Social Media: The Most Dangerous Echo Chamber

With every passing day of my settling down in India, I am finding how the change in India and USA has been parallel. In USA I have seen the two political parties getting increasingly polarized and it has been the same in India. People have extremely strong opinions about things, even simple things, ridiculous and irrelevant things. And the level of passion and heat in an argument quickly reaches stratosphere. Use of inflammatory words is very common. Conspiracy theories are abound. The words “Fascist”, “Nazi”, “Traitor”, “Treason” are being thrown around like candy.

I was wondering what happened. And then it dawned to me.

Social media. Bang.

There are multiple major problems with this social media influenced thinking.

• Polarization and rigidity of opinions – People are used to post things, about their political and religious beliefs and inclinations on social media and get comments from their friends and family, an audience who is very much similar to them. The opinions they hear are mostly like theirs, as if they are hearing their own echo, hence echo chamber. Hearing the same opinions again and again, just like a magnet exposed to same type of magnetic field repeatedly, their own mind gets completely polarized.
• Selective empathy – People who have brain washed themselves for long time suffer from selective empathy. They show empathy to one side and completely lack any empathy to other. Granted we are not Mother Theresa or Dalai Lama to feel love for everyone. We have preferences. But at least there should not be dehumanization. The people we don’t like get dehumanized and refused the right to basic human emotions and human reactions.
• Confirmation bias– People seek out only the information that already confirms what they know, or they think. They avoid the information or publications that might prove them wrong. If the argument is irrefutable, they will cast the doubt on intentions of the writer. There is no tolerance for opposing viewpoint. The quality of objective thinking is severely eroded because of confirmation bias.
• Emotional reasoning– When you say something and someone agrees with you, it gives you validation, a sense of being right, being appreciated, being valuable. It helps bonding and brotherhood and can generate good feelings and emotions. Since these are desirable emotions, our reasoning often gets clouded. We think, perhaps subconsciously, that whatever makes us feel good must be right. We enjoy agreeing with friends more than we enjoy being truthful, and the cycle of agreeing goes on. After a while, people get into discussion just to agree and to make it a bonding exercise. Truth does not matter.

Over the time, same thing get repeated again and again and again. In our mind, a thought or conjecture is promoted to a hypothesis or a theory. A hypothesis or a theory is promoted to the truth. And eventually the truth becomes an assumption or  forgone conclusion. Original thought, which was probably a guess at best, which has undergoes no scrutiny, is now used as a reference to prove or disprove other similar thoughts. This results in circular reasoning. Since A is true, B must be true. Since we now conclude B is true, A must be true.

And almost all people I have known to be in this trap claim to be fair, to be centered in their preferences. They are completely in denial of the trap.

One strong sign, a red flag that you are biased. If you cannot find anything good in the other side, if you cannot find any common ground with the people with whom you disagree, you are in this trap.

What about Hitler? you might say. Do you find common ground with Hitler too?

And their lies the problem. Hitler was bad, but there aren’t that many Hitlers in the world. If you are seeing Hitler everywhere, there is something wrong with you.

How to get yourself out of these mental traps?

• First, open and accept that you, and everyone is vulnerable to these traps. The best way to equip yourself against these is knowledge. Google the terms “cognitive bias”, “confirmation bias”, “emotional reasoning”, “echo chamber”, “groupthink”. And read information. These are well known cognitive traps and a psychologists have done a lot of research on them.
• Second, to check the confirmation bias, actively seek out information that is contradictory to your viewpoint. It can cause short term distress when you are forcing your mind to adjust with a complicated perspective, but eventually it will broaden your understanding and point you to the truth which will result in much less distress.
• Third, practice all encompassing empathy. Showing empathy to someone does not mean you are agreeing with them or you will surrender your position or you will cease to fight. It just means that you give them right of human emotions such as fear, greed, and do not directly link their choices to being sociopath or evil.  It means that you accept that they are fallible human beings just like you and in different time and circumstances, they could be you or you could be them. May be it’s not hate, may be it’s fear? May be it’s not arrogance, may be it’s insecurity? Give your adversary benefit of doubt at least once or twice.
• Fourth, when you get a message that gives you some information that just seems too good to be true, seems to prove you are right beyond doubt, put a hat of skeptic and cross check. Find references from reputed sources. Use your common sense. Put yourself in that situation and ask yourself if you would do that?
• Fifth, and most important, get the hell out and interact with real people and put yourself back into reality. Shake hands, smile, chat, walk in their shoes. Get to know them. Don’t just form your opinions about them based on what you are reading , form it based on personal experience.