The Internet and the Age of Echo Chambers

This is a concept that I kind of am fascinated, largely due to listening to a variety of talk radio, and hearing different perspectives on conspiracy theories (we didn't land on the moon!) to how information is disseminated.

I also have been studying counseling and psychology for a number of years, and one facet that is fundamental to human psychology is that change is rarely easy. No matter the person, how open they are, how willing they are to change, how much they recognize that some information is inaccurate, unreliable, or downright harmful, as human beings, we tend to gravitate towards what is comfortable. Change is rarely comfortable, and we might avoid it, or embrace what part, but not embrace the other.

And this can be seen in different aspects of society, with the Internet serving as kind of a multiplying factor to that effect. We have a lot of information now, but that doesn't make it any easier if we don't know how to think critically, how to determine primary, secondary and tertiary sources, or even engage material. Really, our instantaneous culture has made thinking critically very difficult, because there is so much information that it overwhelms, and we run to comfortable sources to make conclusions.

For me, a solution is not to force the issue. Too often, the Internet can be the battle ground for ideological crusaders (I'm guilty of that at one point) without any empathy for the other side's position. I certainly don't agree with all the positions out there, but that doesn't mean I can understand and even empathize with why someone would believe that, regardless of how nonsensical it sounds to me.

To use an illustration, a friend of mine is recently widowed (tragically). However, she was amazed by the amount of reactions she got after a month past, and she was still sad. Everyone else had moved on, or didn't see how it impacted their lives. They had moved on, but didn't recognize her point of view and how long term this would impact her.

So, my suggestion is empathy. There is no need to agree on anything, but I also would want to take time to understand an individual and their beliefs. A lot of times, beliefs, opinions and such are rooted in in personal identity, and attacking those beliefs is tantamount to attacking that individual's person-hood. Why should someone listen me if they think I'm on the attack?

Education is important, but empathy and open dialog can go a long way to helping people take their own steps in evaluating their own beliefs and opinions.

 

It is commonly alleged that scientists ignore unpopular ideas and don't investigate uncomfortable or fringe topics, but this isn't really true.

UFOs and all variety of paranormal phenomena have been investigated by scientists, sometimes by scientists who really wanted to prove that they were real. The reason you never hear confirmation of such things is because, lo and behold, there isn't any. Supernatural incidents, alien encounters--they aren't reported by mainstream scientists because, as much as they are investigated, they remain unsubstantiated if not downright disproven.

There are many things in this universe that we don't understand. What there is not, however, is a rash of aliens visiting this planet that we are somehow unaware of. And despite people throwing tons of time and equipment at the issue, there is precisely zero evidence for ghosts... at all. The people who purport to be able to hunt/detect ghosts are universally charlatans, and yes, their claims have been evaluated (and thoroughly rejected) through scientific methods.

Science is not a religion and the scientific community does not behave like a church. Bad ideas can spread through scientific means--science doesn't always get it right, and sometimes well-meaning people make mistakes, and sometimes fraudsters go undetected for too long--but scientific channels eventually get it right, and filter out the nonsense. It can, of course, take time. But scientists are not out there willfully ignoring vast fields of study because they fear seeing paranormal activities confirmed or something. These things just have been studied, often extensively, only to find there's no "there" there.

 

Sure. But none of those interpretations take evidence that could be considered "ghosts are real" and turns it into "ghosts aren't real" (to pick an example). All evidence is interpreted--interpretation is what humans do. But we can say with high confidence that (for instance) ghosts aren't real. We've looked. A lot.

That's why scientists have peer review and why experiments and evidence must be documented and shared. Everyone is biased, but everyone isn't going to have the same biases, so when different people with different views and biases all study the same things and reach the same conclusion... you can be pretty sure that it wasn't the result of bias.

One should always be open to the possibility of new evidence, but that's not the same as believing literally anything is possible (or plausible), which is where that line of thinking tends to lead.

 

Thank you, Emilia for a truly awesome thread! I ventured in here totally randomly but feel exactly as you do that the internet actually drives conflict rather than bringing people together.

The problem people have in vetting what they see online is the 21st century equivalent of the War of the Worlds social experiment. Note Onion articles or Dihydrogen Monoxide or the photo of Spielberg bagging a triceratops to see how gullible people are.



We still feel that if something looks and feels like journalism, it can be trusted. (This is also why infomercials are styled the way they are. It's a Jedi mind-trick that influences the weak-willed.) There is also the inversion, where people have become so cynical of the mainstream media that they are MORE inclined to pay attention to firebrands like your Alex Jones' whose product is to tell people that up is down and black is white.

Newspapers have a small section reserved for "letters to the editor". That's the space that used to be reserved for the peanut-gallery. I don't know what criteria editors use to decide which ones to post or not, but to this day they still tend to be fairly cogent rebuttals, albeit ideologically charged, but because they were separated from the original article, both in space and time, people had time to mull over a news story first. But today, almost every news article online has a comments section immediately underneath that is updating moment by moment. In effect, it would be like drinking your coffee and reading the morning newspaper in the middle of a crowded streetcorner with random bystanders getting into your face and telling you how to interpret it. It's hard to disregard that noise. The second someone says something controversial, the news story disappears in your mind and it becomes all about trying to talk down a stubborn troll.

I really think this is a HUGE part of why we've gotten to where we are.

What "connection" means is to expose ourselves to everyone else all the time, and the fact is that not everyone's opinion is worth our attention. So what happens is that the loudest voice, the squeakiest wheel, gets the grease.

I also think this is why the kinds of topics you see people talk about tend to relate about policing online behavior. The anti-shaming movement, for instance. If people were not effectively publishing their life online as a reality show, they probably would not get hit up by drive-by haters as much.



So I would go way beyond fretting that the internet has caused people to believe in CTs or disbelieve science and say that it's destroying our interpersonal skills and erasing barriers between what constitutes a friend vs. an acquaintance vs. a complete stranger or public vs. private life.

The irony is that while there is this constant plea for more tolerance and sensitivity online, the actual quality of online communication is still racing to the bottom of the cesspool.

 

Reflecting on {Emilia}’s mentioning intersubjectivity and dancing with Wikipedia and other pages since it’s a new term for me (thanks for the interesting afternoon {E}), as well as Robert’s and fireproof’s thoughts on tribalism and desire for familiarity makes me wonder who we are ever talking to online. Especially so since writing is a format which is alien to our evolution, an artificial construct made to convey ideas a task which is difficult enough with words face to face, one is left judging what’s in front of you as text as well as divining the skill of the writer to write, their knowledge of the subject, and your own ability to comprehend it. It’s a wonder we can communicate at all.

One thing I came upon was ‘thought communities’ which here I’ll lift from Wiki (the levels of humor here, heh) and the book it’s from, Social Mindscapes, looks like a fascinating read.

As I understand the points above, posters and people at large are always working from a host of perspectives at any given moment. In communicating with someone those perspectives can be working to provide common understanding but also can be presenting defense against rival perspectives without being consciously aware. Dealing with the Internet this becomes much harder since text is very easy to misconstrue just from the mechanics of writing alone, let alone from the topic itself.

What the Internet can provide is ready like thought communities for any idea. No matter how far out of mainstream, Flat Earth, Lizard Aliens, Breatharians, one can find like minds to socialize with and support one’s idea no matter how unusual. Before computers, such folks were confined to pamphlets and their own wallets by and large, in spite of the occasional Erich von Däniken.

Confronting the ideas of such far out folks is not just a matter of information; it also confronts their sense of community that they get from that particular thought community. Contradictory information is ignored not just because it doesn’t agree with their view, but also because it doesn’t satisfy why they believe what they do. The rival information unsettles their view of community.

What’s to be done? Confronting the why they believe rather than the what that they believe. Of course engaging speakers like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Brian Cox are great, but so is humor itself. Abbot and Costello’s 7x13=28 gag is grand way to get a kid to like sitting down to Math or ‘Whos on First’ for studying language. Both are subjects many kids see as ‘hard’; humor is a great passport into a thought community they might otherwise resist. Folks believing the wacky may need to feel comfortable about learning something that challenges their assumptions before they can begin learning something that does so?

 

That's such a marvelous gag that I'll post it for reference.

 

The original post was a gag and a parody, and a lot of those comments were people in on the joke and playing along. I think a lot fewer people actually believed this was real than the replies would suggest.

 

I never factored that in. I HOPE you're right