from Hacker News

It should be okay to just read headlines

by mattwilsonn888 on 1/30/23, 10:28 PM with 23 comments

• by frogulis on 1/30/23, 11:30 PM

  Damn, I got beaten to the "I only read the headline" comment.

  I did read the article though, and I found it a bit confusing. Assuming it is written in good faith by a real person, my concern is that the central analogy to open source software does not hold up.

  Someone who runs OSS after gaining trust through the headline-like "shortcut" verification process that the author describes gains utility through the execution of the software, not through the shortcut verification of it.

  In contrast, when reading the news, the ideal shortcut form that the author dreams of (i.e. being able to just read the headline) seems to be skipping the primary utility of the content itself.

  In other words, I don't think reading the news should be about trying to consume as many factoids as possible. Better to read a few good articles than get a one-sentence-deep summary of everything that happened everywhere.

• by karaterobot on 1/30/23, 11:47 PM

  > And so describes most users experience with open source software. The exposure of its inner workings is not a direct benefit to most users - it simply makes undesired and unexpected behaviors detectable and unsustainable. This is not wholly unlike the common media consumer's desire to truncate what information they need to consume to reach conclusions.

  Arguing by analogy is dangerous, in this case because doing a code review of open source software is actually not like reading a news article, or being an informed citizen. The incentives are different in each case, so is the actual activity, so are the people involved, so is the level of expertise required, so is the social obligation. It's actually only really alike in a couple ways, the biggest one being: you're looking at something. Okay.

  > Strong, but basic critical thinking, not among all, but spread among enough, is sufficient to collectively process information. It is the faux authority of censorship which causes such a practice to appear unreliable.

  In the U.S., the first amendment exists, in part, because we need voters who engage vigorously with the world of ideas. Compulsory liberal education exists to prepare people with the skills to do so. No such obligation exists for code reviews, which is just one reason why this is a bad analogy.

  And yeah, you "should" be able to get away with just reading headlines, but in practice what happens? You get an ignorant, disengaged population that sees the world through the eyes of the people who (in essence) write headlines for people who only read headlines. The solution is probably not to say "oh, we just need better headline", it's for people to increase their critical reading skills and their engagement with information that is (to step into the dangerous world of software analogies) 'closer to the metal'.

• by pimlottc on 1/30/23, 11:28 PM

  I tried to skim this but it’s full of such lofty language (“one should…”) and wordy prose that I couldn’t make heads or tails as to what the actual point was. Sure, I went to college, but you don’t need to put a ten letter word in every single sentence…

• by mensetmanusman on 1/30/23, 11:27 PM

  There have been articles where the headline is contradicted by the first paragraph.

  We should probably read neither.

• by BizarreByte on 1/30/23, 11:46 PM

  I am always reminded of this Thoreau quote when we talk about people reading only headlines, or titles.

  “And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter -- we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.”

• by nomilk on 1/30/23, 11:32 PM

  Headlines are such an important part of media, it would be so useful if they were used to earnestly inform, rather than attract attention.

  Idea: ChatGPT chrome extension that replaces the headline with one generated from the actual article.

• by oa335 on 1/30/23, 11:37 PM

  Read the title, and half a paragraph but got strong GPT vibes. Anyone else?

• by mftb on 1/30/23, 11:11 PM

  I only read your headline, so I have no idea why you think that, but it doesn't seem to be working in practice.

• by anigbrowl on 1/30/23, 11:36 PM

  AI hands typed this

• by exabrial on 1/31/23, 12:01 AM

  Trump says: :: dont matters you fell for it and they know it:: buy ${thing}