The widely held belief of the echo chamber has been bothering me for a while now. I don’t question the phenomenon itself. It’s happened often enough; I totally agree this is a thing. What bugs me though is the idea that the root cause is members of a group agreeing too much.

Agreement is good wtf. Consensus should be a welcome occasional checkpoint. How are you even supposed to build healthy communities if you don’t share some common ground, like say equality for all. Sealioning is not a vaccine against radicalization. If anything the constant bickering from contrarians has the opposite effect.

Diversity may be a better sign of healthy community. Diversity of age, origins, gender, whatever. I don’t believe such a community turns into a radicalization timebomb for being like-minded. We need shared values to build upon, lest loneliness swallows us all.

Nevertheless I feel that obsessing over the homogeneous aspect of an echo chamber is mistaking the symptoms for the essence. My intuition is that the danger is in the discourse itself and to a certain extent in the platform used. I can’t say I’ve made up my mind on the specifics though.

What do you think? It’s OK if you disagree lol 🤪

  • t3rmit3@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    Thank you for sharing this, it definitely helps clarify the discussion.

    I don’t think this article is really about echo chambers (and it never uses the term), I think it’s about (if I had to coin a name for it) performative conformity. The article points out how Democrats and Republicans tend to trend towards different lifestyles, not necessarily based on actual informed dislike of their counterparts’ choices, but because those things are signifiers of their group affiliation. Buying a lifted pickup to appear conservative, for example. I don’t think the author has an issue with this intrinsically, except when it becomes an entrenched position that prevents reflection on your own beliefs.

    Now, the thing I heavily disagree with the author about is that “polarization” equates to “radicalism” or “extremism”. Polarization is about the degree of separation between 2 things. If everyone in American was either Far-Right or Extreme-Far-Right, there would be minimal polarization, but no lack of harmful extremism. Hell, what constitutes extremism is even based on your baseline of “normalcy”, so in order to equate polarization with extremism, you have to be erroneously conflating your own beliefs with “normalcy”. Clearly the author thinks he’s a ‘Centrist’.

    Reading more about the author, Robert B. Talisse, I’m fairly unimpressed. He’s written several books on epistemic pluralism, basically arguing that there are many different, even opposing Truths, which are all valid because Truth is about pragmatic outcomes, and we should always be exposing ourselves to opposing views in order to continually refine our beliefs, a la the Scientific Method of testing hypothesis. That’s great in theory, but if a given system of belief has been analyzed and found lacking, why should we still be engaging with it?

    Consequently, epistemic pluralism countenances the possibility that further argumentation, enhanced reflection, or the acquisition of more information could yield rational resolutions to the kinds of value conflicts that metaphysical pluralists deem irresolvable as such. Talisse’s epistemic pluralism hence prescribes a politics in which deep value conflicts are to be addressed by ongoing argumentation and free engagement among citizens; the epistemic pluralist thus sees liberal democracy is the proper political response to ongoing moral disagreement. [Link]

    I don’t need to constantly debate Nazis to know that Nazism is still bad. I don’t constantly need to re-measure the Earth to know it’s still round, just because some fools believe it’s flat. Both in science and in philosophy, there are settled Truths, and the presence of people who fail to understand them doesn’t threaten them.