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Escape the echo chamber

aeon.co

41–50 of 69 posts

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#41

To try and escape both pitfalls I attempt to follow Altucher's advice to have less opinions. https://jamesaltucher.com/2012/12/ten-reasons-i-dont-have-op...

Which is a nice thought, but he’s outsourcing his opinions to someone else and betting on them to make the right call. Most people who did that in Syria are now dead or fleeing. If you’re wealthy this is no problem of course. The wealthier you are, the less opinions you should share or fight for. You can afford this because you can always put your fortune (and yourself) into an available free society with property ri…

Rich-shaming for that post was already weird, but pulling the Syrian war is downright bizarre.

Are you saying the Syrians caused the war, and did that by not having enough opinions?

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#42

> A social network composed entirely of incredibly smart, obsessive opera fans would deliver all the information I could want about the opera scene, but it would fail to clue me in to the fact that, say, my country had been infested by a rising tide of neo-Nazis. Except it would. I know no-one that talks about opera (or anything) all of the time, and it's hard to think that a rising tide of neo-Nazis would escape the…

> it's hard to think that a rising tide of neo-Nazis would escape the notice of a group of reasonably educated, establishment liberals

It's more likely that a bubble of "reasonably educated, establishment liberals" would not understand the grievances of another group of people, and perceive them through the lens of "a rising tide of neo-Nazis", othering them and directly creating conflict, rather than understanding them.

This is how the filter bubble actually works. It's not that the information doesn't come through; it's that it comes through a glass darkly, at high risk of alienation from people holding out-group views.

If, for example, you think that people who don't like change in the social composition of their community are morally wrong for feeling uncomfortable, you're going to push for cultural movements that demonize them. And that makes the problem worse; it amplifies conflict and widens the cracks in society.

There are multiple self-coherent but mutually incoherent views on how society should be structured. As I get older, I find myself feeling less strongly about one view versus another. I am most suspicious of those who believe they have found the one true view; their zeal for change isn't tempered by doubt. No matter which coherent perspective you have, you won't succeed in moving people with other perspectives if you don't acknowledge that their perspectives are also coherent. Your best bet for achieving change is reframing that change within the perspective of those you're trying to convince. Saying that the people you're trying to convince are evil because their view is wrong won't end well.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#43
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If IQ is closely related to genetics and IQ is important for your society (two bold assumptions) you could argue for some eugenics and advantage high IQ people for reproduction. But as you say it could go really bad really fast. Especially if some of those high IQ genes are linked to some illness. For your question about why some people are focused on ethnicity? As usual: people's appearance are easier to discriminat…

>argue for some eugenics and advantage high IQ people for reproduction See .. I find this line of thinking heinous. Why do you not instantly trip up when you type this?

You should have a reason for that. Just feeling terrible might mean you're inside an echo chamber.

Most people support eugenics in the form of outlawing incest because it can lead to faulty offspring. We also think treating neurodegenerative diseases is a good thing. Most parents also hope their kids will be smart. Or at least they don't hope for the opposite. Women don't like to have kids past 40 partly because of higher risk of Down's syndrome. And there's a test for that which can help them decide to abort the baby. All these things are us trying to make future humans smarter, mostly by eugenic techniques.

Maybe you're thinking of actually killing people? That's not quite the same as selective breeding.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#44
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>argue for some eugenics and advantage high IQ people for reproduction See .. I find this line of thinking heinous. Why do you not instantly trip up when you type this?

You should have a reason for that. Just feeling terrible might mean you're inside an echo chamber. Most people support eugenics in the form of outlawing incest because it can lead to faulty offspring. We also think treating neurodegenerative diseases is a good thing. Most parents also hope their kids will be smart. Or at least they don't hope for the opposite. Women don't like to have kids past 40 partly because of h…

Those are all perfectly appealing reasons to step one iota closer to the reality described, which is that we should promote the DNA-privileged forward on the sexual reproduction stack.

Which is something, I think, a little different to all the nice, shiny new things we're getting from CRISPR, et al., sure. Its the dangerous, vile things I care about: opening the door for selective breeding and clones, racial purism, etc.

The technology is one thing; the ethics another tube entirely. Somethings things go boom, othertimes BOOM.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#45
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an empirical matter, but my hunch is that most of the people who focus on correlations between intelligence and ethnic groups or phenotypical perceived "race" are racists. Many people aren't aware that you can be a racist without knowing it. (In a broader sense we're all racists, as practically everybody overgeneralizes based on stereotypes.) It's important to stress that the differences between members of the p…

There is a lot I am tempted to call out in this post, but just for a particularly glaring example, > It's important to stress that the differences between members of the perceived groups ("ethnicities", "country of origin", "mother tongue", "a certain look") are much larger within that group than any measurable differences between averages of those groups. Surely the differences in income, the binary variable of bein…

No, I didn't, as I made very clear in the post. (keyword: "policy making")

I also hope that you don't believe that intelligence and salary are in any way on a par. Intelligence is at least partly genetically inherited (notwithstanding other factors). Salary is not.

To make your analogy correct, consider someone who claims that women are less intelligent than men. That person is most likely a sexist, even though I do not deny that from time to time there may be people who actually believe to have data to back up the claim. Even if there is data, the comparison makes almost no sense except for certain cases of policy making, since the variation of intelligence amongst the group of women and man is so much higher than the difference between the averages of the groups.

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#46

Look at the many stories of people leaving cults and echo chambers. Take, for example, the story of Derek Black in Florida – raised by a neo-Nazi father, and groomed from childhood to be a neo-Nazi leader. Black left the movement by, basically, performing a social reboot. He completely abandoned everything he’d believed in, and spent years building a new belief system from scratch. He immersed himself broadly and ope…

> And they would come back with 150 more recent, more well researched studies and explain to me how statistics works Has anyone actually put this data together in a presentable way? I've only seen things that say the opposite and it would be good to actually have a read of something well-formed that sets the modern progressive case for dealing with this research, beyond simply ignoring it altogether.

Much of published research in all fields is wrong and you shouldn’t trust science to tell you what you should know in your heart and from your own experience. And definitely don’t listen to people like Sam Harris!

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#47
Maybe the best article I’ve read on the topic. Too often people use terms like filter bubble or echo chamber and mean different things. Generally, the lack of access to contrarian viewpoints. But that’s rarely the actual problem. If the author is correct, it’s the lack of trust.

This is especially great: “Here’s a basic check: does a community’s belief system actively undermine the trustworthiness of any outsiders who don’t subscribe to its central dogmas? Then it’s probably an echo chamber.”

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#48
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should have a reason for that. Just feeling terrible might mean you're inside an echo chamber. Most people support eugenics in the form of outlawing incest because it can lead to faulty offspring. We also think treating neurodegenerative diseases is a good thing. Most parents also hope their kids will be smart. Or at least they don't hope for the opposite. Women don't like to have kids past 40 partly because of h…

Those are all perfectly appealing reasons to step one iota closer to the reality described, which is that we should promote the DNA-privileged forward on the sexual reproduction stack. Which is something, I think, a little different to all the nice, shiny new things we're getting from CRISPR, et al., sure. Its the dangerous, vile things I care about: opening the door for selective breeding and clones, racial purism,…

What's wrong with racial purism? We do it with dog breeding. What are the ethical problems?

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#49
post #23
post #18

Your page has loads of problems! Like: Who are you? Why would I trust you? What's your business model? What's your privacy policy? Code of Ethics? Security? How does it work? I would not install the app, nor fill in your website forms before anything like that is clear! Maybe you should interact with The Center for Humane Technology (humanetech.com), because the subject matter is really interesting, and the problem a…

I am getting downvoted, but this is honest feedback. Points for improvement.

Are you sure you've posted on the right thread? You've probably been downvoted because those questions are either easily answerable or simply don't make sense (what app?).

Re: Escape the echo chamber

#50
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all perfectly appealing reasons to step one iota closer to the reality described, which is that we should promote the DNA-privileged forward on the sexual reproduction stack. Which is something, I think, a little different to all the nice, shiny new things we're getting from CRISPR, et al., sure. Its the dangerous, vile things I care about: opening the door for selective breeding and clones, racial purism,…

What's wrong with racial purism? We do it with dog breeding. What are the ethical problems?

Purebred dogs suffer a host of genetic diseases resulting in considerable suffering.
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