2 ms·

I've wondered for a while if a new kind of news could be fashioned from the events of the world. Basically, if I were to try and define what items are most news

I've wondered for a while if a new kind of news could be fashioned from the events of the world. Basically, if I were to try and define what items are most newsworthy, it'd be along the lines of what (according to my pop-culture understanding) Claude Shannon described, of the items that are most "surprising". But while we normally look at surprise as a subjective thing that impacts only one person, like an item that most conflicts with my current understanding and requires me to update my own model the most, we'd instead apply that to very large groups of people, or whatever group the "news" is being tuned to. So, what items of news cause the most "change" (or surprise) to that group of people. All our understandings and notions of truth are based off of large chains of reasoning that are based off of premises and values. When a new event happens that changes a premise our understandings are based on, which events cause the largest changes in those dags? We're regularly subjected to "news" that doesn't change anything very much, while subtle events of deep impact are regularly missed. Maybe it would be a way to surface those things. I wonder if someone smarter than me could analyze a data set such as this and come up with a revised set of headlines and articles over the years that do the best job of communicating the most important changes.

mistermann 2y ago
It's an interesting idea...most news outlets are pretty similar, but with variance in a few (of the same) dimensions. A radical change could be to vary along new and more dimensions, and in new ways, but also to introduce variance (or novelty) to the shared axioms it all sits on top of (~"the reality"). If it was all powered by AI I think you could get some really interesting results. I bet it would invoke extremely strong emotions in Humans, they tend to not like their "reality" being messed with (well...in ways other than they have become accustomed to - these ways they seem extremely fond of, and defend them passionately). Another angle no one's run with in any serious way would be a sort of meta-journalism, again with the techniques described above. I think a well done implementation could steal/borrow 50% of Trump's base, and 30% of the Democrats. Actually, with different variations of parameters I'd think you could get a wide range of outcomes, it is often hard to know in advance what will strike a chord with people, some of the weirdest things work like a charm.

mistermann 2y ago

It's an interesting idea...most news outlets are pretty similar, but with variance in a few (of the same) dimensions. A radical change could be to vary along new and more dimensions, and in new ways, but also to introduce variance (or novelty) to the shared axioms it all sits on top of (~"the reality"). If it was all powered by AI I think you could get some really interesting results. I bet it would invoke extremely strong emotions in Humans, they tend to not like their "reality" being messed with (well...in ways other than they have become accustomed to - these ways they seem extremely fond of, and defend them passionately). Another angle no one's run with in any serious way would be a sort of meta-journalism, again with the techniques described above. I think a well done implementation could steal/borrow 50% of Trump's base, and 30% of the Democrats. Actually, with different variations of parameters I'd think you could get a wide range of outcomes, it is often hard to know in advance what will strike a chord with people, some of the weirdest things work like a charm.