{"id":33766,"date":"2018-04-26T07:41:36","date_gmt":"2018-04-26T12:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33766"},"modified":"2018-04-26T07:41:36","modified_gmt":"2018-04-26T12:41:36","slug":"escape-the-echo-chamber","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33766","title":{"rendered":"Escape the Echo\u00a0Chamber"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Escape the Echo\u00a0Chamber<\/a><\/h3>\n

First you don\u2019t hear other views. Then you can\u2019t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a\u00a0cult\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
<\/canvas><\/div>\n<\/div>
Photo: Scott Olson\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n

S<\/span>omething has gone wrong with the flow of information. It\u2019s not just that different people are drawing subtly different conclusions from the same evidence. It seems like different intellectual communities no longer share basic foundational beliefs. Maybe nobody cares about the truth anymore, as some have started to worry. Maybe political allegiance has replaced basic reasoning skills. Maybe we\u2019ve all become trapped in echo chambers of our own making\u200a\u2014\u200awrapping ourselves in an intellectually impenetrable layer of likeminded friends and web pages and social media feeds.<\/p>\n

But there are two very different phenomena at play here, each of which subvert the flow of information in very distinct ways. Let\u2019s call them echo chambers<\/em> and epistemic bubbles<\/em>. Both are social structures that systematically exclude sources of information. Both exaggerate their members\u2019 confidence in their beliefs. But they work in entirely different ways, and they require very different modes of intervention. An epistemic bubble is when you don\u2019t hear<\/em>people from the other side. An echo chamber is what happens when you don\u2019t trust<\/em>people from the other side.<\/span><\/p>\n

Current usage has blurred this crucial distinction, so let me introduce a somewhat artificial taxonomy. An \u2018epistemic bubble\u2019 is an informational network from which relevant voices have been excluded<\/em> by omission<\/em>. That omission might be purposeful: we might be selectively avoiding contact with contrary views because, say, they make us uncomfortable. As social scientists tell<\/a> us, we like to engage in selective exposure, seeking out information that confirms our own worldview. But that omission can also be entirely inadvertent. Even if we\u2019re not actively trying to avoid disagreement, our Facebook friends tend to share our views and interests.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Escape the Echo\u00a0Chamber First you don\u2019t hear other views. Then you can\u2019t trust them. Your personal information network entraps you just like a\u00a0cult\u00a0 Photo: Scott Olson\/Getty Images Something has gone wrong with the flow of information. It\u2019s not just that different people are drawing subtly different conclusions from the same evidence. It seems like different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19936,67,19937,14781,19938,1493,3034,14273,19939,1169,9695,815,1250],"class_list":["post-33766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-aeon-magazine","tag-beliefs","tag-c-thi-nguyen","tag-echo-chamber","tag-epistemic-bubbles","tag-facebook","tag-information","tag-medium","tag-omission","tag-social-media","tag-social-structure","tag-trust","tag-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33767,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33766\/revisions\/33767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}