#echo chambers

[whatbigotspost]

It’s only an 11 min listen linked but to summarize:

•we’re pretty much never changing people’s minds who don’t agree with us

•we’re in echo chambers of feedback for what we already believe

•we get addicted on people who think like us already liking our posts and that reinforces and expands what we already generally think and feel

•it’s happening right now like this is it occurring wheeeeeeeee 😂🔫

#social media #echo chambers

[frameacloud]

“Some weres in the recent past have made some ‘rules’ for therianthropy.  Ignore these.  There are no rules that any of these people can place over YOU and your spiritual beliefs.  Some will claim that you must be a predatory animal, or you cannot be a mythical beast.  Please do not fall for this.  These rules may be true for their small groups, or their friends, but they do not govern therianthropy.  Most of these people create rules to limit the number of members in their group, or to exclude people from therianthropy altogether.  These people have no right, and you shouldn’t listen to them.  Once again, find the truth for yourself.  The werecommunity has many members who believe they are mice, deer, rabbits, snakes, dragons, unicorns, and gryphons.  You find out what’s true for yourself, and nothing else matters.”

- Excerpt from “Introduction to the Newbie’s Guide,” by Jakkal, in 2001. You can read the full article here.

Some present-day context: Jakkal is one of the most respected and influential writers of the therianthrope community of the 1990s. She ran one of the main therian sites, which is where this article was. At the time, it was common to call therians “weres,” from the word “werewolf.” Today you can still find some therian groups who have made themselves echo chambers where they try to push misinformation of the very kind that Jakkal warns against in this piece from over two decades ago. Sharing and reading widely from different times and places in our communities-- especially about harmless opinions and experiences that differ from our own-- are important methods for preventing such echo chambers of misinformation.

#therian #therianthrope #therianthropy #theriomythic #quote #mouse #deer #rabbit #snake #dragon #unicorn #gryphon #carnivore #gatekeeping #exclusion #echo chambers #rules #history #mythical being #mythical creature #jakkal #werewolf #were #only you can know who you are #rated G #from 2001 #screen reader friendly #alterhuman history

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ostromizing democracy

Friday (May 5), I’ll be at the Books, Inc in Mountain View with Mitch Kapor for my novel Red Team Blues; and this weekend (May 6/7), I’ll be in Berkeley at the Bay Area Bookfest.

You know how “realist” has become a synonym for “asshole?” As in, “I’m not a racist, I’m just a ‘race realist?’” That same “realism” is also used to discredit the idea of democracy itself, among a group of self-styled “libertarian elitists,” who claim that social science proves that democracy doesn’t work — and can’t work.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

You’ve likely encountered elements of this ideology in the wild. Perhaps you’ve heard about how our cognitive biases make us incapable of deliberating, that “reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments.”

Or maybe you’ve heard that voters are “rationally ignorant,” choosing not to become informed about politics because their vote doesn’t have enough influence to justify the cognitive expenditure of figuring out how to cast it.

There’s the “backfire effect,” the idea that rational argument doesn’t make us change our minds, but rather, drives us to double-down on our own cherished beliefs. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s the Asch effect, which says that we will change our minds based on pressure from the majority, even if we know they’re wrong.

Finally, there’s the fact that the public Just Doesn’t Understand Economics. When you compare the views of the average person to the views of the average PhD economist, you find that the public sharply disagrees with such obvious truths as “we should only worry about how big the pie is, not how big my slice is?” These fools just can’t understand that an economy where their boss gets richer and they get poorer is a good economy, so long as it’s growing overall!

That’s why noted “realist” Peter Thiel thinks women shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Thiel says that mothers are apt to sideline the “science” of economics for the soppy, sentimental idea that children shouldn’t starve to death and thus vote for politicians who are willing to tax rich people. Thus do we find ourselves on the road to serfdom:

https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/

Other realists go even further, suggesting that anyone who disagrees with orthodox (Chicago School) economists shouldn’t be allowed to vote: “[a]nyone who opposes surge pricing should be disenfranchised. That’s how we should decide who decides in epistocracy.”

Add it all up and you get the various “libertarian” cases for abolishing democracy. Some of these libertarian elitists want to replace democracy with markets, because “markets impose an effective ‘user fee’ for irrationality that is absent from democracy.

Others say we should limit voting to “Vulcans” who can pass a knowledge test about the views of neoclassical economists, and if this means that fewer Black people and women are eligible to vote because either condition is “negatively correlated” with familiarity with “politics,” then so mote be it. After all, these groups are “much more likely than others to be mistaken about what they really need”:

https://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2015/03/the-demographic-argument-for-compulsory-voting-with-a-guest-appearance-by-the-real-reason-the-left-advocates-compulsory-voting/

These arguments and some of their most gaping errors are rehearsed in an excellent Democracy Journal article by Henry Farrell, Hugo Mercier, and Melissa Schwartzberg (Mercier’s research is often misinterpreted and misquoted by libertarian elitists to bolster their position):

https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/68/the-new-libertarian-elitists/

The article is a companion piece to a new academic article in American Political Science Review, where the authors propose a new subdiscipline of political science, Analytical Democracy Theory:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/analytical-democratic-theory-a-microfoundational-approach/739A9A928A99A47994E4585059B03398

What’s “Analytical Democracy Theory?” It’s the systematic study of when and how collective decision-making works, and when it goes wrong. Because the libertarian elitists aren’t completely, utterly wrong — there are times when groups of people make bad decisions. From that crumb of truth, the libertarian elitists theorize an entire nihilistic cake in which self-governance is impossible and where we fools and sentimentalists must be subjugated to the will of our intellectual betters, for our own good.

This isn’t the first time libertarian political scientists have pulled this trick. You’ve probably heard of the “Tragedy of the Commons,” which claims to be a “realist” account of what happens when people try to share something — a park, a beach, a forest — without anyone owning it. According to the “tragedy,” these commons are inevitably ruined by “rational” actors who know that if they don’t overgraze, pollute or despoil, someone else will, so they might as well get there first.

The Tragedy of the Commons feels right, and we’ve all experienced some version of it — the messy kitchen at your office or student house-share, the litter in the park, etc. But the paper that brought us the idea of the Tragedy of the Commons, published in 1968 by Garrett Hardin in Science, was a hoax:

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/01/the-tragedy-of-the-commons-how-ecofascism-was-smuggled-into-mainstream-thought/

Hardin didn’t just claim that some commons turned tragic — he claimed that the tragedy was inevitable, and, moreover, that every commons had experienced a tragedy. But Hardin made it all up. It wasn’t true. What’s more, Hardin — an ardent white nationalist — used his “realist’s account of the commons to justify colonization and genocide.

After all, if the people who lived in these colonized places didn’t have property rights to keep their commons from tragifying, then those commons were already doomed. The colonizers who seized their lands and murdered the people they found there were actually saving the colonized from their own tragedies.

Hardin went on to pioneer the idea of “lifeboat ethics,” a greased slide to mass-extermination of “inferior” people (Hardin was also a eugenicist) in order to save our planet from “overpopulation.”

Hardin’s flawed account of the commons is a sterling example of the problem with economism, the ideology that underpins neoclassical economics:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

Economism was summed up in by Ely Devons, who quipped “”If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’”

Hardin asked himself, “If I were reliant upon a commons, what would I do?” And, being a realist (that is, an asshole), Hardin decided that he would steal everything from the commons because that’s what the other realists would do if he didn’t get there first.

Hardin didn’t go and look at a commons. But someone else did.

Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel for her work studying the properties of successful, durable commons. She went and looked at commons:

https://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/elinor-ostroms-8-principles-managing-commmons

Ostom codified the circumstances, mechanisms and principles that distinguished successful commons from failed commons.

Analytical Democratic Theory proposes doing for democratic deliberation what Ostrom did for commons: to create an empirical account of the methods, arrangements, circumstances and systems that produce good group reasoning, and avoid the pitfalls that lead to bad group reasoning. The economists’ term for this is microfoundations: the close study of interaction among individuals, which then produces a “macro” account of how to structure whole societies.

Here are some examples of how microfoundations can answer some very big questions:

Backfire effects: The original backfire effect research was a fluke. It turns out that in most cases, people who are presented with well-sourced facts and good arguments change their minds — but not always.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-019-09528-x

Rational ignorance: Contrary to the predictions of “rational ignorance” theory, people who care about specific issues become “issue publics” who are incredibly knowledgeable about it, and deeply investigate and respond to candidates’ positions:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08913810608443650

Rational ignorance is a mirage, caused by giving people questionnaires about politics in general, rather than the politics that affects them directly and personally.

“Myside” bias: Even when people strongly identify with a group, they are capable of filtering out “erroneous messages” that come from that group if they get good, contradictory evidence:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237827

Majority bias: People are capable of rejecting the consensus of majorities, when the majority view is implausible, or when the majority is small, or when the majority is not perceived as benevolent. The Asch effect is “folklore”: yes, people may say that they hold a majority view when they face social sanction for rejecting it, but that doesn’t mean they’ve changed their minds:

https://alexandercoppock.com/guess_coppock_2020.pdf

Notwithstanding all this, democracy’s cheerleaders have some major gaps in the evidence to support their own view. Analytical Democratic Theory needs to investigate the nuts-and-bolts of when deliberation works and when it fails, including the tradeoffs between:

“social comfort and comfort in expressing dissent”:

https://sci-hub.se/10.1016/S0065-2601(05)37004-3

“shared common ground and some measure of preexisting disagreement”:

https://sci-hub.st/10.1037/0022-3514.91.6.1080

“group size and the need to represent diversity”:

https://www.nicolas.claidiere.fr/wp-content/uploads/DiscussionCrowds-Mercier-2021.pdf

“pressures for conformity and concerns for epistemic reputation”:

https://academic.oup.com/princeton-scholarship-online/book/30811

Realism is a demand dressed up as an observation. Realists like Margaret Thatcher insisted “there is no alternative” to neoliberalism, but what she meant was “stop trying to think of an alternative.” Hardin didn’t just claim that some commons turned tragic, he claimed that the tragedy of the commons was inevitable — that we shouldn’t even bother trying to create public goods.

The Ostrom method — actually studying how something works, rather than asking yourself how it would work if everyone thought like you — is a powerful tonic to this, but it’s not the only one. One of the things that makes science fiction so powerful is its ability to ask how a system would work under some different social arrangement.

It’s a radical proposition. Don’t just ask what the gadget does: ask who it does it for and who it does it to. That’s the foundation of Luddism, which is smeared as a technophobic rejection of technology, but which was only ever a social rejection of the specific economic arrangements of that technology. Specifically, the Luddites rejected the idea that machines should be “so easy a child could use them” in order to kidnap children from orphanages and working them to death at those machines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/20/love-the-machine/#hate-the-factory

There are sf writers who are making enormous strides in imagining how deliberative tools could enable new democratic institutions. Ruthanna Emrys’s stunning 2022 novel “A Half-Built Garden” is a tour-de-force:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/26/aislands/#dead-ringers

I like to think that I make a small contribution here, too. My next novel, “The Lost Cause,” is at root a tale of competing group decision-making methodologies, between post-Green New Deal repair collectives, seafaring anarcho-capitalist techno-solutionists, and terrorizing white nationalist militias (it’s out in November):

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Mountain View, Berkeley, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

[Image ID: A lab-coated scientist amidst an array of chemistry equipment. His head has been replaced with a 19th-century anatomical lateral cross-section showing the inside of a bearded man's head, including one lobe of his brain. He is peering at a large flask half-full of red liquid. Inside the liquid floats the Capitol building.]

#pluralistic #epistocracy #analytical democracy #echo chambers #issue publics #stop confusing the issue with facts #cognitive elites #rational ignorance #backfire effects #analytical democratic theory #scholarship #political science #democracy #epistemic democrats #microfoundations #libertarians #elinor ostrom #ostrom #deliberation

[engagepro-social]

The Dark Side of Social Media: Unveiling the Dangers of Homophily

In today's digital age, social media platforms have become integral parts of our lives, connecting us with others around the world. However, amidst the allure of connectivity, there lies a darker side to social media—one that perpetuates homophily, or the tendency for individuals to associate with others who share similar traits or interests. In this blog post, we'll explore the negative aspects of homophily in social media and its potential risks.

Factors Contributing to Homophily:

Homophily, the phenomenon where individuals with similar characteristics are drawn to one another, has long been a subject of study in social network research. As McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cook (2001) elucidate, "the idea that similarity breeds connection has been a major theme in research on social networks, both formally and informally, for almost half a century."

The Role of Social Network Services:

In their analysis of social network services, Lee and Ahn (2012) dive into the homophily effect, noting that "individuals with similar characteristics tend to be attracted to one another and form connections." This underscores the pervasive nature of homophily in shaping social interactions online.

Risks of Homophily in Social Media:

While homophily may seem innocuous at first glance, it can exacerbate existing societal divisions and perpetuate echo chambers, where individuals are only exposed to viewpoints that mirror their own. This can lead to polarization, as individuals become increasingly isolated within their ideological bubbles.

Preventing the Negative Effects:

To mitigate the negative effects of homophily, it's crucial to actively seek out diverse perspectives, engage in respectful dialogue with those who hold different viewpoints, and critically evaluate the information we encounter online. By cultivating a sense of curiosity and open-mindedness, we can combat the harmful consequences of homophily in social media.

In conclusion, while social media has the power to connect us in unprecedented ways, we must be cognizant of its potential pitfalls. By understanding and addressing the negative aspects of homophily, we can foster a more inclusive and diverse online community.

References:

Lee, E., & Ahn, J. (2012). An analysis of homophily effect on social network service. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 7235, 245-252.

McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1), 415-444.

#social media #homophily #echo chambers #online community #Diversity inclusion #social networks #digital age #internet culture #online dialogue #Openmindness

[jbfly46]

Lol at the trans/LGBTQIA echo chamber of basing serious life decisions on pure emotion, apparently not knowing anything about crowd psychology, sociology, and peer pressure. I've met plenty of reasonable trans/LGBTQIA people, these are not reasonable people.

#echo chambers

[whimsidreams]

People who only speak to you when you say/do something they disagree with is a red flag that they never cared about you as a person to begin with. They just want to be around carbon copies of their own minds and that's boring as hell and if you so much as have an individual thought that goes against theirs, you're exiled from their echo chamber.

Surround yourself with people who recognize the nuance in others and embrace flaws and differences in opinon while calling out the genuinely harmful ones.

It's outright abnormal and unhealthy to feel constantly on edge around "friends" because you might set them off with one little disagreement. Get rid of the toxic mindset that you have to agree with every little thing someone says or else friendship over. Sounds less like friendship and more like a cult to me.

Just. Imagine a world where every individual on this mud ball had the same exact brain with the same exact thoughts and feelings. How depressingly boring would that be???? Diversity of thought????? Ever heard of it???????

It's okay to have different opinions and it is totally possible to correct or disagree without being a patronizing ass. Please, guys. Let's promote open and educational discussions without the urge to stroke your ego with a "witty" comeback. Imagine all of the rewarding conversations you could be chasing away and the potential friendships that could manifest from them. It's just a lose-lose for everyone.

#whimsi posts #echo chambers #nuance #social commentary #communication #social interaction #social skills #just reflecting back on past events #this is why i deleted my socials lol #such a game changer

[medicinalblacklocusts]

PINNED POST.

howdy hey name's echo

they/them and it/its pronouns for me please and thanks

tone indicators would be appreciated, especially if you are making a joke as i have a difficult time deciphering intentions via text, i will also be using tone indicators when necessary or if i feel that my own tone could be misinterpreted

posts will mostly be about ieytd/ieytd2/ieytd3, but there will be the occasional oc spy posting (if i feel brave enough to do so)

there will be infrequent posts from me as my motivation levels are very inconsistent but i am up to chat so send in asks :)

all personalized tags used will be stationed here, including chat tag, art tag, oc tag, etc etc... more will be added as time goes on

if there's something that needs to be tagged as tw/cw that i forget, do notify me and i'll add it

here's the obligatory dni, do NOT interact if you are proship/MAP/NOMAP, homophobic/transphobic, exclusionist, racist, terf, etc, i'm not gonna fucking baby you about this and will block you immediately

#pinned post #do not rebagel #echo chatters #echo arts #echo chambers

[wild-garden-fairy]

I hate how you can't correct an argument without instantly becoming the other side online. I have no idea if people actually listen because they'll jump straight to using a different argument instead of acknowledging a flaw.

#politics #arguments #discussions #feminism #echo chambers

[salamanderinspace]

husband is very intelligent, very educated, and very online, however, he had never heard the word "polycule"

#postmodernism #echo chambers #also he has always been non monogamous #his whole life

[chriswhodrawsstuff]

Falling Down in the Echo Chamber

I love the film Falling Down, for those that are unfamiliar with this classic nineties blockbuster, it follows an everyday bloke played by Micheal Douglas on a trail of revenge against the system and and all the horrors of urban living; or that’s how it seems… Somewhere down the line, the, by the numbers, plot takes a swerve as it becomes clear that the ‘everyman’ tale will end in murder suicide…

View On WordPress

#actually autistic #Autism #Bullies #echo chambers #friendships #group mentality #Human nature #hypocrites #toxic people #toxic relationships #virtue signalling

[tetsunabouquet]

I ironically had a writing practise assignment today for 3 pages where I would write whatever was on my mind. As whilst I finished the children's literature part of my creative writing classes, I didn't finish my writing class itself yet. I used that to rant a bit more on Femke Halsema and other topics of human stupidity, how I think and how technological developments are going too fast for what is actually good for humanity. I was supposed to do this because you produce more gold from the subconscious with automatic writing. Which I actually did. Freud's theory of the Id, ego and superego were part of this chapter. Thanks to a Silent Hill YouTube video of all things, I already knew about this psychological theory. And as an example of how technology ruins humanity as well of human stupidity, I managed to explain echo chambers using Freud's theory and that observation is one I find so god damn well written that it feels like the good base of an essay. OMG. Before today, I never thought I'd ever write a Freudian essay about social media, but now I've surprisingly written a wonderful observation that certainly is worthy of becoming a full fledged Freudian essay. I feel so smart!!!

#tetsutalk #writing classes #freud #sigmund freud #id #superego #ego #psychology #social media #echo chambers

[maybeilikenumbers]

Fake News, Bias, and Rationality

The commerce of false information prevails as a ubiquitous and profitable industry, often rearing its head alongside innovations in communication, where propaganda and the means to spread it are made increasingly available to the masses. With the latest technologies and their abundance in modern society, this facet of media garners new meaning under the term “fake news,” utilized by figures on all sides of society and politics. With the widespread adoption of the internet, this induces an erosion of civic confidence in institutional knowledge. This, in conjunction with developing psychological research into cognitive biases, leads many to question whether humanity really is rational.

The phenomena governing fake news and the rapidly dissolving epistemic trust of the media in the digital age are broadly covered by media scholars Mark Andrejevic and Gina Giotta in the first and second chapters of Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age, published by The MIT Press in 2020. In their contributions, they outline the systematic downfall of photographic evidence’s publicly-perceived veracity and the ways in which news media and civic disposition dilute symbolic efficiency. Giotta traces the history of the photograph, noting that it “enjoyed a ‘uniquely privileged and comparatively untroubled relationship with truth throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’” and was characterized by being “free from the inescapable sin of subjectivity… and personal ambition” (McLeod & Zimdars, 2020).  Observing that this notion was held skeptically by some, though generally accepted, Giotta continues in summarizing the shift in media consumers’ attitudes from naïve trust in the medium, to what she refers to as “flexible visuality”—a term describing the tendency of the consumer to equate authenticity to what aligns with their existing beliefs, rather than a more objective truth. 

Andrejevic reinforces the “idea that photographic truth is malleable” in his earlier chapter, where he posits that “These days, facts are preceded by their denunciation” (McLeod & Zimdars, 2020).  Andrejevic examines the phenomenon of fake news in the modern era and the shift in information-dense media landscapes to promoting “disorganized messaging” (as opposed to far-reaching, constructed narratives) which works to “sow distrust of the media themselves,” while “[relying] on circuits of individual and automated sharing to amplify messages” (McLeod & Zimdars, 2020). The endemic mistrust within online environments demonstrated by Giotta is, in Andrejevic’s view, propagated by this strategy of propagandization, and contributes to a minimization of philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s ideal symbolic efficiency online via the instillation of extensive distrust in authoritative sources (what Žižek may call a “big Other”) in conjunction with promoted individualized reporting (exemplified in Giotta’s “flexible visuality”) (McLeod & Zimdars, 2020). These arguments serve to describe and distill the growing distrust in news media in the United States and elsewhere, emphasizing the vacillatious nature of new consumer approaches to axiomatic pursuits in coordination with personal biases.

A later chapter within The MIT Press’s work, written by interactive media scholar Nicholas David Bowman and correspondent journalist Elizabeth Cohen, aims to elaborate on these psychological biases that govern individualistic notions of truth. They point to perceptive and emotive coping mechanisms as critical disabilities of information processing, highlighting cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias, a mindset referred to as that of the “cognitive miser,” and mistrust in media structures which are not fully understood by the public (McLeod & Zimdars, 2020). Through these processes, the reasons for Andrejevic and Giotta’s observations become more clear: people generate conceptions of reality, and the confrontation with information which runs counter to those conceptions requires additional effort to reconcile, where information that does not require this exertion is incorporated easily—showing a link between confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and cognitive misery. Mistrust and misunderstanding can also be described in these terms—mistrust arising from cognitive dissonance and cognitive misery governing the extent to which one is willing to work to understand information systems. 

The pervasiveness of these predispositions as near-universal is cause for many to assume that humans, as an aphorism, are not simply fallible, but irrational altogether and in need of guidance from more meritorious members of society. Journalist and author Steven Poole contests this “scientised version of original sin” and prideful social-soteriology in his essay Not So Foolish, where he argues in favor of humanity’s rational capacities, arguing for a “wider sense of [rationality]” through three categories of cognition: the autonomous, the algorithmic, and the reflective (Poole, 2014). Autonomous thought is subconscious, carried out reflexively, and is strongly influenced by one’s own biases (Poole, 2014). Algorithmic thought is similarly automatic, analogous to modern day conceptions of generalized intelligence (Poole, 2014). Finally, reflective thought is the most rigorous and logical of the three in Poole’s description, and is characterized by its accurate reasoning. Poole points out that on an individual level most of  humanity has the capacity for all of these and is logical to this extent, reasoning that people ought to be capable of rationality at a wider scale, provided that reflective thought is prioritized. Given this, Poole contends that the most effective means of viewing veracity is through the “...[combining] of individuals into public bodies capable of high-level reasoning,” such as in universities and scientific societies, and that techniques like debiasing can hone public rationality, ultimately concluding that “...public reason is our best hope for survival” (Poole, 2014). One may liken Poole’s rationale in this arena to John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, where the collective wrestling-with of ideas between pluralistic and competitive viewpoints weeds out human fallibility and reinforces the merits of a given work in a darwinistic domain of dialogue. 

Poole’s optimism is not without critique, though, and many would point to sources of collective reasoning that ignore epistemically valid (and culturally accepted) truths. In a 2021 interview with the American Psychological Association, researcher and social psychologist Karen Douglas elaborated on one example of this: conspiracy (Mills, 2021). Douglas’s body of work includes extensive research into the mindset of mass conspiracy movements, including public and political responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, conspiratorial influences on the EU “Brexit” vote, connections between conspiracy theorizing and crime, and even the merits of the term “conspiracy theory” (Keng et. al., 2022, Jolley et. al., 2021, Jolley et. al., 2019, Douglas, K., van Prooijen, J.-W., & Sutton, R. M. 2021). Douglas avers that the same modes which Poole considers “individually rational” are equally responsible for engagement in conspiracy theories, especially along epistemic, existential, and social lines, much like philosophical thought which is supported by pillars of epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, and widely considered rational (Mills, 2021). Douglas’s work casts doubt upon Poole’s conclusion, because it presents strong evidence that, even within ostensibly reflective public bodies, denial of empirical evidence is not only possible, but plausible, common, and strongly held-to (Mills, 2021). In light of this, Poole’s argument for humanity’s rationality seems to stand on weaker footing, as these communities who strive for enlightenment so frequently arrive at the fraudulent. 

While the subjects of Douglas and her colleagues’ work may detract from Poole’s argument and reinforce the conclusions implied by Andrejevic, Giotta, Bowman, and Cohen, the research group itself stands as an authoritative affidavit for the attitudes that combat such irrationality (the same which Poole argues for). Institutions like Douglas’s highlight the specific merit of Poole’s stance, that institutionalized disconfirmation—the application of ignorance in pursuit of knowledge—rather than the simple fact of reflection, is the tool that drives understanding.

Works Cited

Douglas, K., van Prooijen, J.-W., & Sutton, R. M. (2021). Is the label "conspiracy theory" a cause or a consequence of disbelief in alternative narratives?. British Journal of Psychology. https://doi:10.1111/bjop.12548 

Jolley, D., Douglas, K. M., Marchlewska, M., Cichocka, A., & Sutton, R. M. (2021). Examining the links between conspiracy beliefs and the EU “Brexit” referendum vote in the UK: evidence from a two-wave survey. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. https://doi:10.1111/jasp.12829 

Jolley, D., Douglas, K., Leite, A. C., & Schrader, T. (2019). Belief in conspiracy theories and intentions to engage in everyday crime. British Journal of Social Psychology, 58, 534-549. https://doi:10.1111/bjso.12311 

Keng, S.-L. , et. al (2022). COVID-19 stressors and health behaviors: A multilevel longitudinal study across 86 countries. Preventive Medicine Reports, 27. https://doi:10.1016/j.pmedr.2022.101764 

Mills, K. & Douglas, K.. (2021). Speaking of Psychology: Why people believe in conspiracy theories, with Karen Douglas, PhD. Https://Www.apa.org. https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/conspiracy-theories 

Poole, Steven. Not So Foolish. (2014). Aeon. https://aeon.co/essays/we-are-more-rational-than-those-who-nudge-us‌ Zimdars, M., & McLeod, K. (Eds.). (2020). Fake News. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11807.001.0001.

#fake news #Rationality #agnotology #philosophy #epistemology #echo chambers #intelligence #information systems #conspiracy theory #misinformation

[drshaneclements]

You're Being Manipulated and You Don't Even Realize It

In the age of digital omnipresence, it’s easy to fall into the illusion that we are in control of our actions, beliefs, and emotions. Yet, diving deep into the mechanics of today’s dominant online platforms, there’s a revelation that’s hard to swallow: we’re being manipulated, and many of us don’t even realize it. Jaron Lanier, a pioneer in the realm of virtual reality, offers a compelling…

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#algorithmic control #data exploitation #digital addiction #digital awareness #digital empathy #echo chambers #emotional influence #Jaron Lanier #misinformation spread #online behavior #online privacy #online validation #political polarization #social media manipulation

[pazodetrasalba]

Caveat emptor

Dear Caroline:

This post of yours is actually remarkably prescient, as I think this is exactly what has happened to your blog since it went public: the takeaway for most readers is the worst possible imaginable, and for a very small subset of probability 0 (not empty, though, as it includes me; but I'd wager this is like randomly landing on a rational number on the Real number line), otherwise.

By the way, it took me a non-trivial amount of time to decipher what cw was: content warning (as in trigger warning?). We in the planets close to Terminus, in the outer reaches of Empire, always get these US trends pretty late, but also inexorably and ineluctably. So while right now not even my wokest acquaintances uses it, it will inevitably come to pass. And I'd suspect that the use you were making of them was at the very last ironic, although due to your general agreeableness, there was probably an element of 'balancing act' between your contrarian espousal of unusual and controversial stuff and your desire not to antagonize (too) much the more liberals in your social and intellectual circle.

A malaise to engage, even to just be exposed to ideas that you dislike and/or upset you seems to be the sign of our times, but I often wonder if I am not being a bit hypocritical in disdaining it. I only seldom manage to impose on myself the listening to arguments and people I disagree with. Perhaps what has changed is that both other opinions are very easily accessible, while it is also extremely easy to ignore them in digital and physical echo-chambers.

Quote:

To exist in an echo chamber and only talk to people with whom we agree is fruitless.

Tomi Lahren

#caroline ellison #echo chambers

[roystannard]

Rabbit..rabbit. Polylogue or dialogue? Listening to God

Rabbit, rabbit.. Polylogue or dialogue? “My sheep (and rabbits) listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”John 10:27 (NIV) God’s is not the only voice in our lives. Family, friends, the media, social media (how many have you got? That’s way too many!), our bosses, our innermost fears all vie for our attention. It’s easy to hear – and to simply turn to the loudest voice. In John…

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#Babel #Echo chambers #Hearing God #John 10:27 #Listening to God #meditation #Polylogue vs dialogue #Quiet space #Social Media #Voices

[jbfly46]

People existing in the echo chamber of an information bubble are no longer receiving inputs of new information. Even their social media feeds are repeating the same things to them over and over again.

#information #bubbles #echo chambers #social media