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booky type thingies
Feb. 11th, 2013 02:00 pmThe local library seems to have gotten a big shipment all at once from Prometheus, publishers of assorted skeptical stuff and also way-out-there stuff occasionally - people who are skeptical of the real world to the point of massive conspiracy theories, etc. The quality of books from them varies. Sometimes it's straightforward "my doctoral dissertation turned into a book" stuff, sometimes it's stranger than that. Anyway, I grabbed a few of them to look at.
First up: Radical Distortion: How Emotions Warp What We Hear - John Reich. First the totally obvious: people with extreme views on a subject don't like to hear contrary opinions. Then the slightly less obvious, with several studies: people with extreme views on a subject are more likely to rate neutral statements as being negative/against them/contrary, rather than neutral - holding extreme views makes one incapable of perceiving neutral ground. Many of the studies cited are actually from the 50s and 60s, not from current issues that are polarized, showing that this aspect of extreme views has been around for a while.
( For example )
Next up: Second That Emotion: How Decisions, Trends, and Movements are Shaped - Jeremy Holden. This turns out to be mostly stories about how to use social media to spread propaganda - not as interesting as the title, and not even that informative - it's anecdotes, and no real studies showing whether what the author thinks made the "movement" in each anecdote work, is actually what fueled or spread it. It's just stories, no analysis. Waste of time.
Last from this batch: The Big Disconnect: The Story of Technology and Loneliness - Giles Slade. It's the Kindle's fault that people don't talk to each other any more and are rude when they do. No, it's Amazon.com's fault even before the Kindle. No, it's the Internet's fault!! The author's thesis is that since we buy more stuff online now, we have fewer daily interactions that consist of saying "thank you" and "Have a nice day" with store clerks, and that's making us lonelier and ruder. My opinion: Um, no. For one thing, for most products, the percentage of people who buy them online is still vanishingly small - almost everyone still buys their groceries in a grocery store, and even if they order them online, they talk to the delivery guy. Likewise restaurant meals, haircuts, dentists, all that other stuff that CAN'T be done on the Internet - still far, far outweighs the commerce that is done on the Internet. I wound up chatting about this book with the guy next to me at a restaurant - the only seats left at the place across the street before a concert were at the bar, so we were squished together, and he had an e-reader, and we had a nice long chat about reading books (news flash: people who have e-readers still buy lots of hardcopy books too! The more you read, the more you buy!) and whether having a tablet to read on alienated you from other readers. Conclusion: no, if anything, e-readers seem to spark more conversations than carrying around a dead-tree book, if anything. So our joint conclusion was that The Big Disconnect is full of crap.
I also grabbed The Pickwick Papers in my quest to read a few more classics, but discovered that my tolerance for that particular type of humor is quite limited, and after 4 chapters I was too tired of those characters to continue. Oh well, I'll try a different classic soon.
First up: Radical Distortion: How Emotions Warp What We Hear - John Reich. First the totally obvious: people with extreme views on a subject don't like to hear contrary opinions. Then the slightly less obvious, with several studies: people with extreme views on a subject are more likely to rate neutral statements as being negative/against them/contrary, rather than neutral - holding extreme views makes one incapable of perceiving neutral ground. Many of the studies cited are actually from the 50s and 60s, not from current issues that are polarized, showing that this aspect of extreme views has been around for a while.
( For example )
Next up: Second That Emotion: How Decisions, Trends, and Movements are Shaped - Jeremy Holden. This turns out to be mostly stories about how to use social media to spread propaganda - not as interesting as the title, and not even that informative - it's anecdotes, and no real studies showing whether what the author thinks made the "movement" in each anecdote work, is actually what fueled or spread it. It's just stories, no analysis. Waste of time.
Last from this batch: The Big Disconnect: The Story of Technology and Loneliness - Giles Slade. It's the Kindle's fault that people don't talk to each other any more and are rude when they do. No, it's Amazon.com's fault even before the Kindle. No, it's the Internet's fault!! The author's thesis is that since we buy more stuff online now, we have fewer daily interactions that consist of saying "thank you" and "Have a nice day" with store clerks, and that's making us lonelier and ruder. My opinion: Um, no. For one thing, for most products, the percentage of people who buy them online is still vanishingly small - almost everyone still buys their groceries in a grocery store, and even if they order them online, they talk to the delivery guy. Likewise restaurant meals, haircuts, dentists, all that other stuff that CAN'T be done on the Internet - still far, far outweighs the commerce that is done on the Internet. I wound up chatting about this book with the guy next to me at a restaurant - the only seats left at the place across the street before a concert were at the bar, so we were squished together, and he had an e-reader, and we had a nice long chat about reading books (news flash: people who have e-readers still buy lots of hardcopy books too! The more you read, the more you buy!) and whether having a tablet to read on alienated you from other readers. Conclusion: no, if anything, e-readers seem to spark more conversations than carrying around a dead-tree book, if anything. So our joint conclusion was that The Big Disconnect is full of crap.
I also grabbed The Pickwick Papers in my quest to read a few more classics, but discovered that my tolerance for that particular type of humor is quite limited, and after 4 chapters I was too tired of those characters to continue. Oh well, I'll try a different classic soon.
