Cass Sunstein made some astute observations in Republic.com 2.0 about how the blogosphere forms into information cocoons and echo chambers. People can avoid the news and opinions they don’t want to hear.
This is not all that surprising. Many do not read the newspaper, or read those newspapers that fuel their initial beliefs. London is famous for its partisan newspapers each pandering to their own slice of the political spectrum.
The standard J.S. Mill view of deliberation is that group discussion is likely to lead to better outcomes, if only because competing views are stated and exchanged.
Sunstein has argued that there are limitless news and information options and, more significantly, there are limitless options for avoiding what you do not want to hear:
- Those in search of affirmation will find it in abundance on the Internet in those newspapers, blogs, podcasts and other media that reinforce their views.
- People can filter out opposing or alternative viewpoints to create a "Daily Me."
- The sense of personal empowerment that consumers gain from filtering out news to create their Daily Me creates an echo chamber effect and accelerates political polarisation.
A common risk of debate is group polarisation. Members of the deliberating group move toward a more extreme position relative to their initial tendencies!
How many blogs are populated by those that denounce those who disagree? This is the role of the mind guard in group-think.
Debate is over-rated as compared to brute experience. Milton Friedman said this in his Nobel price lecture:
Government policy about inflation and unemployment has been at the centre of political controversy. Ideological war has raged over these matters.
Yet the drastic change that has occurred in economic theory has not been a result of ideological warfare.
It has not resulted from divergent political beliefs or aims.
It has responded almost entirely to the force of events: brute experience proved far more potent than the strongest of political or ideological preferences
The market process succeeds because it relies on a bare minimum of knowledge and hardly any deliberation but a lot of learning from experience.
A purpose of voting through secret ballots is both to bring the debate to a close and to clip the wings of those that shout the loudest and longest.
Sunstein in Infotopia wrote about how people use the Internet to spend too much time talking to those that agree with them and not enough time looking to be challenged:
In an age of information overload, it is easy to fall back on our own prejudices and insulate ourselves with comforting opinions that reaffirm our core beliefs. Crowds quickly become mobs.
The justification for the Iraq war, the collapse of Enron, the explosion of the space shuttle Columbia–all of these resulted from decisions made by leaders and groups trapped in "information cocoons," shielded from information at odds with their preconceptions. How can leaders and ordinary people challenge insular decision making and gain access to the sum of human knowledge?
Conspiracy theories had enough momentum of their own before the information cocoons and echo chambers of the blogosphere gained ground.
Must everything be the result of a grand plan? As Karl Popper explains:
…a theory which is widely held but which assumes what I consider the very opposite of the true aim of the social sciences; I call it the "conspiracy theory of society."
It is the view that an explanation of a social phenomenon consists in the discovery of the men or groups who are interested in the occurrence of this phenomenon (sometimes it is a hidden interest which has first to be revealed), and who have planned and conspired to bring it about.
This view of the aims of the social sciences arises, of course, from the mistaken theory that, whatever happens in society – especially happenings such as war, unemployment, poverty, shortages, which people as a rule dislike – is the result of direct design by some powerful individuals and groups.
Cass Sunstein in another book defines a conspiracy theory as:
An effort to explain some event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.
He goes on to argue that millions hold conspiracy theories – that powerful people work together to withhold the truth about some important practice or terrible event.
Conspiracy theories attribute extraordinary powers to political leaders and bureaucracies to plan, to control others, and to maintain secrets. Conspiracy theories overestimate the competence and discretion of these political leaders and bureaucracies, who are assumed to be able to make and carry out sophisticated secret plans, despite ample evidence that most government actions do not remain secret for long.
Conspiracy theories also assume that these nefarious secret plans are easily detected by members of the public without the need for special access to the key information or any investigative resources.
Sunstein also argued that a distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories and look at these attempts as further proof of the conspiracy.
Karl Popper argued that conspiracy theories overlook the pervasive unintended consequences of political and social action; they assume that all consequences must have been intended by someone.
Most people lack direct or personal information about the explanations for terrible events, and they are often tempted to attribute such events to some nefarious actor as a way of coping with an uncertain world. More than a few blogs help them round-up the usual suspects.
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