5 ms·

Beware what sounds insightful

84 points by janandonly 5y ago

hitekker 5y ago
A similar point was raised in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348755905_The_Seductions_of_Clarity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348755905_The_Seduc... which was surfaced at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30354969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30354969.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
compressedgas 5y ago
Also the illusion of explanatory depth.
jstummbillig 5y ago
That sounds insightful tho...
- kthejoker2 5y ago
  An autological paradox
danielmarkbruce 5y ago
Beware of logical sounding narratives in general. They almost always miss a variable or four.
- Jensson 5y ago
  Which is why you read the comments instead of the article, they always find like ten of those four mistakes.
  - Nition 5y ago
    Read both if you can: On Reddit in particular, the comments often seem insightful if you read the comments first, but idiotic if you've read the article.
feoren 5y ago
One reason I almost always read the comments before the article on Hacker News is that the comments have less control over the narrative, so it's harder to get away with these tricks. People also love to write things like "well duh: of course writers optimize for attention, that's literally their job!" which, while a little bit snotty, helps highlight occurrences of this. By reading the top few comments on HN first, I feel like I get a good idea of whether an article is worth reading, and if I do read it I can go in "armed" to protect against this. The hard part is forcing myself not to respond to those comments until I've actually read the article myself.
- slibhb 5y ago
  > One reason I almost always read the comments before the article on Hacker News is that the comments have less control over the narrative, so it's harder to get away with these tricks. Coloring your opinion of the article before you've read it is a significant downside.
  - faeyanpiraat 5y ago
    I actually just read the comments like 95% of the time, and get good value.
    - dfabulich 5y ago
      It seems unlikely that you could know that you get better value out of skipping the article if you skip the article 95% of the time.
      - electroly 5y ago
        Point of order: they didn't say better, they said good. They didn't compare it to the value of reading the article.
    - jareklupinski 5y ago
      same; my RSS feed opens the comments section of each article, and I check the first two for someone saying 'this is blogpam / clickbait' before reading maybe i should just delay reading articles for 24hrs until the filters do their thing, but then i cant contribute to the convos :(
photochemsyn 5y ago
Tarbell's portrayal of JD Rockefeller is certainly worth reading again in today's New Gilded Age era, biases and all. I suppose Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" is a more objective history, although it glosses over some of the more outrageous history of the industry (Standard Oil providing critical airplane fuel for the Nazi invasion of Poland, and also fueling Nazi Uboats until 1942 when Congress passed the Trading With The Enemy Act).
- paganel 5y ago
  Trading between nations that are in open conflict is kind of interesting. For example in this case yes, Standard Oil was providing the Nazis with fuel, but presumably they were getting paid in return and part of that money was funding the US Government through taxes paid by Standard Oil, directly of indirectly. There's also the Nazis' pov, of course, for lack of a better term. One could say that they were giving money/liquidity (I suppose US dollars, not sure on this one) directly to one of the enemies they were fighting. Like I said, these type of examples (which are pretty rare, at least to my knowledge) can be pretty interesting if you start going into the details.
  - krageon 5y ago
    > yes, Standard Oil was providing the Nazis with fuel, but [...] that money was funding the US Government [...] That fuel also helped murder innocent civilians. The money isn't what's important here.
    - paganel 5y ago
      That only goes to show that the US Government of the time was valuing the money brought in by companies like Standard Oil as being more important than the non-US civilians being killed at that moment in Europe.
      - krageon 5y ago
        I guess we differ on whether or not it is interesting. I primarily think it is horrifying, perhaps even to the point of culpability in (part of) the problem.
Animats 5y ago
Amusing quotes: "A “steering” event at the CEO level is a reorientation for the entire company, and for reasons I’ll get to, the best way to accomplish it is to replace the CEO with a new one who is already locked on to a more desirable orientation vector." In other words, it may be easier to change the CEO than the CEO's mind. (A possibly useful criterion: when did the CEO last admit a mistake? If the answer is "never", and reality indicates the need for a change of direction, the CEO has to go.) "Also: look at how I use the phrase ‘optimised for attention’ here, when I could have just as simply said ‘liked to be read’." Not quite. "Optimized for click-through", more specifically. Here's a topic from CNN right now: "Certain health conditions in adolescence may be linked with faster aging in adulthood, study says." Note that this doesn't tell you what those conditions are. You have to click to find out. That's become all too common. Until recently, the unit of consumer buy was the book or newspaper, not the article. There was no incentive for article titles which deliberately gave too little information. That stopped at headlines and book titles. Now it extends to each little snippet of information. The actual article can be summarized as "Teens who are fat, smoke, or have psych problems age faster." If they said that up front, fewer people would click on the article.
- javajosh 5y ago
  >In other words, it may be easier to change the CEO than the CEO's mind. Makes me wonder, is that a bad thing? Do we want CEOs with plastic minds? It feels like we live in an age of excess plasticity, with respect to leadership. (Perhaps it always does.)
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    Even if the entire power structure agrees not to change, reality still will.
- shard 5y ago
  > In other words, it may be easier to change the CEO than the CEO's mind. (A possibly useful criterion: when did the CEO last admit a mistake? If the answer is "never", and reality indicates the need for a change of direction, the CEO has to go.) Another possible reason is that it may be politically difficult for the incumbent CEO to do the hard thing, but an incoming CEO (especially if he is from the outside and therefore has not accumulated a web of obligations) can do something like lay off a fifth of the company more easily. There are turnaround CEOs that have made a career of being the doer of unpopular things.
swayvil 5y ago
To take this further. A world made of words and ideas, detached from real observation, must necessarily be completely psychotic. We're talking Bosch's Garden here. Demons, skulls, fire and snakes. Consider our modern nigh-solipsistic society. And videogames. And us, wrapped in an airtight bag of propaganda and entertainment. Consider that excellent insulation. Consider the anaerobic ravioli.
Noumenon72 5y ago
I really appreciated the named names and real examples. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to break free of the insight distortion field and see the examples as dumb. I'm the same with academese -- as long as I know all of the big words, I feel like they've said something intelligible.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Also: Beware of commercial advertiser funding! Media doesn't bite the hand that feeds it. This severely limits the truths it's allowed to talk about.
dehrmann 5y ago
Half the time I read something insightful or have a realization, a few seconds later, I think "but want am I going to do with this?" As in, the insight is interesting, but not particularly actionable on its own, and rather than being a jumping off point, it's a concise dead end.
tpoacher 5y ago
> If you read something on the internet today, the odds are good that the writing was produced to capture your attention. This. And not just the writing, but the framing between stories too. I get very frustrated when people assume "framing" in the news was somehow "accidental". Like when putting otherwise independent stories on the front page together, in order to create an argument by association, without either of the articles offering support for that argument by themselves (e.g. putting stories about crime and immigration side by side; or priests and pedophilia; or refugees and terrorism, etc). The framing effect is hugely known to journalists and news editors. If two items are presented in sequence, then that is intentional. Next time you see this happening and catch yourself wondering if it was by accident, just realise that this would have to be such an elementary mistake that the news editor would have to be fired.

84 points by janandonly 5y ago

A similar point was raised in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348755905_The_Seductions_of_Clarity https://www.researchgate.net/publication/348755905_The_Seduc... which was surfaced at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30354969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30354969.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

compressedgas 5y ago

Also the illusion of explanatory depth.

jstummbillig 5y ago

That sounds insightful tho...

kthejoker2 5y ago
An autological paradox

danielmarkbruce 5y ago

Beware of logical sounding narratives in general. They almost always miss a variable or four.

Jensson 5y ago
Which is why you read the comments instead of the article, they always find like ten of those four mistakes.
- Nition 5y ago
  Read both if you can: On Reddit in particular, the comments often seem insightful if you read the comments first, but idiotic if you've read the article.

feoren 5y ago

One reason I almost always read the comments before the article on Hacker News is that the comments have less control over the narrative, so it's harder to get away with these tricks. People also love to write things like "well duh: of course writers optimize for attention, that's literally their job!" which, while a little bit snotty, helps highlight occurrences of this. By reading the top few comments on HN first, I feel like I get a good idea of whether an article is worth reading, and if I do read it I can go in "armed" to protect against this. The hard part is forcing myself not to respond to those comments until I've actually read the article myself.

slibhb 5y ago
> One reason I almost always read the comments before the article on Hacker News is that the comments have less control over the narrative, so it's harder to get away with these tricks. Coloring your opinion of the article before you've read it is a significant downside.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago
  I actually just read the comments like 95% of the time, and get good value.
  - dfabulich 5y ago
    It seems unlikely that you could know that you get better value out of skipping the article if you skip the article 95% of the time.
    - electroly 5y ago
      Point of order: they didn't say better, they said good. They didn't compare it to the value of reading the article.
  - jareklupinski 5y ago
    same; my RSS feed opens the comments section of each article, and I check the first two for someone saying 'this is blogpam / clickbait' before reading maybe i should just delay reading articles for 24hrs until the filters do their thing, but then i cant contribute to the convos :(

photochemsyn 5y ago

Tarbell's portrayal of JD Rockefeller is certainly worth reading again in today's New Gilded Age era, biases and all. I suppose Daniel Yergin's "The Prize" is a more objective history, although it glosses over some of the more outrageous history of the industry (Standard Oil providing critical airplane fuel for the Nazi invasion of Poland, and also fueling Nazi Uboats until 1942 when Congress passed the Trading With The Enemy Act).

paganel 5y ago
Trading between nations that are in open conflict is kind of interesting. For example in this case yes, Standard Oil was providing the Nazis with fuel, but presumably they were getting paid in return and part of that money was funding the US Government through taxes paid by Standard Oil, directly of indirectly. There's also the Nazis' pov, of course, for lack of a better term. One could say that they were giving money/liquidity (I suppose US dollars, not sure on this one) directly to one of the enemies they were fighting. Like I said, these type of examples (which are pretty rare, at least to my knowledge) can be pretty interesting if you start going into the details.
- krageon 5y ago
  > yes, Standard Oil was providing the Nazis with fuel, but [...] that money was funding the US Government [...] That fuel also helped murder innocent civilians. The money isn't what's important here.
  - paganel 5y ago
    That only goes to show that the US Government of the time was valuing the money brought in by companies like Standard Oil as being more important than the non-US civilians being killed at that moment in Europe.
    - krageon 5y ago
      I guess we differ on whether or not it is interesting. I primarily think it is horrifying, perhaps even to the point of culpability in (part of) the problem.

Animats 5y ago

Amusing quotes: "A “steering” event at the CEO level is a reorientation for the entire company, and for reasons I’ll get to, the best way to accomplish it is to replace the CEO with a new one who is already locked on to a more desirable orientation vector." In other words, it may be easier to change the CEO than the CEO's mind. (A possibly useful criterion: when did the CEO last admit a mistake? If the answer is "never", and reality indicates the need for a change of direction, the CEO has to go.) "Also: look at how I use the phrase ‘optimised for attention’ here, when I could have just as simply said ‘liked to be read’." Not quite. "Optimized for click-through", more specifically. Here's a topic from CNN right now: "Certain health conditions in adolescence may be linked with faster aging in adulthood, study says." Note that this doesn't tell you what those conditions are. You have to click to find out. That's become all too common. Until recently, the unit of consumer buy was the book or newspaper, not the article. There was no incentive for article titles which deliberately gave too little information. That stopped at headlines and book titles. Now it extends to each little snippet of information. The actual article can be summarized as "Teens who are fat, smoke, or have psych problems age faster." If they said that up front, fewer people would click on the article.

javajosh 5y ago
>In other words, it may be easier to change the CEO than the CEO's mind. Makes me wonder, is that a bad thing? Do we want CEOs with plastic minds? It feels like we live in an age of excess plasticity, with respect to leadership. (Perhaps it always does.)
- whatshisface 5y ago
  Even if the entire power structure agrees not to change, reality still will.
shard 5y ago
> In other words, it may be easier to change the CEO than the CEO's mind. (A possibly useful criterion: when did the CEO last admit a mistake? If the answer is "never", and reality indicates the need for a change of direction, the CEO has to go.) Another possible reason is that it may be politically difficult for the incumbent CEO to do the hard thing, but an incoming CEO (especially if he is from the outside and therefore has not accumulated a web of obligations) can do something like lay off a fifth of the company more easily. There are turnaround CEOs that have made a career of being the doer of unpopular things.

swayvil 5y ago

To take this further. A world made of words and ideas, detached from real observation, must necessarily be completely psychotic. We're talking Bosch's Garden here. Demons, skulls, fire and snakes. Consider our modern nigh-solipsistic society. And videogames. And us, wrapped in an airtight bag of propaganda and entertainment. Consider that excellent insulation. Consider the anaerobic ravioli.

Noumenon72 5y ago

I really appreciated the named names and real examples. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to break free of the insight distortion field and see the examples as dumb. I'm the same with academese -- as long as I know all of the big words, I feel like they've said something intelligible.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

Also: Beware of commercial advertiser funding! Media doesn't bite the hand that feeds it. This severely limits the truths it's allowed to talk about.

dehrmann 5y ago

Half the time I read something insightful or have a realization, a few seconds later, I think "but want am I going to do with this?" As in, the insight is interesting, but not particularly actionable on its own, and rather than being a jumping off point, it's a concise dead end.

tpoacher 5y ago

> If you read something on the internet today, the odds are good that the writing was produced to capture your attention. This. And not just the writing, but the framing between stories too. I get very frustrated when people assume "framing" in the news was somehow "accidental". Like when putting otherwise independent stories on the front page together, in order to create an argument by association, without either of the articles offering support for that argument by themselves (e.g. putting stories about crime and immigration side by side; or priests and pedophilia; or refugees and terrorism, etc). The framing effect is hugely known to journalists and news editors. If two items are presented in sequence, then that is intentional. Next time you see this happening and catch yourself wondering if it was by accident, just realise that this would have to be such an elementary mistake that the news editor would have to be fired.