Class 4.2: Echo Chambers
Our theme this week of how differences in belief can contribute to interpersonal conflicts continues with more work by Thi Nguyen on the concept of an “echo chamber”, why that is different from an “epistemic bubble”, and how this should help us to think about some of the social forces that are involved in steering us toward divergent beliefs and what the consequences are for blaming individuals whose world views end up being very far from the truth.
Thi Nguyen
Thi Nguyen
By now you know Thi Nguyen - yep, same guy as last week. I’ve chosen to assign his work twice not just because he is in my view one of the most incisive philosophical commentators on contemporary social pathologies, but because individually these two papers stand out on their respective topics of how social forces can shape both values and beliefs. Don’t worry - if you don’t like reading him this is the last that we’ll see of him this semester and these are only close together on the syllabus because I have lumped together the questions of how values and beliefs contribute to conflict.
Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles
In this paper Nguyen sets out to argue that much contemporary discussion of belief polarization (in a broad sense, not Kelly’s narrow sense) has failed to distinguish two importantly different phenomena that each deserve their own name. The first, which he argues has received a lot of attention over the last two decades, is what he calls ‘epistemic bubbles’. The second, which he argues is different and more pernicious, is what he calls ‘echo chambers’. Nguyen sets out to explain the differences, document that this distinction has been underappreciated, and argue that the solution to each is different, and that echo chambers are much harder to overcome.
