4 ms·

Very much agree. When I was a kid I watched one (and only one) of the three network news channels, read The New York Times + the local paper, and that was about

Very much agree. When I was a kid I watched one (and only one) of the three network news channels, read The New York Times + the local paper, and that was about it--this was before the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine, so talk radio hadn't yet metastasized. It was hard to get alternative opinions in either direction, even if you wanted to. Compared to that social media is a cornucopia/vomitorium of diversity. Alternate opinions are easy to find and sometimes hard to escape.

e12e 12y ago
Managing to challenge ones preconceptions is always going to take work. Also note that for someone getting their news from FOX News, the New York Times is a left-wing outlier. News is pretty terrible in Norway too, but I always feel like I'm in a sitcom whenever I visit the US/Canada. Where BBC and the Guardian appear as bastions against the establishment -- while they of course are very much mainstream. On the other hand, I'm quite grateful to many of the Republican bloggers/commenters for offering their view on US politics -- it can be easy to forget that the US has a strong intellectual tradition, and while you'll find me agreeing with/quoting Chomsky or Klein more often than anyone on the other end -- there are quite a few voices on the right that have strong and interesting opinions on freedom, independence, commerce, curbing of federal powers etc. Anyway, with HN being so dominated by the US in general, and Silicon Valley (including the part of SV that lives in NYC ;-) -- I find it can be quite a contrast to my other echo chambers... I'm afraid I couldn't suggest anything similar that is more left leaning -- maybe https://zcomm.org/znet/ https://zcomm.org/znet/ or http://monthlyreview.org/ http://monthlyreview.org/ (but I don't really follow either -- and they certainly can't compare in any meaningful way with hn).
- lazaroclapp 12y ago
  http://slashdot.org/ http://slashdot.org/ ?
  - e12e 12y ago
    It certainly is a different echo chamber than hn... but with some overlap. I was think more in the direction of general news, not tech news.

e12e 12y ago

Managing to challenge ones preconceptions is always going to take work. Also note that for someone getting their news from FOX News, the New York Times is a left-wing outlier. News is pretty terrible in Norway too, but I always feel like I'm in a sitcom whenever I visit the US/Canada. Where BBC and the Guardian appear as bastions against the establishment -- while they of course are very much mainstream. On the other hand, I'm quite grateful to many of the Republican bloggers/commenters for offering their view on US politics -- it can be easy to forget that the US has a strong intellectual tradition, and while you'll find me agreeing with/quoting Chomsky or Klein more often than anyone on the other end -- there are quite a few voices on the right that have strong and interesting opinions on freedom, independence, commerce, curbing of federal powers etc. Anyway, with HN being so dominated by the US in general, and Silicon Valley (including the part of SV that lives in NYC ;-) -- I find it can be quite a contrast to my other echo chambers... I'm afraid I couldn't suggest anything similar that is more left leaning -- maybe https://zcomm.org/znet/ https://zcomm.org/znet/ or http://monthlyreview.org/ http://monthlyreview.org/ (but I don't really follow either -- and they certainly can't compare in any meaningful way with hn).

lazaroclapp 12y ago
http://slashdot.org/ http://slashdot.org/ ?
- e12e 12y ago
  It certainly is a different echo chamber than hn... but with some overlap. I was think more in the direction of general news, not tech news.