, I agree with everything you said. However, > No thanks. I would rather control my own news firehose, and be selective about the information that I

by sinatra 10y ago

In general, I agree with everything you said. However, > No thanks. I would rather control my own news firehose, and be selective about the information that I want to learn more about. My worry is: Isn't this what caused the fake news / misinformation silos? By being selective about our information sources, aren't we distancing ourselves from how a majority of the world lives and thinks? And as product developers (as majority HNers are), isn't it in our benefit to understand as much of the world as possible?

cyberferret 10y ago
You are correct. My viewpoint was mainly about being fed a constant stream of nonsense and/or distractions along with the general feed. For instance, I absolutely loathe 'celebrity news', but most main news sites here that I go to have at least one or two articles on rubbish like that as their lead, and I have to dig to find the stuff that is relevant to me. To use the example of air accidents above - I rarely find out anything useful that I want to know from popular news sources. Of course, I hear about the incidents on them, but when I want to dive deep, I go to specialist forums or sites where people in the know are talking about it. Similarly for mundane things like sport. If I want to find out more about, say, Formula 1 races, I will visit certain sites that I know have motor heads discussing things. That way I can learn about future car developments, driver contracts etc. Mainstream sports news seems to want to talk about dirt and gossip for just a handful of drivers.
- graycat 10y ago
  > gossip for just a handful of drivers. They are using the technique of formula fiction, that is, what the ancient Greeks discovered as a sure-fire way to get and hold the attention of an audience. So, in that formula, there is a protagonist the audience comes to identify with, that is, care about. Then the protagonist has a problem. Through various highly in doubt and improbable victories, from skill, guts, determination, smarts, luck, whatever, the protagonist wins and at the end gets the girl. Can see a version of this formula fiction just as orchestral music with no words at all in the Richard Strauss Ein Heldenleben as at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2-dLoWorUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2-dLoWorUs So, to use some words, there is a man, the hero, aka, protagonist, nice guy, cruising along in life. Then he encounters his adversary, nasty, menacing, bad dude (flute, etc.). Then starting at about 10:00 in the performance above, he sees HER, the girl (solo violin -- IMHO one of the best solo violin parts in orchestral music)! She's a dream! But, soon, she's also darned hard to get and gives him a really tough time, a worse time than even Isolde gave Tristan in http://www.exoticitaly.com/images/Tristan-and-Isolde.jpg http://www.exoticitaly.com/images/Tristan-and-Isolde.jpg where he wouldn't take his eyes off of her and she flatly refused even to look at him. Near 14:00 she really chews him out! Soon she starts to be nice. About 15:00 they really start to smile at each other! Around 16:00 they are together. He keeps trying and eventually hear the music of the climax when he kisses her or whatever. Teenage boys, your life is so much easier now: Have that climax music queued up ready to go at a single button click at just the right time with her on the living room sofa. Trust me: Richard Strauss understood her much better than you do! Just about the time the hero is to settle down to a wonderful life of love, home, marriage, children, the adversary returns. The hero goes off to battle, maybe as in the Edmund Blair Leighton God Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Speed_(painting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Speed_(painting) There is a big battle with the bad dude. Tough battle. Comes and goes. Finally the hero wins the battle. Then there is victory music. Terrific victory music. As in art, the "communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion", the victory music communicates well what a really big victory must feel like, bigger than getting 10 KLOC of code to run, a Series A, a big M&A offer, an IPO, anything in business. Really great victory music. If want to do a foil deck with a mash up of some media content for a presentation to investors, maybe in the last slide in the foil deck use the Ein Heldenleben victory music as background. No words, but it would be tough to miss the message! Of course, not even a big IPO could come up to the Richard Strauss music, but, well, there were no words for lawyers to use to sue for breach of promise! In the performance at the link above, the victory music is before 30:00 with the climax in the next minute or so. At the end, after the hero has hung up his sword and is fading away, the girl is really nice to him. If going to play with formula fiction, then might as well play with some of the best of it! Right, at one point the treble line suddenly goes up and the bass line, down. So, it feels, say, expansive, grand. Ah, Richard Strauss, expert in applied psychology of human emotions! Good thing that human emotions haven't changed much since he wrote his music! So, the race car drivers are made into protagonists people identify with. Similarly for what the tabloids do with celebrities. Similar to what a lot of TV news show producers try to do with their anchors. Put all of it into various buckets, e.g., manipulation, light entertainment. But it's not information.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    >"Teenage boys, your life is so much easier now: Have that climax music queued up ready to go at a single button click at just the right time with her on the living room sofa. Trust me: Richard Strauss understood her much better than you do!" While I appreciate your commentary on the music of Strauss, I disliked this particular comment. Is encouraging emotional manipulation really what we want for the younger generations?
    - graycat 10y ago
      > Is encouraging emotional manipulation really what we want for the younger generations? You are fully correct. We don't want that. But, then, is there an alternative? My first girlfriend, she was 12 and I, 14, I regarded as an angel. She was and remains the prettiest human female I ever saw, in person or otherwise. She was burned into my brain: For the rest of my life I will no more be able to forget her than I will be able to forget my own name. My goal with her was for us to be early teen boyfriend-girlfriend, with some protection against being lonely, some additional affection and compassion, one more person who really cared about us, some romance, security of knowing that our relationship was going to continue, hold hands, hug, and kiss, with nothing wrong and nothing dangerous. I never tried to manipulate her emotionally, but there were a few times when she got emotional anyway; those times, I declined to take advantage of her; i guessed that a day later she or her mother would be angry. No way did I want her hurt, in any way, from any source, for any reason, at any time, and I was ready to risk my life to protect her from being hurt. So, in reality, what I actually did was what you want teen boys to do. My remark, the one you didn't like, was partly a joke, but there is a germ of inconvenient truth there -- it can appear that too often there is such manipulation, taking advantage, or overpowering emotions or nothing at all. Or, maybe it's as in the Strauss music or too often just doesn't happen. Maybe the larger lesson to teen boys is, really love the girl, no way hurt her, seek to protect and care for her, but realize what an expert once told me, "Of COURSE, women are MUCH more emotional than men. That is the cause of all the problems." So, net, maybe, the boy should try to let her be as emotional as she wants but stay rational and prudent himself and do his best to let her have, help her have her emotions with full safety. Usually it appears that not many people in our society are quite as sensitive to protecting girls, emotionally or even physically, as you are, or I was with that girl I loved, but I can partly agree with your point. But I will say, there is evidence that some girls very much seek some of various possible forms of emotional experiences and will resent a boy who does not so contribute and respect a boy who does. Ah, someday I'll write a book, Girls 101 for Dummies -- Boys. The Strauss music was about all of life, and I was just mentioning the part where the two fell in love! I was mentioning the Strauss music as a grand example of formula fiction, and that is one of the pillars of the news business which the OP was talking about.
bloaf 10y ago
I'm not sure it's possible to invent a method of letting users select their information sources that doesn't immediately let them create their own misinformation silos.
sextus_prop 10y ago
>aren't we distancing ourselves from how a majority of the world lives and thinks If I wanted to know how majority world lives and thinks I would go and sample this information in real world by traveling and talking to different people, and not getting this info from people who have their own agendas to push onto me and who call themselves journalists.
chrisdone 10y ago
I've only truly learned about people in other places by traveling. Anything else is mostly caricature.
- DonaldFoss 10y ago
  Try learning foreign languages. To understand a language, one must possess a level of understanding of the underlying culture and history. Then one discovers that dialects arise from a common language with differences in geographic or societal culture and history. Linguistics and etymology are fascinating topics, _almost_ as much fun as building (and test breaking) fault tolerant distributed systems.

by sinatra 10y ago

cyberferret 10y ago

You are correct. My viewpoint was mainly about being fed a constant stream of nonsense and/or distractions along with the general feed. For instance, I absolutely loathe 'celebrity news', but most main news sites here that I go to have at least one or two articles on rubbish like that as their lead, and I have to dig to find the stuff that is relevant to me. To use the example of air accidents above - I rarely find out anything useful that I want to know from popular news sources. Of course, I hear about the incidents on them, but when I want to dive deep, I go to specialist forums or sites where people in the know are talking about it. Similarly for mundane things like sport. If I want to find out more about, say, Formula 1 races, I will visit certain sites that I know have motor heads discussing things. That way I can learn about future car developments, driver contracts etc. Mainstream sports news seems to want to talk about dirt and gossip for just a handful of drivers.

graycat 10y ago
> gossip for just a handful of drivers. They are using the technique of formula fiction, that is, what the ancient Greeks discovered as a sure-fire way to get and hold the attention of an audience. So, in that formula, there is a protagonist the audience comes to identify with, that is, care about. Then the protagonist has a problem. Through various highly in doubt and improbable victories, from skill, guts, determination, smarts, luck, whatever, the protagonist wins and at the end gets the girl. Can see a version of this formula fiction just as orchestral music with no words at all in the Richard Strauss Ein Heldenleben as at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2-dLoWorUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2-dLoWorUs So, to use some words, there is a man, the hero, aka, protagonist, nice guy, cruising along in life. Then he encounters his adversary, nasty, menacing, bad dude (flute, etc.). Then starting at about 10:00 in the performance above, he sees HER, the girl (solo violin -- IMHO one of the best solo violin parts in orchestral music)! She's a dream! But, soon, she's also darned hard to get and gives him a really tough time, a worse time than even Isolde gave Tristan in http://www.exoticitaly.com/images/Tristan-and-Isolde.jpg http://www.exoticitaly.com/images/Tristan-and-Isolde.jpg where he wouldn't take his eyes off of her and she flatly refused even to look at him. Near 14:00 she really chews him out! Soon she starts to be nice. About 15:00 they really start to smile at each other! Around 16:00 they are together. He keeps trying and eventually hear the music of the climax when he kisses her or whatever. Teenage boys, your life is so much easier now: Have that climax music queued up ready to go at a single button click at just the right time with her on the living room sofa. Trust me: Richard Strauss understood her much better than you do! Just about the time the hero is to settle down to a wonderful life of love, home, marriage, children, the adversary returns. The hero goes off to battle, maybe as in the Edmund Blair Leighton God Speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Speed_(painting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_Speed_(painting) There is a big battle with the bad dude. Tough battle. Comes and goes. Finally the hero wins the battle. Then there is victory music. Terrific victory music. As in art, the "communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion", the victory music communicates well what a really big victory must feel like, bigger than getting 10 KLOC of code to run, a Series A, a big M&A offer, an IPO, anything in business. Really great victory music. If want to do a foil deck with a mash up of some media content for a presentation to investors, maybe in the last slide in the foil deck use the Ein Heldenleben victory music as background. No words, but it would be tough to miss the message! Of course, not even a big IPO could come up to the Richard Strauss music, but, well, there were no words for lawyers to use to sue for breach of promise! In the performance at the link above, the victory music is before 30:00 with the climax in the next minute or so. At the end, after the hero has hung up his sword and is fading away, the girl is really nice to him. If going to play with formula fiction, then might as well play with some of the best of it! Right, at one point the treble line suddenly goes up and the bass line, down. So, it feels, say, expansive, grand. Ah, Richard Strauss, expert in applied psychology of human emotions! Good thing that human emotions haven't changed much since he wrote his music! So, the race car drivers are made into protagonists people identify with. Similarly for what the tabloids do with celebrities. Similar to what a lot of TV news show producers try to do with their anchors. Put all of it into various buckets, e.g., manipulation, light entertainment. But it's not information.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  >"Teenage boys, your life is so much easier now: Have that climax music queued up ready to go at a single button click at just the right time with her on the living room sofa. Trust me: Richard Strauss understood her much better than you do!" While I appreciate your commentary on the music of Strauss, I disliked this particular comment. Is encouraging emotional manipulation really what we want for the younger generations?
  - graycat 10y ago
    > Is encouraging emotional manipulation really what we want for the younger generations? You are fully correct. We don't want that. But, then, is there an alternative? My first girlfriend, she was 12 and I, 14, I regarded as an angel. She was and remains the prettiest human female I ever saw, in person or otherwise. She was burned into my brain: For the rest of my life I will no more be able to forget her than I will be able to forget my own name. My goal with her was for us to be early teen boyfriend-girlfriend, with some protection against being lonely, some additional affection and compassion, one more person who really cared about us, some romance, security of knowing that our relationship was going to continue, hold hands, hug, and kiss, with nothing wrong and nothing dangerous. I never tried to manipulate her emotionally, but there were a few times when she got emotional anyway; those times, I declined to take advantage of her; i guessed that a day later she or her mother would be angry. No way did I want her hurt, in any way, from any source, for any reason, at any time, and I was ready to risk my life to protect her from being hurt. So, in reality, what I actually did was what you want teen boys to do. My remark, the one you didn't like, was partly a joke, but there is a germ of inconvenient truth there -- it can appear that too often there is such manipulation, taking advantage, or overpowering emotions or nothing at all. Or, maybe it's as in the Strauss music or too often just doesn't happen. Maybe the larger lesson to teen boys is, really love the girl, no way hurt her, seek to protect and care for her, but realize what an expert once told me, "Of COURSE, women are MUCH more emotional than men. That is the cause of all the problems." So, net, maybe, the boy should try to let her be as emotional as she wants but stay rational and prudent himself and do his best to let her have, help her have her emotions with full safety. Usually it appears that not many people in our society are quite as sensitive to protecting girls, emotionally or even physically, as you are, or I was with that girl I loved, but I can partly agree with your point. But I will say, there is evidence that some girls very much seek some of various possible forms of emotional experiences and will resent a boy who does not so contribute and respect a boy who does. Ah, someday I'll write a book, Girls 101 for Dummies -- Boys. The Strauss music was about all of life, and I was just mentioning the part where the two fell in love! I was mentioning the Strauss music as a grand example of formula fiction, and that is one of the pillars of the news business which the OP was talking about.

bloaf 10y ago

I'm not sure it's possible to invent a method of letting users select their information sources that doesn't immediately let them create their own misinformation silos.

sextus_prop 10y ago

>aren't we distancing ourselves from how a majority of the world lives and thinks If I wanted to know how majority world lives and thinks I would go and sample this information in real world by traveling and talking to different people, and not getting this info from people who have their own agendas to push onto me and who call themselves journalists.

chrisdone 10y ago

I've only truly learned about people in other places by traveling. Anything else is mostly caricature.

DonaldFoss 10y ago
Try learning foreign languages. To understand a language, one must possess a level of understanding of the underlying culture and history. Then one discovers that dialects arise from a common language with differences in geographic or societal culture and history. Linguistics and etymology are fascinating topics, _almost_ as much fun as building (and test breaking) fault tolerant distributed systems.