Category: Echo chambers

“Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.” ~ Francois Fenelon

A common trait that qualifies a  person to be a member of good standing in an echo chamber is self delusion… the state of having a false idea about yourself or the situation you are in. The lure of echo chambers is the reinforcement and validation of an opinion or belief that we deem to be true.

In the face of relentless and increasing volume of confirmation for our opinion/belief, we become more and more convinced of our rightness. Correspondingly, we become less and less willing/able to entertain the possibility that we could be wrong and consequently we reject any dissenting voice. 

Ultimately, we become self-deluded, a self-delusion that is a two-sided coin. One side is the delusion that we are omniscient and the other side is the delusion that we are  infallible. Unfortunately, whichever side comes up, we lose.

Despite rational consensus that human beings are neither omniscient nor infallible, we inexplicably persist in the delusion that we are an exception. A convenient argument for resisting warnings about echo chambers and mitigating any peril they may present comes in the form of, “ Yes, but since my opinion/belief is TRUE, I have no reason for concern.” 
The negative impact of echo chambers is indiscriminate. Relative to negative outcomes, it does not matter whether we are right or wrong.  If we are absolutely certain of our opinion/belief, the reverberations within our echo chamber, which confirm our certainty, will deafen and blind us to any dissenting voices. In our self-deluded infallibility, we are able to justify responses, that we would never otherwise consider, toward any and all dissenting voices.

The first step toward overcoming self-delusion is to become self-aware. Self-awareness is a learned skill that requires courage and resolve to develop. Self-awareness involves, self-examination, introspection. “Know Thyself” is an  aphorism from antiquity. 

Socrates says …, that people make themselves appear ridiculous when they are trying to know obscure things before they know themselves. 

Self-awareness is essential to overcoming negative outcomes of echo chambers, which intensifies  the challenge we face.

…even though most people believe they are self-aware, self-awareness is a truly rare quality: We estimate that only 10%–15% of the people we studied actually fit the criteria.

“For the wise have always known that no one can make much of his life until self-searching has become a regular habit, until he is able to admit and accept what he finds, and until he patiently and persistently tries to correct what is wrong. – Bill W.” 

Faced with disturbing conclusions that,

1. the default condition for those who reside in an echo chamber is self-delusion, and,
2. the first step toward surviving and thriving in echo chambers is the necessity of self-awareness and,
3. there is an innate resistance to any form of self-examination and
4. there are prevailing, relentless narratives that engender fear and promote judgement on any dissenting voice and eschew self-awareness.
   …further emphasize the magnitude and complexity of echo chambers and diminishes optimism for a society characterized by our most virtuous human values.

Accepting the premise that self-awareness is essential to surviving and thriving in echo chambers, the immediate question to be addressed is, “How do I become self-aware?”

The next post will address that question.

I submit that the answer to the question … “How can the negative power of echo chambers be mitigated”? starts with what I have asserted from the beginning of this series of posts.

The most significant human trait that sustains and encourages the proliferation of and participation in harmful echo chambers is our unwillingness to entertain the possibility that we may be wrong.

The idea that we can mitigate the power of echo chambers by embracing our fallibility is counterintuitive. The very reason we reside in echo chambers is because of our desire for confirmation that we are right. Kathryn Schultz is helpful in understanding the importance of error.

Far from being a sign of intellectual inferiority , the capacity to err is crucial to human cognition . Far from being a moral flaw , it is inextricable from some of our most humane and honorable qualities : empathy , optimism , imagination , conviction , and courage . And far from being a mark of indifference or intolerance , wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change . Thanks to error , we can revise our understanding of ourselves and amend our ideas about the world .
Schulz, Kathryn. Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error (p. 5). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.

While we intellectually accept that we may be wrong, to consistently  adopt that frame of mind is a daunting task.  As we have seen, the desire to protect our rightness rejects any notion that we may be wrong. At the same time, accepting our fallibility is the only effective antidote to the irrational notion that we are infallible.

There is a deep aversion to being wrong. It feels wrong and counterintuitive to look for evidence that contradicts our rightness.

If we relish being right and regard it as our natural state , you can imagine how we feel about being wrong. Quite unlike the gleeful little rush of being right—we experience our errors as deflating and embarrassing. In our collective imagination , error is associated not just with shame and stupidity but also with ignorance , indolence , psychopathology , and moral degeneracy . (Shultz)

I have observed in my personal interactions, most likely because of writing this article, a correlation between interpersonal conflict and perceived implications of wrongness. Even in ordinary conversations about the most mundane subjects, an innocent remark perceived as a challenge to my rightness can initiate s defensive reaction, if not conflict. The need to defend my position transcends any possibility that I might be wrong. Too often that results in, at worst, anger, resentment, disrespect and/or verbal abuse. At a minimum, an opportunity to communicate effectively and gain better understanding of the other person’s beliefs has been squandered.

It is naive to think that just knowing we need to acknowledge our fallibility will enable us to do so.

.. a widely discussed study found in the last decade that political partisans, when presented with contravening facts, leads to a hardening of the original position. Brendan Nyhan, summarized: “the general idea is that it’s absolutely threatening to admit you’re wrong.” “Cognitive dissonance”—the “backfire” which we experience when we encounter some reality that stands in tension with our presumptions—is painful. So, digging in our heels, when faced with contrary facts, is a natural defense mechanism to avoid that cognitive dissonance.”
?

If facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds and more education is not a solution, we are faced with the discomforting reality that any solution must come from within ourselves.

The major threats to our survival no longer stem from nature without but from our own human nature within. It is our carelessness, our hostilities, our selfishness and pride and willful ignorance that endanger the world.
Unless we can now tame and transmute the potential for evil in the human soul, we shall be lost. How can we do this unless we are willing to look at our own evil?
Evil can be defeated by goodness. When we translate this we realized what we dimly have always known: evil can be conquered only by love.
The first task of love is self purification.
People  the Lie M. Scott Peck

“Nothing will make us so charitable and tender to the faults of others, as, by self-examination, thoroughly to know our own.” ~ Francois Fenelon

An echo chamber is a metaphorical description of a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a defined system. Inside a figurative echo chamber, official sources often go unquestioned and different or competing views are censored, disallowed, or otherwise underrepresented. The echo chamber effect reinforces a person’s own present world view, making it seem more correct and more universally accepted than it really is.  Wikipedia

…an unfortunate and largely unintended consequence of the rise of social media is that instead of being better informed and exposed to ever-broadening viewpoints, research shows that Americans today are more polarized and draw from shrinking pools of news.R. Sunstein

In the last decade or more, our government and society in general has become more polarized. The ability (willingness) to communicate with those who do not share our views/beliefs has become an endanger species.  There seems to be general agreement that a prevalence of echo chambers is a significant factor contributing to the state our society.

Echo chambers are ubiquitous.   Social media, news outlets, blog feeds, churches, families, neighborhoods, communities. If there is a context where differences exists, a “safe room” (echo chamber) will emerge and like-minded people will seek refuge.

Echo chambers are not a new phenomenon. They are the consequence of human nature’s inclination to tribalism.

Tribalism is pervasive, and it controls a lot of our behavior, readily overriding reason. Think of the inhuman things we do in the name of tribal unity. Wars are essentially, and often quite specifically, tribalism. Genocides are tribalism – wipe out the other group to keep our group safe – taken to madness. Racism that lets us feel that our tribe is better than theirs, parents who end contact with their own children when they dare marry someone of a different faith or color, denial of evolution or climate change or other basic scientific truths when they challenge tribal beliefs. What stunning evidence of the power of tribalism!

How Tribalism Overrules Reason, and Makes Risky Times More Dangerous

Not unlike many facets of our society, echo chambers are benefactors (victim?) of the digital and technological revolution.

Since we’ve become so attached to social media, we are less and less required to interact with people who disagree with us. Technology allows us to reach across state lines (and even oceans) to find people who share our beliefs and values. Until social media designers can address the fact that these platforms allow the increasing polarization of users into small, tight-knit communities, stopping the proliferation of misinformation will continue to be a challenge.    The social media “echo chamber” is real

I would suggest that technology has unleashed the ever present malevolent potential of echo chambers in ways never imagined. Some would suggest that the existence of democracy is threatened.

The subject of echo chambers has become increasingly personally relevant. After recognizing my self imposed political/social echo chamber, I made a decision to dampen the echoes and open myself to different sources.

My efforts have met with mixed success. The peril of trading one echo chamber for another is real. The most significant result of my decision, thus far, is that it has become a catalyst for more serious thought and investigation into the character and nature of echo chambers. this blog post is the first, in what I hope to be a series of posts, addressing questions, ideas and issues that I have encountered related to echo chambers.

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