Is this just technophobia? Or am I missing something, and this really is a horrible, evil technology that should be avoided at all costs? [That’s a rhetorical question—I’d be surprised if even one LWian held that position]
You seem to underrate the amount of contra-contrasrism on Lesswrong. For most subjects you will find someone on Lesswrong that can take the other side of the debate.
I guess what I’m asking is, what are the psychological roots for the almost-unanimous aversion to this attempt at gathering and using information about what people want?
Take a look at the discussion about Transcendence. You will find a sentiment that a film isn’t supposed to be judged by the amount of fun that reader have in the cinema but that the film is supposed to be judged on the way it frames the societal debate.
Pop culture is culture that optimised on short-term enjoyment and pleasing the audience. Serious fiction is supposed to be optimised for more noble goals.
Effective technology that focuses on giving people what they want by looking at what people read is technology that engages in what we label on Lesswrong as “wireheading”.
Ugly things happen when you start to pay all journalists by the click instead of focusing on accurate reporting.
Nassim Taleb said on the subject: “Truck driver who read books don’t want to read books that are written for truck drivers.”
I guess I don’t imagine the idea always being used to that degree. I can imagine someone writing a new classic novel and they turn in their first draft of their next draft to their publisher, and their publisher says something like, “This sentence structure...studies have shown that it’s a bit too complicated for most readers to parse on the first read, and they can take 3 or 4 times reading it before they understand what you were trying to say. Try to simplify it or break it up into multiple sentences.”
I mean, that’s not the only example. That’s a rather mild example of how this sort of data would come into play, but I guess the examples I think of are less, ‘Shelf full of Twilight novels’ and more ‘Same variety of books we have now, written with structure that’s more in tune with how people read and think.’
I want a shelf full of Twilight as little as the next guy. But I also see that this sort of data can be used in helpful ways as well, not just used to produce the next mind-numbing teen fantasy.
I can imagine someone writing a new classic novel and they turn in their first draft of their next draft to their publisher, and their publisher says something like, “This sentence structure...studies have shown that it’s a bit too complicated for most readers to parse on the first read, and they can take 3 or 4 times reading it before they understand what you were trying to say. Try to simplify it or break it up into multiple sentences.”
That’s a goal of dumbing down books to get stupid people to understand them. That’s why people cite 1984. Orwell’s newspeech is also about dumbing down intellectual discourse.
Is a book provides the reader an intellectual challenge that’s not supposed to be a bad thing. Authors of serious fictions do have a license to provide their readers an intellectual challenge.
I don’t have a problem with an author making a stylistic choices to use simple language, but I wouldn’t want to create a complex system that enforces a dumbing down of literature.
That’s a rather mild example of how this sort of data would come into play, but I guess the examples I think of are less, ‘Shelf full of Twilight novels’ and more ‘Same variety of books we have now, written with structure that’s more in tune with how people read and think.’
That depends on the quality of the computer algorithm. If you have an algorithm that can tell a publisher the percentage that a specific book is going to be the next Twilight, that publishers might start making publishing decisions based on that number.
There are monetary pressures.
In the New York Times journalists have to suddenly care about readers interests via hard numbers.
If you want to read about what damage that dynamic did to journalism read Ryan Holiday’s “Trust me, I”m lying”.
You seem to underrate the amount of contra-contrasrism on Lesswrong. For most subjects you will find someone on Lesswrong that can take the other side of the debate.
Take a look at the discussion about Transcendence. You will find a sentiment that a film isn’t supposed to be judged by the amount of fun that reader have in the cinema but that the film is supposed to be judged on the way it frames the societal debate.
Pop culture is culture that optimised on short-term enjoyment and pleasing the audience. Serious fiction is supposed to be optimised for more noble goals.
Effective technology that focuses on giving people what they want by looking at what people read is technology that engages in what we label on Lesswrong as “wireheading”.
Ugly things happen when you start to pay all journalists by the click instead of focusing on accurate reporting.
Nassim Taleb said on the subject: “Truck driver who read books don’t want to read books that are written for truck drivers.”
I guess I don’t imagine the idea always being used to that degree. I can imagine someone writing a new classic novel and they turn in their first draft of their next draft to their publisher, and their publisher says something like, “This sentence structure...studies have shown that it’s a bit too complicated for most readers to parse on the first read, and they can take 3 or 4 times reading it before they understand what you were trying to say. Try to simplify it or break it up into multiple sentences.”
I mean, that’s not the only example. That’s a rather mild example of how this sort of data would come into play, but I guess the examples I think of are less, ‘Shelf full of Twilight novels’ and more ‘Same variety of books we have now, written with structure that’s more in tune with how people read and think.’
I want a shelf full of Twilight as little as the next guy. But I also see that this sort of data can be used in helpful ways as well, not just used to produce the next mind-numbing teen fantasy.
That’s a goal of dumbing down books to get stupid people to understand them. That’s why people cite 1984. Orwell’s newspeech is also about dumbing down intellectual discourse.
Is a book provides the reader an intellectual challenge that’s not supposed to be a bad thing. Authors of serious fictions do have a license to provide their readers an intellectual challenge.
I don’t have a problem with an author making a stylistic choices to use simple language, but I wouldn’t want to create a complex system that enforces a dumbing down of literature.
That depends on the quality of the computer algorithm. If you have an algorithm that can tell a publisher the percentage that a specific book is going to be the next Twilight, that publishers might start making publishing decisions based on that number.
There are monetary pressures.
In the New York Times journalists have to suddenly care about readers interests via hard numbers. If you want to read about what damage that dynamic did to journalism read Ryan Holiday’s “Trust me, I”m lying”.