![]() ![]() Even if we’re not actively trying to avoid disagreement, our Facebook friends tend to share our views and interests. But that omission can also be entirely inadvertent. As social scientists tell us, we like to engage in selective exposure, seeking out information that confirms our own worldview. That omission might be purposeful: we might be selectively avoiding contact with contrary views because, say, they make us uncomfortable. An ‘epistemic bubble’ is an informational network from which relevant voices have been excluded by omission. An echo chamber is what happens when you don’t trust people from the other side.Ĭurrent usage has blurred this crucial distinction, so let me introduce a somewhat artificial taxonomy. An epistemic bubble is when you don’t hear people from the other side. But they work in entirely different ways, and they require very different modes of intervention. ![]() Both exaggerate their members’ confidence in their beliefs. Both are social structures that systematically exclude sources of information. Let’s call them echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Maybe we’ve all become trapped in echo chambers of our own making – wrapping ourselves in an intellectually impenetrable layer of likeminded friends and web pages and social media feeds.īut there are two very different phenomena at play here, each of which subvert the flow of information in very distinct ways. Maybe political allegiance has replaced basic reasoning skills. Maybe nobody cares about the truth anymore, as some have started to worry. It seems like different intellectual communities no longer share basic foundational beliefs. It’s not just that different people are drawing subtly different conclusions from the same evidence. Something has gone wrong with the flow of information. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |