4 ms·

The first in the list is about echo chambers. How was life not an echo chamber with not phones? I'm guessing people in a town would all agree with each other be

The first in the list is about echo chambers. How was life not an echo chamber with not phones? I'm guessing people in a town would all agree with each other because they couldn't get any opinions on the opposite sides. In a city, this could be the case as well, where people would gather and trash people with the opposite views. For the rest, I'm sure I'd be able to come up with convincing examples of why that was an issue in the past. It's incredibly difficult to understand what society and politics from the past. History books aren't able to get us fully emerged in what life was like then. I guess I'm saying that there have always been threats to democracy, but it's shifted more towards social media these days.

mantas 9y ago
Pre-social-media, you'd talk more to neighbours or random strangers in a bar. They'd be more likely to have different opinions and you'd be exposed to different ideas as well as people behind them. Meanwhile today people are less exposed to different opinions and even when they're, they're even less exposed to people behind them. Which is no less important than the ideas themselves.
- jackschultz 9y ago
  How can you claim that people's neighbors had different opinions than the people themselves? How can you say that about strangers at a bar? People then could be the same as people now who don't want to talk about politics and would rather call people with different opinions trash. Who's to say that people these days are less exposed? That's incredibly difficult to research. And I can just claim that people see different opinions all the time, and are able to look up which well known people agree on each side? This whole thing is all claims and not proof. So many people never respecting the opposite side's opinions, but that could easily be because of how humans evolved and not because of culture and tech.
  - Boothroid 9y ago
    I have to say whenever I am out and about speaking to people I meet I find they generally have a very different view to what you get in the MSM, to the point that I wonder what kind of world the MSM inhabits - certainly seems like a different one to the rest of humanity. This is just one person's view.
  - mantas 9y ago
    Are your neighbours your close friends? Most likely not. Most likely they're strangers from different walks of life who happened to be your neighbours purely by accident. Since people are different, your neighbours will likely have different opinions than you. Same for people you meet in a bar. If it's not X-political-gang bar, you'll probably meet all kinds of strangers from the area and away. Meanwhile your closely knit friends' circle is mostly of people who think similarly to you. Or at least people who you're comfortable with. People in general are lazy and rarely look up different opinions for the sake of it. They hear whatever opinions they bump into. Be it their neighbourhood and bar or their FB feed. Another thing is, back in hood & bar times, people would not only hear different ideas, but see that it's regular humans behind them. That there's no inherent us vs them. In social media, it's easy to just write it off as bullshit, the other person as stupid and block them. "Well known people on each side" is a part of a problem. They're "them". It's harder to find common ground with some celebrity you don't agree with than with a neighbour you interact with daily and who is a great human being other than few political points you don't agree with. Of course humans were always prone to "us vs them" and echo chambers. But today's technology makes that very easy to find very specific echo chambers. A century ago language was the echo chamber limit. Thus people speaking same language in close enough geographical proximity would usually get along pretty well. Now that is more or less gone, but we have echo chambers in between people living relatively close to each other. What next, reorganising into virtual states defined by political opinions? Liberal and conservative living next to each other, but following different laws? This is how many countries were run up to modern times actually. Jews having different laws in some European countries. Christians having different laws in Ottoman empire. Neither of these ended well.

mantas 9y ago

Pre-social-media, you'd talk more to neighbours or random strangers in a bar. They'd be more likely to have different opinions and you'd be exposed to different ideas as well as people behind them. Meanwhile today people are less exposed to different opinions and even when they're, they're even less exposed to people behind them. Which is no less important than the ideas themselves.

jackschultz 9y ago
How can you claim that people's neighbors had different opinions than the people themselves? How can you say that about strangers at a bar? People then could be the same as people now who don't want to talk about politics and would rather call people with different opinions trash. Who's to say that people these days are less exposed? That's incredibly difficult to research. And I can just claim that people see different opinions all the time, and are able to look up which well known people agree on each side? This whole thing is all claims and not proof. So many people never respecting the opposite side's opinions, but that could easily be because of how humans evolved and not because of culture and tech.
- Boothroid 9y ago
  I have to say whenever I am out and about speaking to people I meet I find they generally have a very different view to what you get in the MSM, to the point that I wonder what kind of world the MSM inhabits - certainly seems like a different one to the rest of humanity. This is just one person's view.
- mantas 9y ago
  Are your neighbours your close friends? Most likely not. Most likely they're strangers from different walks of life who happened to be your neighbours purely by accident. Since people are different, your neighbours will likely have different opinions than you. Same for people you meet in a bar. If it's not X-political-gang bar, you'll probably meet all kinds of strangers from the area and away. Meanwhile your closely knit friends' circle is mostly of people who think similarly to you. Or at least people who you're comfortable with. People in general are lazy and rarely look up different opinions for the sake of it. They hear whatever opinions they bump into. Be it their neighbourhood and bar or their FB feed. Another thing is, back in hood & bar times, people would not only hear different ideas, but see that it's regular humans behind them. That there's no inherent us vs them. In social media, it's easy to just write it off as bullshit, the other person as stupid and block them. "Well known people on each side" is a part of a problem. They're "them". It's harder to find common ground with some celebrity you don't agree with than with a neighbour you interact with daily and who is a great human being other than few political points you don't agree with. Of course humans were always prone to "us vs them" and echo chambers. But today's technology makes that very easy to find very specific echo chambers. A century ago language was the echo chamber limit. Thus people speaking same language in close enough geographical proximity would usually get along pretty well. Now that is more or less gone, but we have echo chambers in between people living relatively close to each other. What next, reorganising into virtual states defined by political opinions? Liberal and conservative living next to each other, but following different laws? This is how many countries were run up to modern times actually. Jews having different laws in some European countries. Christians having different laws in Ottoman empire. Neither of these ended well.