Little Ideas | Hacker News Reader

Little Ideas

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104 pointsRickJWagner12 comments

"Fact-Check Scarcity Principle: This article is called 100 Little Ideas but there are fewer than 100 ideas. 99% of readers won’t notice because they’re not checking, and most of those who notice won’t say anything. Don’t believe everything you read."

I was thinking to myself "this is an amazing list" until I came across that cheeky snippet. Now I'm confused; is the point to make readers critically evaluate each of the listed theories?

>99% of readers won’t notice

Let's not forget the (classic by now) The Simpsons:

>Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that

Well, in fact the first one "Depressive Realism" is a common (false) myth. Depressed people tend to have distorted thoughts about reality with a strong negative bias.

A typical distorted though is over-generalization. For instance: if a depressed person fails to pass an exam, he may think that he will never be able to pass that exam and his life is a complete failure because of that. Of course that though is NOT the reality. The reality is that he probably need prepare better for that exam, but that does not mean that his life is a complete failure.

If someone is interested in this topic I recommend the book "Feeling good" by David Burns.

"The 90-9-1 Rule: In social media networks, 90% of users just read content, 9% of users contribute a little content, and 1% of users contribute almost all the content."

What percentage of people started typing something, deleted it, started typing something else, then gave up when they realized they had nothing of value to contribute or out of fear of rejection?

This reddit post, invocatively titled Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People, builds up on that rule.

https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

> Google Scholar Effect: Scientific research depends on citing other research, and the research that gets cited the most is whatever shows up in the top results of Google Scholar searches, regardless of its contribution to the field.

As a scientist, to me, this is extremely dangerous. We don't know what the Google Scholar search algorithm exactly is. But it does put highly cited papers on top, meaning those papers get cited more in the future. I see this as preventing alternate lines of investigation in a subfield not being successful as much.

I’m enjoying lists like this. They’re like pocket versions of “This book will make you smarter”. Here’s another: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1225561131122597896.html

It's a fun list but I think the list will make you smarter if you take each ideas as possibility to play with in a given situation or as a toolbox of ideas to use or not depending on the situation. I think the list could make you dumber if you use it as a series of pat-answers to complicated situations, ie, so you can avoid thinking the particular details involved.

Nice list! I have one note where I collect "concepts" like these, too.

Example: Pygmalion effect: or Rosenthal effect, is the phenomenon whereby others' expectations of a target person affect the target person's performance. Based on antique Pygmalion whose sculpture became a real women over time

This link will definitely help to grow my list :)

A nice list of things to keep in mind. But just to keep in mind, not to believe definitively.

With Base Rate, for example, yes, if you attempting to succeed at something that many others have failed at, you should know why you expect to succeed and track your beliefs as you about the effort.

"Buridan’s Ass", not "Burdian's Ass"

Thanks for sharing

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