
Escape the echo chamber - kawera
https://aeon.co/essays/why-its-as-hard-to-escape-an-echo-chamber-as-it-is-to-flee-a-cult
======
ScottBurson
_Look at the many stories of people leaving cults and echo chambers. Take, for
example, the story of Derek Black in Florida – raised by a neo-Nazi father,
and groomed from childhood to be a neo-Nazi leader. Black left the movement
by, basically, performing a social reboot. He completely abandoned everything
he’d believed in, and spent years building a new belief system from scratch.
He immersed himself broadly and open-mindedly in everything he’d missed – pop
culture, Arabic literature, the mainstream media, rap – all with an overall
attitude of generosity and trust. It was the project of years and a major act
of self-reconstruction_

This makes it sound like Black undertook this "reboot" on his own, just by
reading and listening. That's not how Black himself tells the story:

 _In 2010, I moved across the state and started college at this little liberal
arts college in Florida, which was about three and a half hours from home_

Okay, this was one step he did take on his own: he changed his environment.
But eventually he started talking to his fellow students.

 _And I would say, “This is what I believe about I.Q. differences, I have 12
different studies that have been published over the years, here’s the journal
that’s put this stuff together, I believe that this is true, that race
predicts I.Q. and that there were I.Q. differences in races.” And they would
come back with 150 more recent, more well researched studies and explain to me
how statistics works and we would go back and forth until I would come to the
end of that argument and I’d say, Yes that makes sense, that does not hold
together and I’ll remove that from my ideological toolbox but everything else
is still there. And we did that over a year or two on one thing after another
until I got to a point where I didn’t believe it anymore._

The whole thing (it's a podcast transcript) is worth reading:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/podcasts/the-daily-
transc...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/podcasts/the-daily-transcript-
derek-black.html)

~~~
jackfraser
> And they would come back with 150 more recent, more well researched studies
> and explain to me how statistics works

Has anyone actually put this data together in a presentable way? I've only
seen things that say the opposite and it would be good to actually have a read
of something well-formed that sets the modern progressive case for dealing
with this research, beyond simply ignoring it altogether.

~~~
3131s
Tell them that it is completely impossible to set up rigorous controls in a
study of ethnicity and intelligence anyway.

The bigger question is why do some people care so much and why are they so
focused on ethnicity among many other data points that could be predictive of
intelligence. I typically ask these people if some connection between race and
intelligence actually existed, is it your intention to change how society is
organized or governed somehow? If it is, then there are historical examples of
that going badly, and if not, then why is the answer important?

~~~
arkh
If IQ is closely related to genetics and IQ is important for your society (two
bold assumptions) you could argue for some eugenics and advantage high IQ
people for reproduction.

But as you say it could go really bad really fast. Especially if some of those
high IQ genes are linked to some illness.

For your question about why some people are focused on ethnicity? As usual:
people's appearance are easier to discriminate upon so it makes it easy to
make different people an out-group. But it's not just some supremacists doing
it: the hardcore NA "diversity is good" groups focus on skin color. I'd argue
they seem to be worse because it feels like for them all blacks are the same
(African American) while the recent history of Africa should tell them how
wrong it is.

~~~
primitur
>argue for some eugenics and advantage high IQ people for reproduction

See .. I find this line of thinking heinous. Why do you not instantly trip up
when you type this?

~~~
lopmotr
You should have a reason for that. Just feeling terrible might mean you're
inside an echo chamber.

Most people support eugenics in the form of outlawing incest because it can
lead to faulty offspring. We also think treating neurodegenerative diseases is
a good thing. Most parents also hope their kids will be smart. Or at least
they don't hope for the opposite. Women don't like to have kids past 40 partly
because of higher risk of Down's syndrome. And there's a test for that which
can help them decide to abort the baby. All these things are us trying to make
future humans smarter, mostly by eugenic techniques.

Maybe you're thinking of actually killing people? That's not quite the same as
selective breeding.

~~~
primitur
Those are all perfectly appealing reasons to step one iota closer to the
reality described, which is that we should promote the DNA-privileged forward
on the sexual reproduction stack.

Which is something, I think, a little different to all the nice, shiny new
things we're getting from CRISPR, et al., sure. Its the dangerous, vile things
I care about: opening the door for selective breeding and clones, racial
purism, etc.

The technology is one thing; the ethics another tube entirely. Somethings
things go boom, othertimes _BOOM_.

~~~
lopmotr
What's wrong with racial purism? We do it with dog breeding. What are the
ethical problems?

~~~
scatters
Purebred dogs suffer a host of genetic diseases resulting in considerable
suffering.

------
hawktheslayer
To try and escape both pitfalls I attempt to follow Altucher's advice to have
less opinions.

[https://jamesaltucher.com/2012/12/ten-reasons-i-dont-have-
op...](https://jamesaltucher.com/2012/12/ten-reasons-i-dont-have-opinions/)

~~~
eksemplar
Which is a nice thought, but he’s outsourcing his opinions to someone else and
betting on them to make the right call. Most people who did that in Syria are
now dead or fleeing.

If you’re wealthy this is no problem of course. The wealthier you are, the
less opinions you should share or fight for. You can afford this because you
can always put your fortune (and yourself) into an available free society with
property rights.

If you’re poor however, it only works as long as reason and democracty
triumphs in your society. Because nobody will want you if you ever have to
flee.

~~~
icebraining
Rich-shaming for that post was already weird, but pulling the Syrian war is
downright bizarre.

Are you saying the Syrians caused the war, and did that by not having enough
opinions?

------
imartin2k
Maybe the best article I’ve read on the topic. Too often people use terms like
filter bubble or echo chamber and mean different things. Generally, the lack
of access to contrarian viewpoints. But that’s rarely the actual problem. If
the author is correct, it’s the lack of trust.

This is especially great: “Here’s a basic check: does a community’s belief
system actively undermine the trustworthiness of any outsiders who don’t
subscribe to its central dogmas? Then it’s probably an echo chamber.”

------
gnicholas
I work in the arena of echo chambers [1] and wrote a piece on the different
usage of the terms "filter bubble" and "echo chamber" [2]. Interesting that
the author chose "echo chamber", even though "filter bubble" tends to be used
more often in academic settings.

1: [http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com](http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com)

2: [https://medium.com/@nicklum/the-surprising-difference-
betwee...](https://medium.com/@nicklum/the-surprising-difference-between-
filter-bubble-and-echo-chamber-b909ef2542cc)

------
kristianc
> A social network composed entirely of incredibly smart, obsessive opera fans
> would deliver all the information I could want about the opera scene, but it
> would fail to clue me in to the fact that, say, my country had been infested
> by a rising tide of neo-Nazis.

Except it would. I know no-one that talks about opera (or anything) all of the
time, and it's hard to think that a rising tide of neo-Nazis would escape the
notice of a group of reasonably educated, establishment liberals.

Much of filter bubble theory as it applies to social media seems to treat
humans as unthinking demographic blobs defined entirely by their status and
political beliefs, and the bubble as something impenetrable, through which new
information about the world cannot pass.

Sure, within groups there is groupthink, and I get the appeal of techno-
dystopianism, but I can't accept the idea that this is in any way a new
phenomenon, or that we are not more connected to new ideas now than we have
ever been.

~~~
barrkel
> _it 's hard to think that a rising tide of neo-Nazis would escape the notice
> of a group of reasonably educated, establishment liberals_

It's more likely that a bubble of "reasonably educated, establishment
liberals" would not understand the grievances of another group of people, and
perceive them through the lens of "a rising tide of neo-Nazis", othering them
and directly creating conflict, rather than understanding them.

This is how the filter bubble actually works. It's not that the information
doesn't come through; it's that it comes through a glass darkly, at high risk
of alienation from people holding out-group views.

If, for example, you think that people who don't like change in the social
composition of their community are morally wrong for feeling uncomfortable,
you're going to push for cultural movements that demonize them. And that makes
the problem worse; it amplifies conflict and widens the cracks in society.

There are multiple self-coherent but mutually incoherent views on how society
should be structured. As I get older, I find myself feeling less strongly
about one view versus another. I am most suspicious of those who believe they
have found the one true view; their zeal for change isn't tempered by doubt.
No matter which coherent perspective you have, you won't succeed in moving
people with other perspectives if you don't acknowledge that their
perspectives are also coherent. Your best bet for achieving change is
reframing that change within the perspective of those you're trying to
convince. Saying that the people you're trying to convince are evil because
their view is wrong won't end well.

------
jamesblonde
I believe that there are even cases of echo chambers for systems software out
there. For example, the database community is pretty tight with a center of
gravity around Stonebraker (Postgres, Vertica for columnar stores, voltdb for
NewSQL dbs). Well, there's a DB out there for OLTP workloads called NDB (MySQL
Cluster) and not only is it the fastest in the world (200m transactions/sec on
commodity hardware), but it is also GPL-v2 licensed. But, it's completely
unknown in the valley. And when evidence is presented about it it, the
evidence is ignored and conflated "in echo chambers, other voices are actively
undermined"

Reference: [http://mikaelronstrom.blogspot.se/2015/03/200m-reads-per-
sec...](http://mikaelronstrom.blogspot.se/2015/03/200m-reads-per-second-in-
mysql-cluster.html)

------
kazinator
> _Notice that the logic of the echo chamber depends on the order in which we
> encounter the evidence._

That proves it is in fact bad logic; the victims of the echo chamber are _not_
rational to the point of behaving in a logically sound way.

In actual logic, the order among a set of prepositions makes no difference and
they can be evaluated in parallel also to the extent that they are
independent; there are no side-effects.

If two propositions A and B contradict each other, that one of them you heard
first isn't necessarily the true one.

If everyone is working in good faith (mistakes are acknowledged and fixed)
then rather chronologically _later_ propositions should be more trustworthy.
People who are not willing to replace old propositions with new ones that
contradict them are making themselves impervious to the good-faith improvement
in understanding.

------
IIAOPSW
>we get much of our news from Facebook feeds and similar sorts of social
media.

I disagree with the premise already. Anyone got data? How many people actually
get their news from FB?

And no hn, reddit and other content aggregators are not just as bad. Following
topics != following people.

------
ozten
Not sure why, but that font Academica Book Pro vibrates on my screen and is
difficult to read. Maybe it's too thin? It is a serif font and looks optimized
for print. Firefox and Chrome on Mac.

------
overloadedArgs

      Maybe political allegiance has replaced 
      basic reasoning skills.
    

Not for one second, do I buy into that idea. Not for one second, do I imagine,
that because of one election result, that suddenly people have somehow been
transformed into anything vastly different throughout the world.

We have phases, where aggregate priciples of interaction change, not unlike
shifts in musical taste. Cycles of class and intellectualism, and cycles of
low-brow simplicity. Each pole has its own facets and degrees of appeal and
attraction. The cycles are an expression of the prevailing winds for the
dominant age group.

For the most part, a lot of people clearly thought their vote didn't matter,
didn't really care who got elected, developed an opinion that the presidency
doesn't matter, and cast the vote that seemed to be biggest joke.

Two other, much smaller, groups of people exist: those that genuinely believe
a tiny, weak, incompetant and ineffectual government is a good thing (because
substitute teachers aren't as demanding), and those that genuinely want to
help, improve the world, and make a difference in benefitting the lives of as
many people as possible, starting with those that have the least going for
them.

The goof offs, though, voted the most and won. That's it. That's the only
thing that happened, and it's not a disaster yet. Let's see if we can keep it
that way, and stay on track.

There's some violence and sabotage in the picture too, and all of it stems
from an unnecessary war in Iraq that should have never happened. Some of the
very real political destabilization on the fringes is essentially blowback and
revenge for that debacle. Take a step back, and note the coincidence in timing
for each. I'm not sure this stuff will difuse itself. It may simmer on in the
background for some time, and might not have any solution, as retaliation
tends to fuel a continuity of grudges.

------
rapnie
Your page has loads of problems! Like: Who are you? Why would I trust you?
What's your business model? What's your privacy policy? Code of Ethics?
Security? How does it work?

I would not install the app, nor fill in your website forms before anything
like that is clear!

Maybe you should interact with The Center for Humane Technology
(humanetech.com), because the subject matter is really interesting, and the
problem and ways to avoid it need more attention.

~~~
rapnie
I am getting downvoted, but this is honest feedback. Points for improvement.

~~~
icebraining
Are you sure you've posted on the right thread? You've probably been downvoted
because those questions are either easily answerable or simply don't make
sense (what app?).

~~~
rapnie
Wow, thanks for pointing that out. This is my mistake! I was commenting on
gnicholas above, and this link:

[http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com/](http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com/)

My bad, everyone :(

