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A nicely laid out and illustrated article that's well written. That's about the best I can say. The worst is why? Who is the audience for this? I firmly believ
by eludwig 9y ago
A nicely laid out and illustrated article that's well written.
That's about the best I can say. The worst is why? Who is the audience for this? I firmly believe that if you found this article by clicking on a link on the HN homepage, then you already know all this. It's exactly the kind of article we've been reading about in one form or another for 20 years.
If you didn't find this article on the homepage of HN, then the odds are that you will never read it. Why? Because of all of the noise that the very article itself points out!
This is a type of preaching to the choir, imo. Reinforcing to the wrong audience. The points made are fair, but obvious.
But it is pretty! :)
- ereyes01 9y agoI shared the article in my Facebook feed. It will reach at least a couple of friends that are habitual troll victims. I guess to your point, that probably won't stop them from being victims/easy bait. At least they'll read it, hopefully.
- bmelton 9y agoI highly doubt it will matter. I was at the dentist's office about 6 months ago, and as I'd had a few dental procedures done over a spread-out timeline, I'd made friends with the dental assistants. We were talking about the news (which was on in the background) and I cautioned the lady at the desk to not put too much stock in it, and to wait around for updates before drawing any conclusions. She asked why, and I explained that the 24 hour news cycle often drops facts -- a couple of segues later, and I made the point that everybody thinks America is more dangerous than ever, largely because of the constant fear-mongering in the news, but crime statistics actually show falling crime rates over the past few decades. She didn't believe me, so I asked her to Google it on the computer in front of her, which resulted in a search result something like this[1], but before she started giving too much credence to it, she Googled a few more times until she found an article about Baltimore crime rates going up, even though we weren't in Baltimore, and neither of us lived in Baltimore, and she'd previously admitted to not having been in Baltimore in more than a decade -- none of that mattered, because her confirmation bias was slaked. [1] - http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/141209_Charts-Homicide-Rates-US-England.jpg.CROP.promovar-mediumlarge.jpg http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/articles/news_and_pol...
- seanwilson 9y agoWe need to promote critical thinking skills somehow (obviously a difficult task though). I don't see how it's a good strategy to simply accept a population lacks critical thinking skills and the only way forward is the impossible goal of stopping all misleading news from reaching people. The people that believe obviously misleading news are just as much at fault as the ones producing the news.
- olleromam91 9y agoSame...and the only person I really care that reads it is my mother =/
- jredwards 9y agoI dunno about you, but I clicked because of the sensational headline.
- firethief 9y agoA memetic countervirus.
- sgt101 9y agoI put it on Facebook, I used the headline "what the human race did next will make you cry". Maybe this will turn a few heads that I've not been able to?
- freshhawk 9y agoJudging by the comments it's not entirely preaching to the choir. It's also hard not to notice that HN is one of the highest concentrations you can find online of the very people who build this system.