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I have personally lost the belief that you can actually change someone's opinion on almost anything. So an echo chamber doesn't have to be a bad thing. I think

I have personally lost the belief that you can actually change someone's opinion on almost anything. So an echo chamber doesn't have to be a bad thing. I think people overestimate the value of having your beliefs challenged, does it ever really change someone's mind? If that's the case, you might as well view twitter as entertainment and to clue into the things you care about, in which case it can be pretty useful.

ivraatiems 10y ago
You can change somebody's opinion, just not through one direct interaction. An opinion change requires time, internal rationalization, and repeated exposure. An echo chamber is bad because it not only repeatedly re-broadcasts beliefs, it also amplifies them. "The President is wrong and should be voted out of office" can turn into "The President is wrong and ought to be shot" in an echo chamber environment much faster if there's nobody around to say "wait, hold up, maybe don't."
- TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
  Most likely at that point, they are making the opinion for themselves and you probably have very little in the decision making
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    Yes, that's exactly what is happening. You can't reach into somebody's brain and make them change, but you can plant little idea-seeds that grow into change.
    - asQuirreL 10y ago
      Recent studies [Nolan 2010] have shown this method to be tricky and dangerous, but effective. [Nolan 2010]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception P.S. Sorry... couldn't resist ;)
- Spellman 10y ago
  Most recent studies of deep canvassing (redone to fix the fabricated data) indicate that a strong, empathetic listener with leading questions has only about a 10% success rate. Note this is NOT shooting out facts, not necessarily a close individual who you've built repoire with, and in fact almost zero talking. AND it persists for at least 3 months! It's small, but it's also viable and completely different than what most people I know think of when we go out to "change someone's mind."
- dabockster 10y ago
  >"The President is wrong and should be voted out of office" can turn into "The President is wrong and ought to be shot" in an echo chamber environment much faster if there's nobody around to say "wait, hold up, maybe don't." Are you implying that social media created Donald Trump?
- guelo 10y ago
  Milo was not the kind of agent that could change people's minds, except maybe those that already agreed with him.
nostromo 10y ago
You can change someone's mind once you know someone's mind, through deep empathy. My friends and I can change each other's minds quite often, by approaching arguments from their own rubric. For example, by drawing an analogy between the topic of discussion and one of their deeply held views, exposing some dissonance. But it takes time, empathy, and understanding. Which is to say I doubt it ever happens on the internet.
bleair 10y ago
I think you're right, but it's my hope that if you both communicate with true intentions you can come to understand a part of the perspective of the other person and why they believe what they believe. You won't charge their mind, but maybe you won't see each other in such negative light for what each person believes.
LoSboccacc 10y ago
Don't look at the trees for the forest. Challenging the status quo solved the aphartaid, freed nations, emancipated women and much more. Sure those changes are generational as people don't get their opinion changed easily. But allowing these discussion to take place freely especially amongst the youth is essential to let them shape their world.
johncolanduoni 10y ago
HN changes my opinion on things all the time. If your beliefs never have to stand up to challenge, your faith in them being correct should be very slim.
- riboflava 10y ago
  If your beliefs change all the time, they can't have been held very strongly or justifiably in the first place. Maybe you should stop having beliefs like that. That's direct evidence that you shouldn't be confident in many of your beliefs, given they change so often. A person with stable beliefs, even if they aren't ever challenged, has no such direct evidence to suggest they should be less confident, they can only have the same general blow to confidence as everyone else with arbitrary unchallenged beliefs.
  - johncolanduoni 10y ago
    > A person with stable beliefs, even if they aren't ever challenged, has no such direct evidence to suggest they should be less confident That's like saying someone who comes up with a bunch of scientific hypotheses and never tests them should have more confidence in them than someone who does. Holding on to your beliefs even in the face of evidence/arguments to the contrary is not a sign of having better or more considered beliefs, it's a sign of arrogance. If you truly think that you're never wrong about anything so there is no reason to even look for contrary data, that is especially arrogant.
    - riboflava 10y ago
      You cut off the rest of my sentence. It's not that never having your beliefs challenged is good, it's that it's not a strong signal that your beliefs are actually wrong, and so your confidence can't actually diminish much from pointing out this fact, because everyone should already account for this in their confidence factors for beliefs they haven't actively tried challenging. Whereas if you're frequently changing your mind, well, that is a strong signal that your beliefs are frequently wrong, or that you're interpreting evidence poorly, either way that is a signal you should be even less confident in your beliefs than general. If you're frequently testing your beliefs, then it's the results of the tests, not the fact that you're testing, plus your ability to have your beliefs appropriately shifted by the results of the tests, which determine how good your beliefs are. The latter half of that equation is probably the bigger factor for what causes wrong beliefs anyway. Ideally your confidence in the belief should match its actual probability distribution, and shifts should be in correspondence with Bayes' rule. In reality many people will see a known-to-be-uniformly-independently-random binary process output a 'run' of Trues and feel more than 50% sure the next hit has to be False because it's 'due'. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy)
snaky 10y ago
> I have personally lost the belief that you can actually change someone's opinion on almost anything. So an echo chamber doesn't have to be a bad thing So you want to change someone's opinion, but not going to allow someone to change yours?
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
HN changes my opinions. Or at least, helps me understand those opinions. It helps that I'm not employed in software engineering, so I have a degree of humility. Well, a little. The rules are: Don't believe anything that isn't substantiated, Do be open to new ideas, but don't be afraid to question them, and don't be afraid to re-evaluate your position. After all, your ideas deserve as much skepticism as anybody else's.
learc83 10y ago
I've had plenty of my opinions changed, and I've changed many of my friends and families opinions numerous times. I once even managed to change someone's opinion about gun-control, on the internet. Rational arguments, a bit of rhetorical ability, and persistence are surprisingly effective. The problem is the persistence part requires multiple interactions over months or years, so it's hard to study.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  Was that over twitter? 140 characters is very restrictive.

ivraatiems 10y ago

You can change somebody's opinion, just not through one direct interaction. An opinion change requires time, internal rationalization, and repeated exposure. An echo chamber is bad because it not only repeatedly re-broadcasts beliefs, it also amplifies them. "The President is wrong and should be voted out of office" can turn into "The President is wrong and ought to be shot" in an echo chamber environment much faster if there's nobody around to say "wait, hold up, maybe don't."

TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
Most likely at that point, they are making the opinion for themselves and you probably have very little in the decision making
- ivraatiems 10y ago
  Yes, that's exactly what is happening. You can't reach into somebody's brain and make them change, but you can plant little idea-seeds that grow into change.
  - asQuirreL 10y ago
    Recent studies [Nolan 2010] have shown this method to be tricky and dangerous, but effective. [Nolan 2010]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inception P.S. Sorry... couldn't resist ;)
Spellman 10y ago
Most recent studies of deep canvassing (redone to fix the fabricated data) indicate that a strong, empathetic listener with leading questions has only about a 10% success rate. Note this is NOT shooting out facts, not necessarily a close individual who you've built repoire with, and in fact almost zero talking. AND it persists for at least 3 months! It's small, but it's also viable and completely different than what most people I know think of when we go out to "change someone's mind."
dabockster 10y ago
>"The President is wrong and should be voted out of office" can turn into "The President is wrong and ought to be shot" in an echo chamber environment much faster if there's nobody around to say "wait, hold up, maybe don't." Are you implying that social media created Donald Trump?
guelo 10y ago
Milo was not the kind of agent that could change people's minds, except maybe those that already agreed with him.

nostromo 10y ago

You can change someone's mind once you know someone's mind, through deep empathy. My friends and I can change each other's minds quite often, by approaching arguments from their own rubric. For example, by drawing an analogy between the topic of discussion and one of their deeply held views, exposing some dissonance. But it takes time, empathy, and understanding. Which is to say I doubt it ever happens on the internet.

bleair 10y ago

I think you're right, but it's my hope that if you both communicate with true intentions you can come to understand a part of the perspective of the other person and why they believe what they believe. You won't charge their mind, but maybe you won't see each other in such negative light for what each person believes.

LoSboccacc 10y ago

Don't look at the trees for the forest. Challenging the status quo solved the aphartaid, freed nations, emancipated women and much more. Sure those changes are generational as people don't get their opinion changed easily. But allowing these discussion to take place freely especially amongst the youth is essential to let them shape their world.

johncolanduoni 10y ago

HN changes my opinion on things all the time. If your beliefs never have to stand up to challenge, your faith in them being correct should be very slim.

riboflava 10y ago
If your beliefs change all the time, they can't have been held very strongly or justifiably in the first place. Maybe you should stop having beliefs like that. That's direct evidence that you shouldn't be confident in many of your beliefs, given they change so often. A person with stable beliefs, even if they aren't ever challenged, has no such direct evidence to suggest they should be less confident, they can only have the same general blow to confidence as everyone else with arbitrary unchallenged beliefs.
- johncolanduoni 10y ago
  > A person with stable beliefs, even if they aren't ever challenged, has no such direct evidence to suggest they should be less confident That's like saying someone who comes up with a bunch of scientific hypotheses and never tests them should have more confidence in them than someone who does. Holding on to your beliefs even in the face of evidence/arguments to the contrary is not a sign of having better or more considered beliefs, it's a sign of arrogance. If you truly think that you're never wrong about anything so there is no reason to even look for contrary data, that is especially arrogant.
  - riboflava 10y ago
    You cut off the rest of my sentence. It's not that never having your beliefs challenged is good, it's that it's not a strong signal that your beliefs are actually wrong, and so your confidence can't actually diminish much from pointing out this fact, because everyone should already account for this in their confidence factors for beliefs they haven't actively tried challenging. Whereas if you're frequently changing your mind, well, that is a strong signal that your beliefs are frequently wrong, or that you're interpreting evidence poorly, either way that is a signal you should be even less confident in your beliefs than general. If you're frequently testing your beliefs, then it's the results of the tests, not the fact that you're testing, plus your ability to have your beliefs appropriately shifted by the results of the tests, which determine how good your beliefs are. The latter half of that equation is probably the bigger factor for what causes wrong beliefs anyway. Ideally your confidence in the belief should match its actual probability distribution, and shifts should be in correspondence with Bayes' rule. In reality many people will see a known-to-be-uniformly-independently-random binary process output a 'run' of Trues and feel more than 50% sure the next hit has to be False because it's 'due'. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_fallacy)

snaky 10y ago

> I have personally lost the belief that you can actually change someone's opinion on almost anything. So an echo chamber doesn't have to be a bad thing So you want to change someone's opinion, but not going to allow someone to change yours?

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

HN changes my opinions. Or at least, helps me understand those opinions. It helps that I'm not employed in software engineering, so I have a degree of humility. Well, a little. The rules are: Don't believe anything that isn't substantiated, Do be open to new ideas, but don't be afraid to question them, and don't be afraid to re-evaluate your position. After all, your ideas deserve as much skepticism as anybody else's.

learc83 10y ago

I've had plenty of my opinions changed, and I've changed many of my friends and families opinions numerous times. I once even managed to change someone's opinion about gun-control, on the internet. Rational arguments, a bit of rhetorical ability, and persistence are surprisingly effective. The problem is the persistence part requires multiple interactions over months or years, so it's hard to study.

monk_e_boy 10y ago
Was that over twitter? 140 characters is very restrictive.