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Ask HN: I feel like I'm in a filter bubble. How can I “expand my horizons”?
Hi! I've noticed that I've stopped rapidly expanding my knowledge about the world. I hang out on the same websites(HN, reddit), learn the same topics(programming plus couple of hobbies), hear the same ideas.
Nothing has dramatically "expanded my mind" or changed my opinion in the past couple of years. I try to read a lot but it seems like all the books I read are on the same topics, and just repeat the same ideas.
How do I fight that?
I think there's a lot of great areas of knowledge and new ideas in the world that I have no idea about, but I don't know how to find them.
I feel like I've explored pretty much everything that I care to know about the world, and all that is left is to go deeper into the areas I'm already aware of(science, tech, etc), but of course it's probably not true.
What do you do about that? And what are some things that you've discovered in the past 5 years that you weren't aware of before?
- jgh 11y agoCheck out the local poetry scene. If you're in/near a big city it will almost certainly exist and you'll definitely be exposed to a whole host of new ideas from all sorts of socioeconomic strata. The events are generally free or you can donate. Often the poets will have self-published (or small-time-published) chapbooks for a few dollars.
- throwawayaway 11y agohow many hours a week do you spend outdoors and interacting with people face to face?
- WillPostForFood 11y agoTravel, and do it without excessively researching your destination online.
- ajdecon 11y agoGo to the library. (Yes, the place with all the books. ;-) ) Wander through the nonfiction section and scan the titles. If anything catches your eye, pick it up and read the first couple pages. If it seems at all interesting, check it out and read it. This technique is responsible for my reading in depth about the history of shipping containers, learning just a little bit about how to do interior design, and reading a large number of gardening books. (And doing some gardening!) Among other things. You could probably come up with something similar online. (For example, clicking "Random article" on Wikipedia and actually reading it.) But I find that if I'm at a computer, I'm more prone to revert to narrow interests. Going to the real, physical library seems to make me less distractable -- or more so, depending on how you look at it. :)
- AnkhMorporkian 11y agoA hundred times this. I was at the library with my nephew a few years ago. He was watching a magic show the library was putting on, so I just wandered around. If I hadn't done that, I never would have gotten into homebrewing and the surrounding theory, which has been a huge horizon broadener and eats up a good portion of my time. So many things would never strike your interest on the internet as much as they would when you're holding a book. I'm not sure what the difference is, but your theory seems as good as any.
- jlees 11y agoSomeone once gave me a great piece of advice - read a book that you might not "normally" read, especially an autobiography. Doing so can give you a glimpse into a wholly different way of thinking about the world than you might be used to. I follow this advice whenever I'm in an airport and the results are always interesting.
- dalke 11y agoI'll add that one shouldn't exclude older books for being old. I've been reading scientific literature from the 1960s, and it's full of similar topics to now (information explosion, data science, organizational principles). They, like we, are in a bubble formed by the general cultural expectations of that era and topic. Only, it's a different bubble than now. It also ended up making me less interested in following the new hotness, when I realize it's often little different from the new hotness of a few decades ago. Makes me jaded before my time ;)
- design-of-homes 11y agoExcellent advice about the library. An anecdote from me: a few years ago I was researching the Swiss architect Le Corbusier. I wanted to find out about his famous housing complex called Unité d'habitation (Housing Unit) first built in Marseille in France. I started my research online looking for floorplans and commentary or critques. I found very little (there is a lot more available online today, but not when I was looking). Consider that Le Corbusier is one of the most famous architects of the 20th century so this was a surprise. Eventually, I did find what I was looking for by going to the library and visiting an architecture exhibition. The point of all this is that we assume everything is mostly online and so it's our first port of call for any research or knowledge gathering. But there is a huge amount of information and knowledge found in books that have never made it online. If you never go to the library, you simply won't realise what you're missing.
- trwhite 11y agoWhy don't you try reading outside of the subject areas with which you're familiar? Or perhaps you could take up a hobby that requires a different frame of thought to the ones you already do? There's plenty more out there beyond science & tech.
- devalier 11y agoMost of my knowledge exploration comes from real world encounters. I moved to an older, partially-decaying, partially-gentrifying U.S. city and wanted to learn all about its history. What happened to all these crumbling old buildings? Why are certain areas blighted? Where did all the old ethnic communities go? Back in 2008, shortly after I started earning money and investing in the stock market, the market crashed. So I went a long reading project trying to figure out what causes booms and busts, bubbles and crashes. Then there are all sorts of political questions in the world. What drives terrorism? Who is right or wrong about policy argument X? There are endless historical arguments. Why did the Roman Empire fall? Were the American colonists really right to rebel from the British, or is that just winner's history? Where did our modern customs and mores come from? I've gone down other reading rabbit holes with other life knowledge areas - dating & relationships, management, startups, etc. If there are certain areas that pique your interest, perhaps myself or someone else could make you a reading list that will break you out of your filter bubble. I've certainly come across a lot unorthodox material that is both edgy, novel, and more true than not. But it is hard to give you advice if you don't know what you want to learn about.
- tanderson92 11y agoPlease do! I at least would enjoy reading about any and all of those topics. The learning about new things is what fascinates and interests me and I would prefer reading about things I have previously no idea about. Very much appreciated if you could share some of these things you've learned.
- devalier 11y agoDo you have one or two of the topics you are most interested in? It would take up too much time to dig up a worthwhile list for them all :-P
- tanderson92 11y agoA study of the economy would be great. Also interesting would be as you described "Were the American colonists really right to rebel from the British, or is that just winner's history?" A study of "dating & relationships" would be good too (I assume this would cover all interpersonal relationships, i.e. how to be a good friend and win friends over)
- scholia 11y agoYou're in a filter bubble because you're doing your own curation. Historically, many if not most thinking people let someone else do their curation, ie they read a good newspaper or magazine. Magazines such as The Economist and New Scientist have journalists and editors who keep a close eye on significant parts of the world and then report them in digestible form. With a good newspaper or magazine, you're exposed to a lot of subjects that you wouldn't normally see in your own filter bubble. Some of those you will find interesting enough to read, and reading even a few of those stories will expand your horizons.
- thenomad 11y agoThe Economist is particularly good. Definitely worth reading if you don't already do so. Although they have a filter bubble of their own, it probably doesn't perfectly align with yours.
- scholia 11y agoGreat point! It's certainly true that The Economist (like similar publications) has its own filter bubbles, but (a) it's based on input from hundreds of people; and (b) the editorial intent is to find and present new and disruptive ideas. It's the opposite of, say, Fox News, where the aim is to reinforce existing stereotypes. I guess you have to choose your publications wisely....
- jschmitz28 11y agoPrevious discussion (10 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458829
- pbreit 11y agoYou could do worse than spending a few hours on TED.
- m52go 11y agoEmail me at mfiver@gmail.com. I'm solving this exact problem right now at peruse.meteor.com. It could be valuable for both of us to exchange ideas. As people have mentioned here, wandering bookstores and libraries are excellent ways to get out of a filter bubble. That's exactly what we're simulating at Peruse. EDIT for reference, I'm the one who recently posted on this topic, because it's an issue I've been having too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9458829
- francis- 11y agoQuit your job. Drop LSD repeatedly over the course of a week. Stop reddit usage (reddit is a watering hole for morons). Learn LISP (it is more of a trip than acid). Find controversial people, read and understand their viewpoint. Do mathematics. Good luck.
- francis- 11y agoI almost forgot - don't interact with people for several months at a time - the meaningless interactions of everyday life get in the way of significant thoughts.
- kirang1989 11y ago> Stop reddit usage (reddit is a watering hole for morons). Disagree. Reddit is a treasure trove if you're subscribed to the right topics.
- funkyy 11y agoGo bankrupt/totally broke, start using website blockers. I got some serious depression when I got to the point of non-expanding (if you can name it like that). I sold out all my business, throw a glow on everything else. Went full blown bankrupt. Do not drag your family in to this, it is lone journey. I went to very close of zero - barely possible to afford food. Rewritten myself and started from the beginning. It is amazing how you can rewrite yourself when back to basics. 6 months it took me to rewrite all the "downs" and once I started business it took me 2 weeks to earn as much as in last 6 months. Now everything is so much easier.
- walterbell 11y agoPick a random interesting page from a reference below, then use a search engine to find and connect with people who care about the topic: Harper's dictionary of classical literature and antiquities, https://archive.org/details/harpersdictiona00peckgoog https://archive.org/details/harpersdictiona00peckgoog David Rumsey Map Collection (includes old "maps" of human knowledge, today could be called infographics), http://www.davidrumsey.com http://www.davidrumsey.com The Ancient Engineers, by L. Sprague de Camp, http://www.amazon.com/The-Ancient-Engineers-Sprague-Camp/dp/0345482875 http://www.amazon.com/The-Ancient-Engineers-Sprague-Camp/dp/... Oxford English Dictionary, 1888 Edition, 15000 searchable pages as a Windows app, https://archive.org/details/oed11_201407 https://archive.org/details/oed11_201407
- Nutella4 11y agoBesides looking for different topics as many have suggested, look for different authors. If you find that everything you read is written by people from your own country, search out readings from authors of other nationalities. If you find that everything you read is written by people of your own race, search out readings from authors of other races. If you find that everything you read is written by men, search out readings by women.
- minthd 11y agoedge.org, long now, london literary review, are good starting points. Also regarding books - try to find books that abstract the patterns out of a field, since it's a useful way to maximize learning - and having everything in a format that's easy to use in the future(problem -> pattern).
- bra-ket 11y agodig deeper into one topic
- mikekchar 11y agoLearn a new (human) language. It will change the way that you think (literally).
- mindcrime 11y agoWhat do you do about that? Here's one easy option: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random Beyond that, if you think about it, this is actually a sort of paradox. Anything you consciously choose to do to break out of your filter bubble, could just be part of the very filter bubble you're in! How do you ever really "take the red pill"? I think one of the best ways is to interact with other people, who have different hobbies, interests, and ideas. Go to meetups and user group meetings, but make it a point to talk to people you wouldn't usually talk to, or identify and try to connect with the people who say things you instinctively find yourself disagreeing with, etc. Try to cultivate friendships with people outside of your chosen field and discipline. If most of your friends are people you know through work and tech related stuff, start looking to make friends from other venues. Take up a hobby - salsa dancing, mountain biking, cooking, poetry, whatever, and start going to events that cater to those hobbies, and make friends with those people.
- egusa 11y agoThe best thing you can do is travel, and also aim to learn a new language (it'll open up your eyes to how much else is out there). Particularly today, where most cities have co-working spaces with strong communities & community platforms like StartupDigest.com are active around the world with weekly events, it's easier today to travel & work for a few weeks than ever before. Whenever I find myself in a predictable routine as well, I like to attend conferences; I find the energy there is always helpful.
- time4hn 11y agoget off your computer
- meira 11y agoLearn a a new language.
- phaemon 11y agoThis suggestion is simple and lower down the rankings, but it's very much the best. Learning a new language isn't just reading and writing some stuff in a different way. It exposes you to new TV programmes, new styles of music, new fashions and fads. You'll see different kinds of politics, where the duopoly of Liberal/Conservative simply doesn't apply. A different view on history. Different ways of separating people than "race" and different ways of grouping them together than rich or poor. While the other suggestions have merit, I don't think any of them almost literally open up a whole new world to you the way learning a language does. It will help you view your own culture in a new way too. [similar applies to computer languages ;-) ]
- buddydvd 11y agoGet a copy of Merriam Webster's Visual Dictionary and just go through its approx. 1000 pages of high-quality illustrations. It efficiently introduces you to countless tip-of-the-ice-berg topics/industries that are very much remotely related to tech. It humbles you and evokes that feeling of self-insignificance like when you look at aerial view of cities through an airplane window.
- Dewie3 11y ago> It humbles you and evokes that feeling of self-insignificance like when you look at aerial view of cities through an airplane window. What does it matter how small you are compared to a city, the world, or the Universe? How is that supposed to be humbling? It's more inspiring than "humbling" to know that there is a vast world which I am not knowledgeable about. Being as big as a city, the world or the Universe wouldn't fill me with self-importance; it would fill me with "what's the point".
- sebslomski 11y agoGo read about stocks/etfs/etc. This topic is very underrated, but it's so important! Getting to know more about this topic changed the way I read the news and see the world/politics. Also money.
- freefrag 11y agoCan you recommend any good introductory material or websites?
- chrizzzer 11y agoA good place to start learning about finance is always http://www.investopedia.com/ http://www.investopedia.com/. Further I can recommend reading about modern portfolio theory and the correlation between risk and return: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_portfolio_theory
- aserr 11y agoSurprisingly, Matt Cutts of Google fame has a reasonable overview: https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/make-money-investing-tips/ https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/make-money-investing-tips/ and accompanying HN thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8675952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8675952
- freefrag 11y agoCan you recommend any good introductory material or websites?
- pcunite 11y agoKeep asking questions like this one. :-)
- ohnomrbill 11y agoI would try any one of these: * Volunteer * Take up an outdoor hobby * Learn a new spoken language * Read a seminal work in a vastly different field from computer science (say, "The Interpretation of Dreams" by Freud) [Edited for formatting]
- cazum 11y agoThe Stuff You Should Know podcast is a great way to get introduced to all sorts of topics. Josh and Chuck are super funny guys, and usually know what they're talking about.
- jerf 11y agoTake advantage of the fact that everything is connected to everything. You know one of those programming blog posts you're already reading? You know how there's that link you didn't follow because it was a reference to a show you've never heard of or something? Follow it. You know that article you read that yells something or other about what somebody else said, and has you nodding your head vigorously about how stupid that person must be, but, suspiciously, doesn't link to the original content, or worse, fails to even quote it? Go seek out the original content. Then follow a couple of those links. You get linked to a YouTube video... actually look at the "similar video" links that YouTube spits out, try out a couple that you don't know what they are. (This works surprisingly well for "real content"; linkbait viral videos will of course produce just more linkbait viral videos but when you hit the good stuff the first few links are often also quite good.) And if you've got some spare income, be willing to start buying a book here or there related to what you find. I mean, if you have the desire and the stamina to make one of the big leaps here, do not let me stop you; those are good too. But you can incrementally escape from your current filter bubble, too, by growing it. There is no such thing as not being in one, because you have to have filters, it is literally impossible not to, so there's not much point in angsting about it, but it is possible to upgrade your bubble.
- LilValleyBigEgo 11y agoIn before "turn off your computer and go outside." Wait, too late.
- gluggymug 11y agoBiomimicry. It is when you study nature and animals to find an innovative idea to solve a man made problem.
- im3w1l 11y agoFind a random person using facebook, try to become friends. One unbiased procedure goes like this. Choose a sufficiently large number N. Choose a sufficiently large number M(N). Choose yourself as starting person. Now, do the following M times. Generate a random number r between 1 and N. Change the current person to be the r'th friend of the previous person. Or if r is less then number of friends, then the person in question does not change.
- bane 11y agoIt may sound cliche, but as I've gotten older I've started taking more and more interest into history, and specifically the history of things we hold commonplace. I like to play a game of "connections" (a la James Burke) and learn about things by unfolding knowledge. Take something familiar like amazon.com. - It's an on-line department store - department stores were designed to consolidate various shopping venues under one roof - Sears was an early department store - they launched their stores to cater to working classes and farmers outside of city centers and in concert with their catalog business - their catalogs were common in rural general stores - general stores used them to expand the merchandise they could offer to rural customers - rural customers frequented general stores to pick up items they couldn't manufacture on their farms - they came into the town where the general stores were to sell the stuff they grew on their farms - towns sprung up along major navigation routes: roads, rail, rivers and canals - before roads and rail, there were rivers and canals - rivers are hard to reliably use to move commodities from rural areas to market - canals offered a more controlled environment to move commodities to market - once canals were established goods could easily move both ways - this made it more convenient to live in rural areas - early canals were fed by gravity, tapping into nearby rivers for water, this operated the locks and gates - an investor and promoter of canals was George Washington - George Washington, other than being a General and President was a businessman - Among his business ventures he invested in farming, whisky, canals, tobacco, horse breeding, weaving (a diversified portfolio) - one of his investments was the C&O canal - the C&O canal reached Harpers Ferry in 1833 and connected it with Washington D.C. - Harpers Ferry was named after Quaker Colonist Robert Harper and the ferry service he established - It's at the confluence of the Potomac and and Shenandoah rivers - Before the industrial revolution and steam power, it was used as a military manufacturing center and the rivers powered manufacturing equipment used to carve wood and metal into guns - Equipment used to manufacture weapons were standardized and the invention of interchangeable parts was pioneered there by Captain John Hall between 1820 and 1840 establishing patterns used later in the industrial revolution and gives us today everything from Cars to iPhones Each one of these things can be chased off into different directions and the game of Connections can continue. Along the way you can learn about mechanical engineering, hydrolic power, logistics, commercial models, and so on as the web of connections grows out and grows more complex. Suddenly you'll start to fill in knowledge gaps in other areas, frontier life, colonization, labor saving devices, information transmission, etc. You'll start to understand motivations and first principals behind the modern world. The "why?" behind things. Before too long you'll be able to make seamless connections up-down and across time. The whole of human history will start to take on a vividness it doesn't from just reading a linear textbook. Even better, at particularly interesting stopping points, you can probably go visit those places and see those things yourself and continue to unfold knowledge and ideas. Imagine my surprise when I saw how much of ancient Rome was built out of brick and not marble, and the implications that arise from an industry built around supplying brick to the ancient empire and not quarrying marble! Or seeing Roman concrete in the Pantheon and then climbing the Duomo in Florence and seeing Brunelleschi overcoming a thousand years of ignorance and figuring out how to build a dome again -- and then climbing other domes and seeing Brunelleschi's idea repeated over and over again for centuries. Or seeing the Mosque of Muhammad Ali in Cairo, built from Pyramid stone and adorned with a French clock, and then going to Paris and seeing the Luxor Obelisk at the Place de la Condorde in Paris and thinking through the problem of that exchange in detail (it was like a brain explosion for me). Or walking the restored fortifications at Rhodes and understanding how difficult the approach by the Ottomans was, and then seeing Malta right after and learning about the Knights of Saint John. Or seeing Hadrian's Arch in Athens, Hadrian's Wall in the U.K, Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome and so many statues of Hadrian that you realize you can recognize him by sight, 2,000 years after his death, from across the room in Washington D.C. Or visiting Dasan's grave in South Korea, and then seeing the fortifications at Hwaseong Fortress and then realizing he was Catholic and reading about Christianity in Korea and finding out it started in China! The world is a mindblowing place full of problems that so many smart people throughout history have tried all kinds of interesting ways to solve. I find I'm often inspired and in awe at what those who have come before us have solved, in far more primitive times and without any of the means we have available to us today. It puts in perspective things we still struggle with today, and connects me to people and their thoughts from thousands of years ago. Time starts to flatten out and appreciation starts to creep in.
- thirdreplicator 11y agoRead "Inside the Spaceships" by George Adamski.
- evolve2k 11y agoHere's one interesting strand you can pull on.. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography
- jakeogh 11y agoIt's been more than 5 years, but researching the science behind 9/11/01 has been extremely rewarding for me (in the sense that you seem to be asking about). It's difficult to articulate this to someone who has not looked into it (for all I know you have), but things that didn't make sense become much more intuitive. It's a very interesting window into human psychology. I couldn't have explained this to myself 10 years ago, I would have tuned my older self out. There's links in my profile and I make a comment about it from time to time. The biggest hurdle is that the subject is (by no accident) littered with disinformation designed to poison the well. I'm more than happy to talk about it, but some folks have a negative reaction (I did) if it's brought up so I usually dont. The AIA's upcoming convention program has some solid starting points: http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab105885.pdf http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab1058...
- somberi 11y agoI hear you and you raise a valid point, especially for the Internet generation. NYtimes stated this elegantly - Algorithms lead us to anagrams. My suggestion is go to a library. Even after 15 years of living in the US, I am surprised at how few Americans use its impressive library system. I have heavily used the public libraries in NYC and London. NY Public Library for example, at 53 million titles, is the fourth largest library in the world. The books and other media available is just mind boggling. The Editors Picks (both fiction and non-fiction) in NYPL is fantastic and has yielded many gems. I am sure it is similar in other library systems as well. A few years ago, I decided to "outsource" all my book needs to NYPL and as a result donated all the books I had. Now I use NYPL as my knowledge search and discovery "tool". They also have a e-books issuance service, which I use even when I am not in NYC (where I continue to pay taxes).
- thenomad 11y agoI'm working on a tool to deal with at least some aspects of this. It's very simple but might help. Look for a "Show HN" soon. I'm also in communication with one other developer who has a very clever idea to achieve the same goal. Again, look for a Show HN soon. And of course, if you want to chat more about these solutions off HN, email me - my address is in my HN profile.
- joezjwang 11y agoThe world is not all described in English. Not all ideas originate from the English sources like HN. If you have friends from other parts of the world ask them what books/blogs they read in their own language. This goes along with comments about learning a new language