4 ms·

I'm not sure that has any bearing on whether they are "trapped in a filter bubble". It is quite possible to very deeply understand the motivations and thoughts

I'm not sure that has any bearing on whether they are "trapped in a filter bubble". It is quite possible to very deeply understand the motivations and thoughts of a group and still be blatantly disparaging - ask a historian, for instance.

chrisco255 8y ago
Let's say you have a historian who believes that historical group X were terrible human beings. How likely do you suppose that this historian would be open to new information that shed new light on group X, with some positive and possibly redemptive qualities? I reckon, based on my understanding of human nature, that historian would take a while to come around, if they ever revised their perspective at all.
- watwut 8y ago
  > Let's say you have a historian who believes that historical group X were terrible human beings. How likely do you suppose that this historian would be open to new information that shed new light on group X, with some positive and possibly redemptive qualities? Pretty much all historians face that whenever analyzing WWII. Answer is partly in historians not making direct moral judgement in their historical work. The goal is not to decide whether people were "good" or "bad". That is for philosophers and fiction writers.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  >How likely do you suppose that this historian would be open to new information... New "information", yeah, not very likely at all. New "evidence", very likely indeed. "Evidence", can be investigated for veracity. Information, is no better than you and I sitting around making up stuff. I think that's a subtle but important distinction that I think a lot of people don't understand about the work of a historian. You have plenty of people who wrote down a story about Agincourt for instance. Plenty of people will still tell you some story about Agincourt today. But only a very, very, few of those stories are consistent with the evidence. For example: ---- Hmm, there are a shit ton of arrow heads at Agincourt. Wow! They're all laying in EXACTLY the distribution that long dead historian X indicated given his account of the battle. Hmm. None of them are where long dead historian Y indicated given her account of the battle. ---- You analyze historical site after historical site, and after a while, you figure out that the accounts of long dead historian X nearly always align closely with the physical historical evidence. So... yeah... naturally after a while, over the hundreds of years that pass, more and more historians start believing long dead historian X rather than long dead historian Y.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  I'm not sure that has anything to do with filter bubbles either. In fact, it seems to be an argument that it doesn't matter what kind of news and information gets presented to people, even if everyone gets the same news feed they'll keep their existing opinions.
comicjk 8y ago
Likewise, it's easy to read strongly liberal/conservative takes on the news without being convinced by them. They are pitched to an audience with very different priors, and often are not even trying to convince anyone else.

chrisco255 8y ago

Let's say you have a historian who believes that historical group X were terrible human beings. How likely do you suppose that this historian would be open to new information that shed new light on group X, with some positive and possibly redemptive qualities? I reckon, based on my understanding of human nature, that historian would take a while to come around, if they ever revised their perspective at all.

watwut 8y ago
> Let's say you have a historian who believes that historical group X were terrible human beings. How likely do you suppose that this historian would be open to new information that shed new light on group X, with some positive and possibly redemptive qualities? Pretty much all historians face that whenever analyzing WWII. Answer is partly in historians not making direct moral judgement in their historical work. The goal is not to decide whether people were "good" or "bad". That is for philosophers and fiction writers.
bilbo0s 8y ago
>How likely do you suppose that this historian would be open to new information... New "information", yeah, not very likely at all. New "evidence", very likely indeed. "Evidence", can be investigated for veracity. Information, is no better than you and I sitting around making up stuff. I think that's a subtle but important distinction that I think a lot of people don't understand about the work of a historian. You have plenty of people who wrote down a story about Agincourt for instance. Plenty of people will still tell you some story about Agincourt today. But only a very, very, few of those stories are consistent with the evidence. For example: ---- Hmm, there are a shit ton of arrow heads at Agincourt. Wow! They're all laying in EXACTLY the distribution that long dead historian X indicated given his account of the battle. Hmm. None of them are where long dead historian Y indicated given her account of the battle. ---- You analyze historical site after historical site, and after a while, you figure out that the accounts of long dead historian X nearly always align closely with the physical historical evidence. So... yeah... naturally after a while, over the hundreds of years that pass, more and more historians start believing long dead historian X rather than long dead historian Y.
lazyasciiart 8y ago
I'm not sure that has anything to do with filter bubbles either. In fact, it seems to be an argument that it doesn't matter what kind of news and information gets presented to people, even if everyone gets the same news feed they'll keep their existing opinions.

comicjk 8y ago

Likewise, it's easy to read strongly liberal/conservative takes on the news without being convinced by them. They are pitched to an audience with very different priors, and often are not even trying to convince anyone else.