Ask HN: How do I expand my worldview and meet smart people online?

[lemonade5117]

Going to a big school and meeting people with different backgrounds and interests has made me painfully aware of how ignorant I am. I'd like to meet people who will challenge me intellectually and act as a catalyst for my growth. I'm thinking of reading some lesswrong posts and hanging around in the comments and perhaps exploring that part of the internet. It's not perfect but it's a start I guess. What are some of your experiences with meeting people on the internet and how does one go about meeting great people?

[boboralice]

Real world meetups about subjects you're interested in will have better value than most online stuff.

Read books about things that interest you, and use Goodreads as a source of inspiration for future reading material.

Get off Facebook. Either learn to optimize Twitter as someone else suggested, or get off there too, because it's easy for it to become an echo chamber if you aren't smart about how you use it. I prefer Mastodon because if you choose a good instance there's less fluff and you're not funneled into your own echo chamber.

Where possible, I use special-interest-focused-forums (yes, old-fashioned forums still exist) instead of Reddit. Again, some parts of Reddit are good, but a lot have horribly biased moderation. It depends on the subject.

Start a blog and link it to your social media. I've found participating in blogging challenges has helped me build readership and find new blogs to read, and those blogs have helped me find meetups or conferences in subjects I'm interested in. Some of those have required travel, but the travel has been worth it.

[Aromasin]

To piggy back on the optimising twitter comment, does anyone know how to disable recommended content on Twitter? I keep getting people telling me that I'm missing out, and I've fine tuned my feed so it's a bunch of scientists and engineers who's work I'm interested in, but Twitter keeps giving me content from people they follow, or popular topics. It seems every third tweet is something I simply have zero interest in. Is it really that valuable?

[fold3]

you could use a third-party client like fritter[0] for android or cawbird[1] for linux, then you'll just get a traditional feed much like a rss feed with no ads. If you happen to use an old machine it will run much faster too

There should be some for macos and windows but I haven't looked it up yet

[0]https://fritter.cc/ [1]https://flathub.org/apps/details/uk.co.ibboard.cawbird

[jesterson]

Last time I checked there was absolutely no way for it. They want to keep users stick to screen, no choice for it.

[lemonade5117]

That makes sense. Do you have any advice on finding local meetups?

[Something1234]

Where do you find blogging challenges?

[millzlane]

I googled blogging challenges. Then found a "30 day blogging challenge" keyword. Then found this: https://30dayblogchallenge.com/

[tomjakubowski]

I can't tell if you're still a student at the big school, but if you are I would definitely prioritize building local friendships and maintaining them above meeting new people on the Internet. It sounds like the locals are pretty smart and would challenge you intellectually the way you'd like.

[lemonade5117]

Yeah, makes sense. I'm gonna try that out. Thanks!

[frantzmiccoli]

My first feeling here is: please reach out. I wouldn't mind a quick honest online call to exchange views and all. My contacts details can be deduced from my profile.

Besides that I have found it hard to meet interesting people, I have found a few through meetup.com communities, some in professional context. Some people are jewels that need to be cherished and admired, there is no magic mine where you can find them for free.

One learning though, the harder it is to get somewhere the more interesting people you will find. In that sense all those networking events have a quality that is proportional to how hard it is to get in.

[advisedwang]

I recommend starting by reading. Read history, politics, fiction. Read banned books and popular books. You can expand your horizons much faster this way than trying to meet 100s of people, and it allows you to find a direction that appeals to you.

[eimrine]

Do you know any banned books worth of reading?

[jonahbenton]

Twitter is a place where interesting people doing interesting work in all kinds of fields with all kinds of priors from all kinds of perspectives post threads about their work generally for non-specialist consumption. Among my follows from intellectual perspective are animal studies folks, small book publishers, medieval studies, anthropologists, chemists, banking nerds, political scientists, contract lawyers, religious educators, sex educators, Native American advocates....

From cultural perspective as an older white northeast US man I pick folks to follow from as wide a demographic and timezone range as possible.

Lots of other stuff happens at Twitter too of course but this is what I use it for. Haven't found another soup like it.

And of course the VAST majority of the world is not on Twitter, maybe owns a phone but not a computer, and does interesting things unknown to the digital sphere. To actually EXPAND your worldview you have to travel. Go to the places, put your entire meatspace sensory apparatus in the environment. But the Platos shadow online version is I think what you were asking about.

There are LOTS of ways to optimize Twitter use but to start just make sure you change the algorithm to latest tweets, rather than "Home Tweets" and then start adding people. When you get up to 1000 follows you should have a steady stream of worldview novelty.

Addition: "meet" has multiple connotations and often the two way interactive meet with interesting people is hard/impossible because they are very busy and/or manage their time, etc. Twitter presents an opportunity for learning passively through osmosis, which is also not the same as two way interaction but can be worldview expanding all the same.

[bckr]

Add depth, insight, and research to conversations and stick around for awhile. Send emails or DMs to people who are open to it. It's really just like meeting people anywhere, but your charisma comes through in your writing instead of your speech and appearance.

[minhmeoke]

If you'd like to expose yourself to more diversity: Take an art class or join a makerspace or hackerspace, the creativity and different value systems of the people there will blow your mind. Study the values of another religion. Learn another language. Volunteer at a homeless shelter, food bank, or other community service organization. People who engage in these activities are often a self-selecting group of people who might be optimizing for objectives different than what you usually do.

Take classes at a community college, and find people involved in the extracurricular activities (eg: engineering clubs, math clubs, philosophy clubs). Unlike 4-year colleges, people in community colleges come from all different walks of life and backgrounds. There are a lot of flaky people, but also some really motivated high-schoolers or seniors.

If you'd like more intellectual rigor: Take a philosophy class or join a philosophy club. You might find people who are really interested in questioning everything and debating in ways that will shatter your assumptions and change your worldview. Start following people who are involved in scientific research, maybe do some research yourself.

In addition, some people started a Hacker News Learns discourse group which you might be interested in joining: https://discord.gg/WyRBDGgeCG

It covers all types of interesting topics ranging from economics and history to soft skills, mathematics, philosophy, and personal knowledge management (Zettelkasten and related systems) and I've met some really interesting people from around the world there.

Also, +1 to special interest forums as others have mentioned here, although those tend to go very deep into a particular topic.

[tony]

I've done this during COVID. Zoom groups. I want to share my experience:

Participants in the zoom crowd are great folks.

Occasionally, these zoom events could get amped up on internet banter - this could disappoint the original poster's goal of broadening their horizons.

The zooms aren't a random sampling of a professional or academic field. I'll leave it at that.

Also, if we're there, we're also part of that statistic: we needed the internet to socialize - which is OK - but that puts us with other people who were also frustrated in real life and needed to go online to connect with others.

These sessions had highly talented presenters from around the world. Despite that, they often weren't places where everyone gets work gets done - which may surprise people used to Gitlab/GitHub/etc and doing open source. If you want to chat, OK - if you like to accomplish things, nothing happens. This really was what struck me the most.

[cblockdude]

> Participants in the zoom crowd are great folks.

This dude is right. I did zooms. Many zooms. I had nothing else to do, no work, nothing. So I did zoom. Then many zooms. I am great folk. Such a great folk.

[10g1k]

1) Stay away from Twitter, TikTok, and 4chan.

2) Try Thinkspace.

3) Try online forums specifically inhabited by members of professions and academic fields.

[dredmorbius]

Find an area of interest or general framing question[1] and follow that.

I've been online since the 1980s. I've come to feel that there's a general hierarchy of informational quality by medium. From highest to lowest:

- Books. Particularly Great Books. The list at the end of Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book is an excellent start.[2] Your library, Project Gutenberg, and the Internet Archive offer lawful access to a tremendous set of titles. Library Genesis and ZLibrary extend that but thumb noses at copyright. IMO in a truly justified sense. I tend not to follow recently-published works closely, it takes about a decade at least for actual value to surface. There are specific exceptions to this, of course, but in general (and as a theme for what follows), the odds that the most useful and compelling work on some topic has been published recently is ... low. Audiobooks are an acceptable substitute or adjunct to reading text. Both fiction and nonfiction have value, though I read far more of the latter. Syllabii from academic courses on a specific topic are an excellent curation tool. I also follow references and bibliographies, and stalk specific authors of interest. Writing authors with specific questions can be productive, but don't abuse the privilege.

- Articles and essays in traditional publications, both academic and popular.

- High-quality produced & edited podcasts or academic or structured lectures / discussions. I'm listening to a law-school podcast episode at the moment. I've listened most to several philosophy podcasts (many of our current questions and problems ... are not especially new. Even where earlier philosophical discussion is wrong, it has often anticipated many present questions and discussions (and the realisation of this can be amusing, frustrating, and/or illuminating, variously). It's also a remarkable tour through just plain wrong results which can be arrived at through many centuries of mislead rational thought. I follow several foreign-language podcasts (mostly as a language-learning aid), and a few topical podcasts. The less these focus on present news and politics, the better. Ezra Klein is the principle exception to that set. Long-form interviews can be quite good. The New Books Network offers a huge list of channels and a tremendous back-catalogue of academic books, though the interviewer and production quality are both highly variable. It's an excellent guide to what's coming out of academic presses, and tends to be eclectic. Not all books are worth reading, or even listening to authors talk about. London School of Economics has an excellent lecture series. There are several university press podcasts, some extant, some defunct, though again, back-catalogues are useful. Some YouTube videos approach this, though these tend to be lectures or presentations, occasionally conversations. The less advertising, the higher the content quality (more below).

- Wikipedia and several related wiki-type sites. Wikipedia and RationalWiki are amongst my favourites. Wikipedia has become my preferred option for reading up on / understanding current news, particularly complex and developing stories. I'd first come to this realisation during the 2004 Boxing Day Indian Ocean Tsunami and Earthquake, in which I watched the article develop from a first mention of a strong quake to the present multi-page form. Very few news organisations can even come close, and Brad Plummer's coverage of the Oroville Dam failure (whilst he was at Vox) is among the few favourable comparisons I can make. Wikis digest multiple sources into a single, usually coherent, generally current, whole. Note that not all wikis are created equal, though the major mainstream ones tend to be quite good.

- Reputable news sources. The less frequently updated (e.g., quarterly, monthly, weekly) the better. Time resolves many early question and filters much churn. Finding several sources from several locations is quite useful. If you're interested in learning or improving a foreign language, reading or listening to news in another language can be handy.

- Specific authors' blogs or article archives. Keep in mind that an authors' best work is typically what they've published, and many good writers have really poor blogs, websites, or far more often, Twitter or other social media feeds. There are exceptions, and those are what I'm pointing at. Note that this is five notches below that primary content: books.

- Broadcast news. Daily news has some of the least durable value of any information. Being aware of a five-minute headline summary is almost always sufficient. I typically rate radio over television and noncommercial / public broadcasting over private. I've never owned a television and haven't watched anything in years. I've all but entirely curtailed radio listening.

- Generally: avoid media which include or are supported by advertising. Ads have a reverse Midas touch: they turn everything to shit. See Hamilton Holt's 1909 book Commercialism and Journalism for an early succinct argument as to why. <https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft>. There's a larger literature: <https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...>.

- Online discussions. Most are poor. A very few are modestly useful. HN is among the best I know presently. I did some informal research in 2015 identifying where more substantive discussions might be found, with some interesting findings. See "Tracking the Conversation" <https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3hp41w/trackin...>. A similar methodology utilising other indicia (I've done some initial exploration based on philosophers) might be interesting or useful.

- Large-scale social media. Conversation scales poorly, and larger social media fail in many, many regards. Even intelligent people are often highly incoherent and/or generate far too many / off-topic posts or comments. Facebook is also all but entirely external-search opaque. I will occasionally use Nitter to either catch up on specific Twitter profiles (often via RSS), or to search some present topic of interest. Replies all but entirely detract from the overall informational value in most cases. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc. Reddit is virtually always useless, though there are occasional exceptions. The site's dynamics are actively anti-conversation-generative. Subreddits > 10k subscribers tend to fall tremendously in quality. Conversation scales poorly.

- Tabloid / outrage / promotional / SEO press. Crap used to either spread propaganda or sell ads, but I repeat myself. Block at your router. E.g., Daily Mail.

Once you've found useful information, find where those are being discussed significantly, intelligently, and non-polemically. You'll find in general that this is exceedingly rare.

There's a recurring trope in fiction and myth of the guru on the mountaintop. There's a reason for that.

If you want to talk to a guru, first sort out who that is. Then find their mountain. It's usually their book.

________________________________

Notes:

1. My own for over a decade has been "what are the big problems". Exploring potential candidates, what those are, what they're founded in, and how they interrelate could occupy many lifetimes.

2. <https://www.worldcat.org/title/300152756>

[dredmorbius]

And since I'm referencing this from later discussions: it's worth noting that this advice is somewhat aspirational on my part. I don't hold to this perfectly by any stretch. It is, however, what I'm striving toward.

Goal, not attainment.

[jesterson]

Thank you! Was going to write something similar, but you have made it much better than I possibly could.

Given the incredible complexity of finding valuable information on Internet nowadays, having something like sharing resources you consume may be very useful for OP and also for everyone. This is just an idea, not sure if someone have already made it. If so, i am curious to know

[dredmorbius]

Reading lists / bibliographies are tremendously useful, if that's what you mean by sharing resources.

I'd include both traditional texts and online sources (references, podcasts / blogs, etc.) among those. I've written / shared a few myself.

Or do you have something else in mind?

[jesterson]

Something like that. Where would one find intelligent people exchanging their reading lists/bibliographies?

[dredmorbius]

Authors. In books.

Sometimes as bibliographies, sometimes as footnotes, sometimes mentioned in acknowledgements.

One form I find particularly useful though it's seldom used is a bibliographic note. The one by William Ophuls in Plato's Revenge was sufficiently useful that I typed it out (and added links to sources or names where possible) here:

<https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6fgq8g/william...>

[dredmorbius]

Also, course syllabii, as mentioned in my first comment here.

Generally, I keep an eye (or ear) out for references which I think might prove interesting.

William Ophuls, mentioned previously, was mentioned in an aside during a seminar I was listening to (posted to YouTube from a university institute of interest). I think I spent a few hours replaying the clip and trying various search variations before I got the author's name right. As you might guess by my retyping his bibliographic note, I found his work to be fascinating in its own right, as well as an invaluable guide to other useful sources.

Books without bibliographies, footnotes, or endnotes lose a tremendous amount of value compared to those with. Unless a text is itself a significant primary source or original account this is largely inexcusable. You'll occasionally find reading lists compiled by others --- I've added, for example Gabriella Lim's bibliography to my own media and disinformation list. Hers is here: <https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Disinformat...> (PDF)

Interest and advocacy groups or institutes will sometimes list references or recommended readings. Those can be worth exploring.

But in general, listen for mentions of authors, books, etc., in different contexts and follow up on those. If the same appear repeatedly, see if they're substantive or worth exploration (some are, some aren't). It doesn't hurt to note who's good at recommending worthwhile sources. And beware of biases --- I'll often do oppositional reading, looking for critics and refutations of various works. Sometimes those are valid, sometimes not. You'll often recognise with time what objections are common, which unusual, and whether or not they're substantive or specious.

Author's names or book titles themselves become useful search terms. If you're looking for a group discussing a specific author ... search that author's name. (Many such discussions ... are of poor quality. There are some exceptions.)

Ezra Klein closes his podcast interviews by asking for three book recommendations from the guest. That's an ... interesting and eclectic list. It's been compiled here: <https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.ht...>

[jesterson]

Thank you so much for detailed response. There's a lot to think of. Cheers

[lemonade5117]

Thanks, that's very comprehensive! I'll have to try finding some good podcasts.

[gardenfelder]

Interesting fact ~5 hours into this story: lemonade5117 has yet to enter the conversation. Seems to me that there really is not enough information to evaluate the query: would help to know more about his/her goals and interests.

[lemonade5117]

Ah, sorry I'm probably in a different timezone. As for goals, I know having a specific goal when asking for advice is ideal, but I guess I don't really have one. I guess I'm kind of lost in life and want to expose myself to people who are smart and sort of have it figured out.

[gardenfelder]

Still, would help to know more about you, your skills, experience, passions, etc.

Not to overgeneralize here, but a lot of the HN participants are technically skilled, even to the level of "nerdish", enjoying making things that amaze and amuse. Where does that fit into your life's experience?

[luantrindade]

You have an opportunity in each corner if you allow yourself to see it!

[ktpecot]

Could try checking out bigger blogs that you like and joining their discord for better/more stimulating interactions than comments. Also if you’re in a big enough city Less Wrong and EA probably have in person meetups. If they don’t they have a lot of resources for starting them.

[bvoq]

Go to a local Hackerspace if you find one.

4chan /g and /sci will certainly challenge you, if you challenge them. 3b1b discord group is also nice. Lesswrong and starslatecodex are nice for blogging.

[cblockdude]

Until recently, this was very difficult to do. Only now with the mainstream emergence of blockchain, this has become easy. Blockchain is the smartest idea. Smart people are everyone now and accessible. You just need to sign a smart contract with them and start interacting. In no time, you will be smart too. And the good thing about blockchain is that your oppressive goverments cant control it, which means they can't stop you from becoming smart.

[julienreszka]

Don't hesitate to reach out, people answer more often than you would think and you risk about nothing

[danielmarkbruce]

Non-fiction books. The Economist.

[jesterson]

The Economist? Pretentious leftist echo-chamber. OP was asking about expanding, not shrinking their worldview

[danielmarkbruce]

It might well be pretentious... but leftist? I guess from a certain point on the spectrum it might appear that way. My far right libertarian friend might think it's leftist...Is the editorial board on the WSJ leftist too?

[jesterson]

Right, wsj is quite leftist as well.

That’s the problem with media - ideally it should be balanced instead of pushing particular agenda, whether it’s left or right.

To be fair, the Economist was close to it for some time. I was a fervent reader, but it was hard not to notice systemic decline in quality over years.

[danielmarkbruce]

This is today's editorial board piece from WSJ:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/randi-weingarten-flunks-the-pan...

The editorial board at WSJ meets no reasonable definition of leftist.

[hunglee2]

join online communities at random and learn why people think they way they do. Particularly seek out those communities whose opinions puzzle you.