Hacker News Reader

Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

The thing about asking the schizophrenic uncle about things is that it becomes clear they're schizophrenic, even if the child asking is buying it all.

A while ago I read that lots of people were upset with Joe Rogan for having Alex Jones on his show. I really didn't know anything about Jones other than what you see on cable news and Rogan I'm fairly neutral on. So I found an Alex Jones episode and played it. Jones came off as being entirely unhinged. It was not flattering at all. They were basically winding Jones up and then letting him explode.

View on HN

The Alex Jones episodes are well known for being the wildest comedy ever aired on JRE.

I think he sees himself a lot in the tradition of Stern and Opie and Anthony, where some outrageous stuff is cool. He doesn’t see himself as a media outlet but a guy who wants to have fun and push weird shit. Obviously it’s caused him trouble with the anti vacc guys he had and he’s sort of normalised his show a bit, but still I think he sees himself in that tradition. He’s not looking to be Dan Rather.

IMO I think this is the root of both the valid defense and the valid critique of Rogan. He doesn’t seem to properly account for the fact that having the # of followers he has is itself a signal of credibility. It’s very hard to overcome that with offhanded “I’m a normal guy don’t listen to me!” remarks. I don’t feel he properly informs his users of just how fringe some of his guests are, and in fact once they’re on his show they’re actually not fringe (in the social proof sense of fringiness).

> having the # of followers he has is itself a signal of credibility

Is it though? I assumed it meant people found his show entertaining.

Of course it signals credibility. I suppose you can argue that the entire effect of social proof doesn’t exist, but I’m sure there are better uses of that groundbreaking knowledge than commenting on HN!

So then why don't you do everything Joe Rogan says? You should be powerless before his tremendous social proof. This is the kind of "I'm special smart, the other side are sheeple" discourse that is pointless.

If I found Rogan entertaining enough to listen to him frequently, it probably would affect my behavior. Instead, I have other people who I pay more attention to and whose social proof probably does unduly affect my decisions :) Lol I’m not the one here claiming to be immune to it!

Everybody is using heuristics to navigate an extremely complex world, most of the heuristics are pretty good (which is why they persist), but they also have corner cases.

Social proof is one of those heuristics that should be taught in school so people would learn to discard. In fact multiple pieces of cognitive bias should really be taught in school…

I understand your point and partially agree with it - I do think Rogan has learnt something from the vacc debacle. I’m just trying to explain from what I think is his POV on the matter.

They also fact checked EVERYTHING Jones said. They would interrupt the conversation and fact check him real time which I really liked.

And almost all the fact checks came back and Jones was right. They kept doing it after an hour of this stuff.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com