Locking the echo chamber

It must be awfully convenient to start out from the baseline assumption that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

This observation comes about because Thursday was International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and I posted the following on Facebook: "On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I'm thinking about our cousins, Armand Simon, Céline (Bollack) Simon, and Irène Simon, and Baila Dvora (Bloomgarden) Serejski, Avish Serejski, Tsipe Serejski, and Sholem Serejski, who died at the hands of the Nazis in Auschwitz.  May they never be forgotten."  I also appended a link to a post I did five years ago about the Simon family, who were part of the French Resistance.

Most of the responses were wonderful, but one person, a cousin of mine, wrote the following:

I could never understand how everyday people went along with packing their possessions up and moving to the ghetto thinking how could it get worse?  And yet it became much worse.  I see this going on in our country today.  When we visited Hawaii last March to see our daughter who was living there, we had to get a specific COVID test to enter the state.  And it was negative.  But when we got there, it wasn’t from the lab approved by their Governor and we were hauled into an area for “processing”.  They called our hotel and we’re going to force us in a 14 day quarantine - they wouldn’t even look at our antigen test results!  And we went to a lab at the airport recommended by our airline.  Well I refused to pay for a resort and be forced to stay in a hotel room for 14 days, so we told them we would stay at our daughter’s apartment.  I wasn’t about to give this state a penny of our money and be under their control.  When I said to the lady at the airport Aloha, Welcome to Hawaii - she replied, "We don’t want you here."  I felt like we were no longer in the USA.  And you should see all the homeless in Hawaii because the Governor there shut down all the businesses - tents everywhere. For a state that relies on tourism as a huge part of their livelihood- this was beyond stupid.  Many people in the tourist industry had to move to the mainland and those that couldn’t afford to, now had to live on the streets.  And now you can’t go in restaurants or bars unless you have a vaccine passport.  I have a bad reaction to vaccines so I’m not about to get that shot and it’s my body - nobody should be forced to have to take an injection - EVER!  Our country is FUBAR.  Thank God we live in Florida and our Governor is the best combination of intelligence and common sense.  To think I have to check which states I can travel to is unconscionable.  Our country is on a very bad path as a whole. We can only hope that at some point there will be a mass resistance.

When someone pointed out that it was out of line to compare being mildly inconvenienced on your Hawaii vacation to six million people being systematically killed by the Nazis, she responded:

My point was definitely not a comparison. My point is that we are like the frog and boiling water theory if we don’t pay attention to our gradual loss of freedoms. And that is exactly what is taking [sic] with President Numbnuts in office right now.

And damn straight I am in the right state. I would appreciate if all the people flocking here from Democrat states would stay the hell out unless they have the intelligence to know why they want to be here. Don’t come here and ruin our freedom!

This, of course, isn't the first thing like this she's posted; it's just the first one directed at me.  She's had gems like a diatribe starting out "All Democrats are pinheads," implying that one-half of the American public are hopelessly stupid.  No need to know anything else about them; Democrat = idiot.  Done thinking.

I honestly can't comprehend this level of confident arrogance.  One of my (many) besetting sins is that I'm almost never 100% sure of anything; to me, most of the world is made up of gray areas, ambiguity, and extenuating circumstances.  But my cousin's attitude goes way beyond being sure of oneself.  Confidence and a strong trust in your own beliefs and principles are just fine; in her, it has morphed into a conviction that the people who share her beliefs are the only ones worth listening to.  

It's a scary position to be in.  I wrote a couple of years ago about how absolutely essential it is to keep in mind that your opinion could be based in error -- and cited some research showing that this willingness to consider our own fallibility is essential in science.  (I'd argue that it's essential in damn near everything.)

It reminds me of what Kathryn Schulz said, in her amazing TED Talk "On Being Wrong:"

It's like we want to believe that our minds are these perfectly transparent windows, and we just gaze out of them and describe the world as it unfolds.  And we want everybody to gaze out of the exact same window and see the exact same thing...  If you want to rediscover wonder, you have to step outside of that tiny, terrified space of rightness -- and look around at each other, and look at the vastness and complexity and mystery of the universe, and be able to say, "Wow.  I don't know.  Maybe I'm wrong."

I chose not to try to argue with her.  Maybe that was the cowardly choice, but my impression is that it would have been entirely futile.  Once you've landed in that position -- believing that everyone who disagrees with you is either misinformed, stupid, or lying outright -- you're kind of stuck there.  I don't shy away from an argument when there's ground to be gained, or at least when both sides are listening; but this person has so locked herself in an echo chamber that it's pointless even to engage.

If what I really crave is slamming my head into a wall, it'd be easier and quicker just to go find a wall and do it.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Evbestie, FilterBubble, CC BY-SA 4.0]

In any case, I just decided to disconnect.  I'm kind of done posting on social media.  I'll still throw links to Skeptophilia on Facebook and Twitter every day, and probably will continue to post the occasional pic of my dogs on Instagram, but other than that, I've kind of had it.  I'm just weary unto death of the vitriol -- when you can't post a tribute to relatives who died in the Holocaust without it turning into a Fox News-inspired extremist screed, it's a sign that the platform itself is no longer worth the time and anguish.  And I unfriended my cousin (reducing the number of my blood relatives who still want to have anything to do with me to "almost one"), because I know about her that one of her mottos is "Death before backing down."  Interacting with someone like that isn't worth the toll it takes on me personally.

What that says about the state of affairs in the United States today is scary, though.  The media found out a couple of decades ago that polarization and agitation gets viewers, and has whipped up the partisan rancor to the point that each side thinks the other is actively evil.  It's kind of ironic that the whole nasty exchange started because of a post about the Holocaust, though.  It reminds me of the trenchant quote -- attributed incorrectly to Werner Herzog, and actually of unknown provenance -- "Dear America, you are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that one-third of your people would happily kill another one-third, while the remaining one-third stands there watching."

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It's kind of sad that there are so many math-phobes in the world, because at its basis, there is something compelling and fascinating about the world of numbers.  Humans have been driven to quantify things for millennia -- probably beginning with the understandable desire to count goods and belongings -- but it very quickly became a source of curiosity to find out why numbers work as they do.

The history of mathematics and its impact on humanity is the subject of the brilliant book The Art of More: How Mathematics Created Civilization by Michael Brooks.  In it he looks at how our ancestors' discovery of how to measure and enumerate the world grew into a field of study that unlocked hidden realms of science -- leading Galileo to comment, with some awe, that "Mathematics is the language with which God wrote the universe."  Brooks's deft handling of this difficult and intimidating subject makes it uniquely accessible to the layperson -- so don't let your past experiences in math class dissuade you from reading this wonderful and eye-opening book.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Unity in diversity

A couple of days ago, NPR ran a piece about conservatives who are leaving liberal areas so they can live amongst like-minded folks.  The article, by Vanessa Romo, is entitled "Texas Becoming a Magnet for Conservatives Fleeing Liberal States Like California," and tells the story of people like 36-year-old Tim Stokes, who is upping stakes and moving along with his pregnant wife and three children.

The reason, Stokes said, is that he is tired of "feeling like an outsider" in his hometown.  He's a Republican, has staunchly supported conservative causes, and has the sense of being marginalized in a community that is largely liberal Democrat.  And he's not alone; the article projects that by 2050, twenty million people will have left their home states to be in places that align better with their political stances and religious beliefs.

It's not that I don't understand this.  I tend to have a liberal bent (which, I'm sure, will come as no shock to regular readers of Skeptophilia), although I try to avoid politics when I can because I find arguing about it to be rather pointless.  I live in an area where liberals outnumber conservatives, although if you continue down the highway where I live toward the south and the city of Watkins Glen, the numbers flip completely.  During the last election, if you took the road past my house, you could see the blue Clinton signs thinning as the red Trump signs increased in numbers, mile after passing mile.

I get that it's nice to have like-minded folks near you.  Believe me, being a liberal atheist from southern Louisiana, I know what it's like to feel like you're on the fringe in your own home, and the situation must feel similar for conservatives in strongly liberal areas.

But I think what Tim Stokes and his family (and, apparently, a great many other people) are doing is unequivocally a bad idea.

We need to be around people who disagree with us, who challenge and question us.  I'm not saying we should seek out hostile interactions, or (worse) provoke them; but I contend that if you live in the contented, self-satisfied little bubble of only hearing the opinions you already have reflected back at you, you will never have the opportunity to suss out places where your thinking is wrong-headed -- or things that you haven't thought about at all.

Fortunately, there are influential people who are saying exactly this.  George Fuller, the (conservative) mayor of McKinney, Texas (near Dallas), said of what Stokes and others are doing, "I think instead of just trying to kind of put together pockets of the like-minded, I would think energy is better spent trying to figure out how to live and exist together and find productive solutions going forward versus insulating yourself from different thoughts and ideologies."

Norman Rockwell, Golden Rule (1961) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Which is it exactly.  If there's one thing I've found to be consistently true, it's that it's much easier to demonize someone if you have no personal contact with them.  Over and over, I've seen stories of the devoutly religious who hated LGBT individuals -- until a child or a friend came out to them.  They're forced into realizing that the labels and the hatred allow them to ignore the humanity of an entire group, and that they're being presented with a choice between love and narrow-minded bigotry.  (I realize those situations don't always end this way, and there are cases where the bigoted choose to embrace their prejudice instead; but it's encouraging the number of times it's gone the other way.)

In fact, prejudices of all kinds evaporate when you take the time to get to know people different than you are, and realize that your commonalities far outweigh your differences.  And if you segregate yourself voluntarily into a little echo chamber where everyone looks like you, votes like you, and attends the same church as you, you'll never have the chance to do what Kathryn Schulz calls "moving outside of that tiny, terrified little bubble of having to be right about everything."

In fact, I'll go a step beyond that; you should not only be accepting of opportunities to interact with people who aren't like you, you should seek them out.  The leaders of our country are, by and large, accelerating the polarization of the American people, pushing us into believing that anyone who isn't like you is either a hopeless idiot, or else an evil creature dead-set on destroying the very fabric of the United States.

We have to work tirelessly against this mindset.  And, for cryin' in the sink, don't you think we'd get it by now?  We're a nation that in the past has prided itself on being a "melting pot."  I'm a good example; I have in my ancestry recent immigrants from the southeast of France, Jewish refugees from Alsace, Cajuns exiled from Nova Scotia, Dutch settlers who came to New Amsterdam in the 1600s, and Scottish peasants who ended up in the hill country of southwestern Pennsylvania.  Virtually all of us are the product of such amalgams.  And yet, the way things are going, we're rapidly heading toward a society where we not only don't interact with people who aren't like us, we almost never see them.

So do yourself a favor.  Find some people of different ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, age, or political values, and sit down with them to have a conversation over your favorite libation.  Don't just talk; listen.  Chances are good that you'll find out that this person, so different than you are, just wants the same things you want; a secure home, food on the table, a safe environment to raise children, the freedom to speak without judgment, the freedom to be who they are without fear of censure, ridicule, or violence.

And who knows?  Maybe you'll come away not only having learned something, but having made a friend.

Red truth, blue truth

At the same time that social media has opened up possibilities for long-distance (and cross-cultural) contact, and allowed us to befriend people we've never met, it also has had the effect of creating nearly impermeable echo chambers that do nothing but reinforce confirmation bias about our own beliefs and the worst stereotypes about those who disagree.

This is being highlighted in a rather terrifying fashion by The Wall Street Journal in their feature "Blue Feed, Red Feed," which they describe as follows:

To demonstrate how reality may differ for different Facebook users, The Wall Street Journal created two feeds, one “blue” and the other “red.”  If a source appears in the red feed, a majority of the articles shared from the source were classified as “very conservatively aligned” in a large 2015 Facebook study.  For the blue feed, a majority of each source’s articles aligned “very liberal.”  These aren't intended to resemble actual individual news feeds.  Instead, they are rare side-by-side looks at real conversations from different perspectives.

It's worth taking a look.  Here's a small sampling of a "red feed" for the recent "alternative facts" interview with Kellyanne Conway:

AWFUL LIBERAL Hack Chuck Todd Attacks #Trump – Kellyanne Conway Rips Him Apart (VIDEO)
Jim Hoft Jan 22nd, 2017 10:39 am 273 Comments
The liberal media today is in the sewer.
More Americans believe in Sasquatch than the crap coming from the liberal media.
After eight years of slobbering all over failed President and liar Barack Obama the media has suddenly decided to take on this new administration.
Today Chuck Todd went after Donald Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway on Meet the Press.
Kellyanne Conway ripped him a new one.
Notice how this condescending ass snickers as Kellyanne answers his question!

The Trump administration should boycott this horrible show immediately.

Contrast this with the "blue feed" on the same topic:

If you are puzzled by the bizarre "press conference" put on by the White House press secretary this evening (angrily claiming that Trump's inauguration had the largest audience in history, accusing them of faking photos and lying about attendance), let me help explain it. This spectacle served three purposes: 

1. Establishing a norm with the press: they will be told things that are obviously wrong and they will have no opportunity to ask questions. That way, they will be grateful if they get anything more at any press conference. This is the PR equivalent of "negging," the odious pick-up practice of a particular kind of horrible person (e.g., Donald Trump). 

2. Increasing the separation between Trump's base (1/3 of the population) from everybody else (the remaining 2/3). By being told something that is obviously wrong—that there is no evidence for and all evidence against, that anybody with eyes can see is wrong—they are forced to pick whether they are going to believe Trump or their lying eyes. The gamble here—likely to pay off—is that they will believe Trump. This means that they will regard media outlets that report the truth as "fake news" (because otherwise they'd be forced to confront their cognitive dissonance.) 

3. Creating a sense of uncertainty about whether facts are knowable, among a certain chunk of the population (which is a taking a page from the Kremlin, for whom this is their preferred disinformation tactic). A third of the population will say "clearly the White House is lying," a third will say "if Trump says it, it must be true," and the remaining third will say "gosh, I guess this is unknowable." The idea isn't to convince these people of untrue things, it's to fatigue them, so that they will stay out of the political process entirely, regarding the truth as just too difficult to determine. 

This is laying important groundwork for the months ahead. If Trump's White House is willing to lie about something as obviously, unquestionably fake as this, just imagine what else they'll lie about. In particular, things that the public cannot possibly verify the truth of. It's gonna get real bad.

It's not like they're looking at the same thing from two different angles; it's more like these people aren't living in the same universe.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Add into the mix a paper published this week in PNAS Online by Michela Del Vicario, Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zollo, Fabio Petroni, Antonio Scala, Guido Caldarelli, H. Eugene Stanley, and Walter Quattrociocchi of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science in Lucca, Italy.  The study, called "The Spreading of Misinformation Online," not only describes the dangers of the echo chamber effect apropos of social media, but the worse problem that it insulates us from correcting our own understanding  when we're in the wrong. The authors write:

Digital misinformation has become so pervasive in online social media that it has been listed by the WEF as one of the main threats to human society.  Whether a news item, either substantiated or not, is accepted as true by a user may be strongly affected by social norms or by how much it coheres with the user’s system of beliefs.  Many mechanisms cause false information to gain acceptance, which in turn generate false beliefs that, once adopted by an individual, are highly resistant to correction...  Our findings show that users mostly tend to select and share content related to a specific narrative and to ignore the rest.  In particular, we show that social homogeneity is the primary driver of content diffusion, and one frequent result is the formation of homogeneous, polarized clusters.  Most of the times the information is taken by a friend having the same profile (polarization)––i.e., belonging to the same echo chamber...  Users tend to aggregate in communities of interest, which causes reinforcement and fosters confirmation bias, segregation, and polarization.  This comes at the expense of the quality of the information and leads to proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia.

It would be easy to jump from there to the conclusion that there's no way to tell what the truth is, that we're all so insulated in our comfortable cocoons of self-approval that we'll never be able to see out.  That's unwarrantedly pessimistic, however.  There is a method for determining the truth; it involves using evidence (i.e. facts), logic, and an unrelenting determination to steer clear of partisan spin.  Giving up and saying "No one can know the truth" is exactly as unproductive as saying "my side is always right."

Still, all kind-hearted ecumenism aside, I'll end with a quote from the eminent Richard Dawkins: "When two opposing points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie somewhere in the middle.  It is possible for one side to be simply wrong."

Social media echo chambers

A guy named Donald Cyprian has come up with an idea that he says he got directly from god.

It's a social media platform he calls "Instant Christ."  On it, you can post Christian messages, and you can ask for prayers from other members.  Not only that, people can record themselves praying for you, and post the audio file so you can hear the prayers you're receiving.

"It’s basically a Facebook for Christians in a safe environment, because if you’re on Facebook you’re liable to get anything on your timeline," Cyprian said.  "It’s very distracting to a believer when you’re trying to walk in the spiritual realm.  When you’re going through something you want to know that you’re fishing in the right ocean."

The hope is that "Instant Christ" will draw away Christians from the more freewheeling sites like Facebook and Twitter, giving them a place to meet the like-minded and to express themselves without fear of criticism or ridicule.

I think this is a bad idea, but I wonder if you'd be able to guess why.

It's not because I'm critical of their belief in Christianity.  As I've said more than once, anyone is free to believe anything they want, as long as they accord me the same right.

For me, the problem with this is that it turns online social media into an echo chamber.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Some platforms already have this tendency; Reddit, for example, is divided into hundreds of "subreddits" each devoted to a different set of interests and ideologies, and many "Redditors" never venture outside the ones peopled with the like-minded.  For good reason, sometimes.  Christians who post to the r/atheism subreddit, even with the intention of  asking a question or spurring reasonable discussion, are taking a chance of exposing themselves to ridicule and being accused of trolling.

There are many downsides of places like Facebook, but one of the upsides is that it exposes you to lots of differing viewpoints -- if you choose to "friend" people who aren't exactly like you.  Humans naturally already tend towards surrounding themselves with people who agree with them, and places like Facebook and Twitter give us the opportunity to see other points of view expressed, if we're willing to listen.

This is why I've resisted the temptation to pare down my Facebook and Twitter contact lists, to unlink from people who post content that annoys me, angers me, challenges me.  I have deliberately stayed in contact with people who are from all sorts of different ideological backgrounds -- my Facebook friend list contains Christians (from moderate to evangelical), Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and the unaffiliated.  I see links posted by Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and people who don't care about politics one way or the other.  

Let me be clear about this; I'm not bragging about how incredibly open-minded I am.  I have strong convictions about a lot of issues, and some of what I see posted I think is dead wrong.  Being willing to expose yourself to multiple viewpoints doesn't mean that you believe them all, nor that you think there's truth to be found in homogenizing whatever you see.  I more agree with Richard Dawkins on this point; "If two people have differing opinions, it is not necessarily the case that the truth lies somewhere in the middle.  It may be that one of them is simply incorrect."

But what this does is keeps me honest.  When all you see is what you already believed, you never have to face the fact that you might be blindly accepting biases, that you may not have all the facts, that your being surrounded by a Greek chorus of the similar-minded has made you unlikely to recognize truths that others see clearly.  I'd rather be occasionally pissed off than to turn away from a source of intellectual, political, and philosophical checks-and-balances.

And this, to me, is the problem with platforms like "Instant Christ."  It might be comforting for Christians to isolate themselves from the rest of the world, but that comfort comes with a cost -- cutting yourself off from even having to acknowledge that other people may not think exactly like you do.

Leaving the echo chamber

It is natural, I suppose, to surround oneself with people whose political, religious, and philosophical beliefs we share.  We tend to get along best with people whose values are aligned with our own, and having the same opinions makes conflict less likely.  So what I'm going to suggest runs completely counter to this tribal tendency that all humans have.

Anyone who aspires to a skeptical view of the world should seek out interactions with people of opposing stances.

I won't say this isn't frustrating at times.  Hearing our most cherished viewpoints criticized, sometimes stridently, brings up some pretty strong emotions.  But there are two outstanding reasons to strive for diversity in our social circles, and I think that both of these make a cogent argument for overcoming our knee-jerk reactions to having our baseline assumptions called into question.

First, being exposed to a wide range of opinions keeps us honest.  It is an all-too-human failing not to question things when everyone around us is in agreement.  This can lead not only to our making mistakes, but not realizing them -- sometimes for a long time -- because we've surrounded ourselves with a Greek chorus of supporters, and no one who is willing to say, "Wait a minute... are you sure that's right?"

Second, it becomes less easy to demonize those who disagree with us when they have faces.  You can slide quickly into "those awful conservatives" or "those evil atheists" -- until you meet one, and spend some time chatting, and find out that the people you've derided turn out to be friendly and smart and... human.  Just like you.

How to build an echo chamber [adapted from Jasny, Fisher, et al.]

The danger of living in an echo chamber was illustrated vividly by a new peer-reviewed study led by Dana Fisher, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland.  Fisher et al. looked at how attitudes about climate change in particular are affected by being surrounded by others who agree with you.  They found that networks of people who are already in agreement, sharing information that supports what they already believed, create a context of certainty so powerful that even overwhelming scientific evidence can't overcome it.

"Our research shows how the echo chamber can block progress toward a political resolution on climate change," Fisher said in an interview.  "Individuals who get their information from the same sources with the same perspective may be under the impression that theirs is the dominant perspective, regardless of what the science says...  Information has become a partisan choice, and those choices bias toward sources that reinforce beliefs rather than challenge them, regardless of the source’s legitimacy."

Lorien Jasny, a lead author of the paper, emphasized how important it was to venture outside of the echo chamber.  "Our research underscores how important it is for people on both sides of the climate debate to be careful about where they get their information.  If their sources are limited to those that repeat and amplify a single perspective, they can’t be certain about the reliability or objectivity of their information."

While the study by Fisher et al. was specifically about attitudes regarding climate change, I would argue that their conclusions could be applied in a much wider context.  We need to hear opposing viewpoints about everything, because otherwise we fall prey to the worst part of tribalism -- the attitude that only the members of the tribe are worth listening to.  It's why liberals should occasionally tune in to Fox News and conservatives to MSNBC.  It's why the religious shouldn't unfriend their atheist Facebook friends -- and vice versa.  It's why my friend and coworker who tends to vote for the opposite political party than I do is someone whose views I make myself listen to and consider carefully.

Now, don't mistake me.  This doesn't mean you should put up with assholes.  The social conventions still apply, and disagreeing philosophically doesn't mean you call the people on the other side idiots.  I have chosen to disconnect from people who were rude and disagreeable -- but I hope I'd do that even if they shared my political views.

Put simply, we need to be pushed sometimes to overcome our natural bent toward surrounding ourselves with the like-minded.  When we do, we become less likely to fall prey to our own biases, and less likely to pass unfair judgment on those who disagree with us.  The work by Fisher et al. shows us how powerful the echo chamber effect can be -- and why it's critical that we get ourselves out of it on occasion, however comforting the illusion of certainty can be at times.