7 ms·

Or worse cases, where there's more than 2 sides and design decision stops you from noticing it.

by Nowado 6y ago

zbyte64 6y ago
My family was surprised by the insurrection because the two sides presented didn't consider that a realistic possibility. But if one was to listen to leftist podcasts covering the IDW (Intellectual Dark Web) then it's far less surprising. Manufacturing consent is real.
mistermann 6y ago
Can you expand on what you mean by this?
- MockObject 6y ago
  There may be more than two sides to a question posed on this website, but the site only offers two columns.
- jjj123 6y ago
  Not the OP but I had the same thought. I get frustrated by the “both sides” presented by mainstream media like the NYT, CNN, etc. it’s always democrats on one side, republicans on the other, as if there’s not an entire political spectrum that expands beyond those two. The effect is it limits the “allowed” perspectives to within those two bounds. This is often exploited by those in power to control the bounds of possibility (that’s the manufacturing consent part).
  - stevenicr 6y ago
    Been thinking similar. I've been kicking ideas around on how to make something similar, but with many sides - but how many sides are there really? 5 main groups 10? Been thinking it would be nice to have comments / replies showing the top 3 conservative takes, the top 3 liberal takes, the top 3 science, 3 libertarian? top 3 fiscally conservative/socially liberal etc. Ability to vote up and notate inaccuracies and removing personal attacks / insults.. finding a way to stop trolls from another side upvote frivolous things.. what the icons would look like.. all sorts of things I've been thinking about this. Seeing the two sides thing really makes me feel the 'powers that be' really want people fighting on two sides.
    - mistermann 6y ago
      > Been thinking similar. I've been kicking ideas around on how to make something similar, but with many sides - but how many sides are there really? 5 main groups 10? If we (magically) assume you have a decent size userbase (or, a small but high quality userbase), I'd say just make a wild guess and then (manually) extract dimensions from the raw comments data - also, just outright ask your users what dimensions should exist. What "side" one is on should be one dimension, everything other than that should be as disconnected from party affiliation as possible (I'm kinda thinking of a survey type site/component, similar to Myers-Briggs or Big 5, but based on current events/news, and the questions being more oriented toward policy preferences, and reason for the choice if possible, with "bad" reasons being a valid option).
- Nowado 6y ago
  'pro and con' for case is a very strong design choice. What if it's an open problem. What if It's a wrong question, based on poor representation of the problem? I'm actually making tool for this exact same thing and the issue is most noticeable in kialo (which I argue is the same thing, with more mature UI). If you made all the research, conversations and planning to know, that answering this 'A or B' problem solves it, then Kialo (or that app) are perfectly fine tools. But most of the time people don't. https://www.loomio.org https://www.loomio.org is another attempt at solving the same problem. It does provide some improvements, but also fails in interesting ways (mostly, I think, through not considering temporality very seriously).
  - mistermann 6y ago
    > 'pro and con' for case is a very strong design choice. What if it's an open problem. What if It's a wrong question, based on poor representation of the problem? Ok I see, and yes I agree. Although to me, I don't think this is necessarily as big of a problem as people seem unable to stop making it out to be, which I tried to point out in my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25904058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25904058 As I see it, the fundamental problem is the infinitely dimensional (recursively self-referencing, paradoxical, etc) nature of reality. A "right way" to model it is impossible - the best we can do is try to find a "good enough" (across all variables) approach, acknowledge (and gather opinions on) where we have fallen short and could improve, and iterate as you go. Kind of like life itself, "coincidentally". In the super short run, even adding a "middle" column would be a huge improvement. > I'm actually making tool for this exact same thing and the issue is most noticeable in kialo (which I argue is the same thing, with more mature UI). If you made all the research, conversations and planning to know, that answering this 'A or B' problem solves it, then Kialo (or that app) are perfectly fine tools. But most of the time people don't. > https://www.loomio.org https://www.loomio.org is another attempt at solving the same problem. It does provide some improvements, but also fails in interesting ways (mostly, I think, through not considering temporality very seriously). I think this is the most interesting (and largely unrecognized) niche out there - in no small part due to the obvious inherent complexity and no obvious business model, but I feel like those may not even be the main reason - I truly that this space is "hard to see" for most people. As for design of your product, what do you think of these pie-in-the-sky ideas (from the link above): > I think that approaches like this website are a not yet a perfect solution, but it feels like a step in the right direction. An improved implementation would have some clever means of allowing a crowd-sourced decomposition of the issue into it's constituent entities and behaviors, graphically displayed in some magical way to maximize the likelihood of everyone seeing the big picture free from misunderstanding, which "all" parties could agree upon (no agreement means more refinement is needed) and refer to in their arguments (so we're all talking about the same thing), and arguments/thinking could take place with precision (attached to the the specific entities and behaviors where the true disagreement resides). > A lot of people may have a strong aversion to this approach as it would turn easy argumentation into a painstakingly laborious & pedantic process, which is a natural consequence of using slow but accurate cognitive processing, rather than fast but unreliable heuristic processing (the root problem in the first place). Arguments under such a methodology would also more closely resemble the scientific method, or systems analysis in software (where one does not simply throw together an analysis and insist that it is 100% free of material flaws). So if you take Trophi as a working prototype, could we add a second phase onto an argument, where "someone smart and unbiased" goes through all the arguments, and decomposes them into some "proper" representation, essentially comprehensively aggregating all the distinct points made in the arguments into a master summary, ideally with some sort of a "properly representational structure" between all the points. Perhaps then, in a phase 3, there could be voting &/or further discussion on this summary, the results of which would be passed back through phase 2 to expand and refine the model, also noting where genuine disagreement remains (specifically where in the complex, multidimensional model), and this process is repeated indefinitely - and when some new event occurs in reality, then that could be run through this very same process, updating the multiple related models based on the results of the process. Obviously this is an incredibly ambitious idea, and is fraught with difficulties (gosh, why is reality so darn complicated!!), but even a half-assed version of it might provide some value - and, perhaps along the way, the true nature of reality might slowly start to dawn on some people, which plausibly might improve the performance of the participants in the overall process, recursively over time.

Or worse cases, where there's more than 2 sides and design decision stops you from noticing it.

by Nowado 6y ago

Or worse cases, where there's more than 2 sides and design decision stops you from noticing it.

My family was surprised by the insurrection because the two sides presented didn't consider that a realistic possibility. But if one was to listen to leftist podcasts covering the IDW (Intellectual Dark Web) then it's far less surprising. Manufacturing consent is real.

mistermann 6y ago

Can you expand on what you mean by this?

MockObject 6y ago
There may be more than two sides to a question posed on this website, but the site only offers two columns.
jjj123 6y ago
Not the OP but I had the same thought. I get frustrated by the “both sides” presented by mainstream media like the NYT, CNN, etc. it’s always democrats on one side, republicans on the other, as if there’s not an entire political spectrum that expands beyond those two. The effect is it limits the “allowed” perspectives to within those two bounds. This is often exploited by those in power to control the bounds of possibility (that’s the manufacturing consent part).
- stevenicr 6y ago
  Been thinking similar. I've been kicking ideas around on how to make something similar, but with many sides - but how many sides are there really? 5 main groups 10? Been thinking it would be nice to have comments / replies showing the top 3 conservative takes, the top 3 liberal takes, the top 3 science, 3 libertarian? top 3 fiscally conservative/socially liberal etc. Ability to vote up and notate inaccuracies and removing personal attacks / insults.. finding a way to stop trolls from another side upvote frivolous things.. what the icons would look like.. all sorts of things I've been thinking about this. Seeing the two sides thing really makes me feel the 'powers that be' really want people fighting on two sides.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    > Been thinking similar. I've been kicking ideas around on how to make something similar, but with many sides - but how many sides are there really? 5 main groups 10? If we (magically) assume you have a decent size userbase (or, a small but high quality userbase), I'd say just make a wild guess and then (manually) extract dimensions from the raw comments data - also, just outright ask your users what dimensions should exist. What "side" one is on should be one dimension, everything other than that should be as disconnected from party affiliation as possible (I'm kinda thinking of a survey type site/component, similar to Myers-Briggs or Big 5, but based on current events/news, and the questions being more oriented toward policy preferences, and reason for the choice if possible, with "bad" reasons being a valid option).
Nowado 6y ago
'pro and con' for case is a very strong design choice. What if it's an open problem. What if It's a wrong question, based on poor representation of the problem? I'm actually making tool for this exact same thing and the issue is most noticeable in kialo (which I argue is the same thing, with more mature UI). If you made all the research, conversations and planning to know, that answering this 'A or B' problem solves it, then Kialo (or that app) are perfectly fine tools. But most of the time people don't. https://www.loomio.org https://www.loomio.org is another attempt at solving the same problem. It does provide some improvements, but also fails in interesting ways (mostly, I think, through not considering temporality very seriously).
- mistermann 6y ago
  > 'pro and con' for case is a very strong design choice. What if it's an open problem. What if It's a wrong question, based on poor representation of the problem? Ok I see, and yes I agree. Although to me, I don't think this is necessarily as big of a problem as people seem unable to stop making it out to be, which I tried to point out in my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25904058 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25904058 As I see it, the fundamental problem is the infinitely dimensional (recursively self-referencing, paradoxical, etc) nature of reality. A "right way" to model it is impossible - the best we can do is try to find a "good enough" (across all variables) approach, acknowledge (and gather opinions on) where we have fallen short and could improve, and iterate as you go. Kind of like life itself, "coincidentally". In the super short run, even adding a "middle" column would be a huge improvement. > I'm actually making tool for this exact same thing and the issue is most noticeable in kialo (which I argue is the same thing, with more mature UI). If you made all the research, conversations and planning to know, that answering this 'A or B' problem solves it, then Kialo (or that app) are perfectly fine tools. But most of the time people don't. > https://www.loomio.org https://www.loomio.org is another attempt at solving the same problem. It does provide some improvements, but also fails in interesting ways (mostly, I think, through not considering temporality very seriously). I think this is the most interesting (and largely unrecognized) niche out there - in no small part due to the obvious inherent complexity and no obvious business model, but I feel like those may not even be the main reason - I truly that this space is "hard to see" for most people. As for design of your product, what do you think of these pie-in-the-sky ideas (from the link above): > I think that approaches like this website are a not yet a perfect solution, but it feels like a step in the right direction. An improved implementation would have some clever means of allowing a crowd-sourced decomposition of the issue into it's constituent entities and behaviors, graphically displayed in some magical way to maximize the likelihood of everyone seeing the big picture free from misunderstanding, which "all" parties could agree upon (no agreement means more refinement is needed) and refer to in their arguments (so we're all talking about the same thing), and arguments/thinking could take place with precision (attached to the the specific entities and behaviors where the true disagreement resides). > A lot of people may have a strong aversion to this approach as it would turn easy argumentation into a painstakingly laborious & pedantic process, which is a natural consequence of using slow but accurate cognitive processing, rather than fast but unreliable heuristic processing (the root problem in the first place). Arguments under such a methodology would also more closely resemble the scientific method, or systems analysis in software (where one does not simply throw together an analysis and insist that it is 100% free of material flaws). So if you take Trophi as a working prototype, could we add a second phase onto an argument, where "someone smart and unbiased" goes through all the arguments, and decomposes them into some "proper" representation, essentially comprehensively aggregating all the distinct points made in the arguments into a master summary, ideally with some sort of a "properly representational structure" between all the points. Perhaps then, in a phase 3, there could be voting &/or further discussion on this summary, the results of which would be passed back through phase 2 to expand and refine the model, also noting where genuine disagreement remains (specifically where in the complex, multidimensional model), and this process is repeated indefinitely - and when some new event occurs in reality, then that could be run through this very same process, updating the multiple related models based on the results of the process. Obviously this is an incredibly ambitious idea, and is fraught with difficulties (gosh, why is reality so darn complicated!!), but even a half-assed version of it might provide some value - and, perhaps along the way, the true nature of reality might slowly start to dawn on some people, which plausibly might improve the performance of the participants in the overall process, recursively over time.