5 ms·

You are being naive. I wanted to see what the impact of a 50 caliber looks like on iron plates. This is just a childish curiosity for things that go bang. Immed

by sn41 6y ago

You are being naive. I wanted to see what the impact of a 50 caliber looks like on iron plates. This is just a childish curiosity for things that go bang. Immediately I was bombarded with recommendations of barely concealed white supremacists, and bizarre conspiracy theorists. I know that if I clicked on even one of them, then my recommendations will be full of that crap. Similarly, watch one motivational video, and Youtube decides "oh! I see!! so that's what you really want. Here's a deluge of 'similar' crap." What I want to know about is more coherent explanations of abstract math and some scientific experiments which I never got to see in school, in addition to comedy. That I watch something else once in a while is not really an indication of my identity or my Jungian shadow self.

wolco2 6y ago
Just because you share more things in common with those you hate doesn't mean the recommendation is broken. If a large percentage of people who watch gun blowing up videos also are interested in the videos you mention than why wouldn't they show it (I assume if it were breaking guidelines it would be removed)
- sn41 6y ago
  The recommendation should be based on what a large fraction of my time is spent on (average over the timeline of my history), rather than a large of fraction of people who watch the last watched video is based on. Why does one video entirely screw up my historical record? I can't remember being recommended one 3Blue1Brown video in the last year, despite being subscribed to him. It's bizarre.
  - wolco2 6y ago
    The ones in the sidebar are based on global patterns to that specific video. The homepage ones should show you subscriptions videos but also based on the last keywords/videos watched. I don't see the value in using 2012-2019 videos watched when your recent ones speak more to what you currently are interested in.
  - 8note 6y ago
    If you turn off your history them search for 3blue1brown, and maybe PBS spacetime, you'll get 3blue1brown in your suggestions
sudosysgen 6y ago
Pretty much. I watch some pretty left-wing political commentators on YouTube along with math/cs/physics videos and some geostratrgy videos, and all it takes is for me to watch one gun video by curiosity or one Joe Rogan video and leave YouTube playing to come back to some extremely questionable content. There's a sinkhole effect somewhere here.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  leave YouTube playing IMO autoplay for anything but music is one of the worst decisions ever made on online streaming services. Kind of reminds me how repeatedly clicking the first link on Wikipedia articles inevitably leads to the article about Philosophy, but diverging instead of converging.
  - sn41 6y ago
    > repeatedly clicking the first link on Wikipedia This is an interesting random walk experiment :)
_qulr 6y ago
> I was bombarded with recommendations of barely concealed white supremacists, and bizarre conspiracy theorists. I know that if I clicked on even one of them, then my recommendations will be full of that crap. You were offered the recommendations, but you declined. It's still a matter of self-selection and self-exposure. How many recommendations would it take to turn you into a white supremacist? How many video viewings? If your answer is that no amount would, then the algorithms don't seem to be the real problem.
- sn41 6y ago
  I did decline. But I have seen many of my parents' generation getting increasingly radical (I am not American, BTW. I am talking about India). They don't have the tools to understand what is going on. Their entire life was training to "read between the lines" of newspaper articles and journals. They are used to subtle lies and distortions, and they can catch that. Blatant outright virulent rhetoric - with the tone "this is some truth that must be told" - is ok in 1 or 2 videos. But the recommendation engine enmeshes them in that mire. My mother is a PhD. I asked her whether she will accept a paper without sound academic bibliography. She said no. Then why would she believe in extremist videos with shady citations and outright lies? But she does. I think it is because of the recommendation engines which keep feeding similar videos. Just like Goebbels' maxim of repeating a lie often enough and loudly enough to make it the truth. We can keep saying that our algorithms are fine. But if what we see today has never been seen in history, I think it is high time that we re-evaluate our current beliefs about the impact and the correctness of our work.
  - _qulr 6y ago
    > I asked her whether she will accept a paper without sound academic bibliography. She said no. Then why would she believe in extremist videos with shady citations and outright lies? This is very common. I would even say the norm. No person is fully rational. Rather, people may think rationally about certain things — their "speciality", perhaps — but not about others. Everyone is irrational in some ways. > But if what we see today has never been seen in history Which part do you think is historically unprecedented? The technology of course is unprecedented, but I don't see anything about the beliefs of people today that's unprecedented.

by sn41 6y ago

wolco2 6y ago

Just because you share more things in common with those you hate doesn't mean the recommendation is broken. If a large percentage of people who watch gun blowing up videos also are interested in the videos you mention than why wouldn't they show it (I assume if it were breaking guidelines it would be removed)

sn41 6y ago
The recommendation should be based on what a large fraction of my time is spent on (average over the timeline of my history), rather than a large of fraction of people who watch the last watched video is based on. Why does one video entirely screw up my historical record? I can't remember being recommended one 3Blue1Brown video in the last year, despite being subscribed to him. It's bizarre.
- wolco2 6y ago
  The ones in the sidebar are based on global patterns to that specific video. The homepage ones should show you subscriptions videos but also based on the last keywords/videos watched. I don't see the value in using 2012-2019 videos watched when your recent ones speak more to what you currently are interested in.
- 8note 6y ago
  If you turn off your history them search for 3blue1brown, and maybe PBS spacetime, you'll get 3blue1brown in your suggestions

sudosysgen 6y ago

Pretty much. I watch some pretty left-wing political commentators on YouTube along with math/cs/physics videos and some geostratrgy videos, and all it takes is for me to watch one gun video by curiosity or one Joe Rogan video and leave YouTube playing to come back to some extremely questionable content. There's a sinkhole effect somewhere here.

nitrogen 6y ago
leave YouTube playing IMO autoplay for anything but music is one of the worst decisions ever made on online streaming services. Kind of reminds me how repeatedly clicking the first link on Wikipedia articles inevitably leads to the article about Philosophy, but diverging instead of converging.
- sn41 6y ago
  > repeatedly clicking the first link on Wikipedia This is an interesting random walk experiment :)

_qulr 6y ago

> I was bombarded with recommendations of barely concealed white supremacists, and bizarre conspiracy theorists. I know that if I clicked on even one of them, then my recommendations will be full of that crap. You were offered the recommendations, but you declined. It's still a matter of self-selection and self-exposure. How many recommendations would it take to turn you into a white supremacist? How many video viewings? If your answer is that no amount would, then the algorithms don't seem to be the real problem.

sn41 6y ago
I did decline. But I have seen many of my parents' generation getting increasingly radical (I am not American, BTW. I am talking about India). They don't have the tools to understand what is going on. Their entire life was training to "read between the lines" of newspaper articles and journals. They are used to subtle lies and distortions, and they can catch that. Blatant outright virulent rhetoric - with the tone "this is some truth that must be told" - is ok in 1 or 2 videos. But the recommendation engine enmeshes them in that mire. My mother is a PhD. I asked her whether she will accept a paper without sound academic bibliography. She said no. Then why would she believe in extremist videos with shady citations and outright lies? But she does. I think it is because of the recommendation engines which keep feeding similar videos. Just like Goebbels' maxim of repeating a lie often enough and loudly enough to make it the truth. We can keep saying that our algorithms are fine. But if what we see today has never been seen in history, I think it is high time that we re-evaluate our current beliefs about the impact and the correctness of our work.
- _qulr 6y ago
  > I asked her whether she will accept a paper without sound academic bibliography. She said no. Then why would she believe in extremist videos with shady citations and outright lies? This is very common. I would even say the norm. No person is fully rational. Rather, people may think rationally about certain things — their "speciality", perhaps — but not about others. Everyone is irrational in some ways. > But if what we see today has never been seen in history Which part do you think is historically unprecedented? The technology of course is unprecedented, but I don't see anything about the beliefs of people today that's unprecedented.