I try to read opposing views often, as that pretty much fits my job description for running WUWT, but not everyone does this. Some people are so steeped in tribalism that they won’t even venture outside of their comfort zone to see what the other side is saying, and when offered information by “outsiders”, flatly refuse to even consider it or even become combative towards anyone that suggests it. They tend to prefer being surrounded only by people they like and content that they agree with, and consider giving attention to any other views as “false balance”. Joe Romm and his Climate Progress blog is a good example of this, which is why he has such few comments these days. WUWT often posts press releases generated by the opposite side of the debate verbatim, so that we can consider the merit, I also post articles where I disagree with some of the content, but we also have our own problems like any collection of like minded people. On the plus side, love it or hate it, WUWT is read almost equally by both sides of the climate debate, if it weren’t, it would not have so many blog spawn.
From MIT technology Review, h/t to Steven Mosher
How to Burst the “Filter Bubble” that Protects Us from Opposing Views
Computer scientists have discovered a way to number-crunch an individual’s own preferences to recommend content from others with opposing views. The goal? To burst the “filter bubble” that surrounds us with people we like and content that we agree with.
The term “filter bubble” entered the public domain back in 2011 when the internet activist Eli Pariser coined it to refer to the way recommendation engines shield people from certain aspects of the real world.Pariser used the example of two people who googled the term “BP”. One received links to investment news about BP while the other received links to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, presumably as a result of some recommendation algorithm.This is an insidious problem. Much social research shows that people prefer to receive information that they agree with instead of information that challenges their beliefs. This problem is compounded when social networks recommend content based on what users already like and on what people similar to them also like.
This is the filter bubble—being surrounded only by people you like and content that you agree with.
And the danger is that it can polarise populations creating potentially harmful divisions in society.
==============================================================
Read the entire article here: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/522111/how-to-burst-the-filter-bubble-that-protects-us-from-opposing-views/
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1311.4658 : Data Portraits: Connecting People of Opposing Views
Social networks allow people to connect with each other and have conversations on a wide variety of topics. However, users tend to connect with like-minded people and read agreeable information, a behavior that leads to group polarization. Motivated by this scenario, we study how to take advantage of partial homophily to suggest agreeable content to users authored by people with opposite views on sensitive issues. We introduce a paradigm to present a data portrait of users, in which their characterizing topics are visualized and their corresponding tweets are displayed using an organic design. Among their tweets we inject recommended tweets from other people considering their views on sensitive issues in addition to topical relevance, indirectly motivating connections between dissimilar people. To evaluate our approach, we present a case study on Twitter about a sensitive topic in Chile, where we estimate user stances for regular people and find intermediary topics. We then evaluated our design in a user study. We found that recommending topically relevant content from authors with opposite views in a baseline interface had a negative emotional effect. We saw that our organic visualization design reverts that effect. We also observed significant individual differences linked to evaluation of recommendations. Our results suggest that organic visualization may revert the negative effects of providing potentially sensitive content.
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Echo Chambers are where critical thinking goes to die.
I am part of a consensus, leave me alone.
“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?” – Dr. Phil Jones
Okay, how many of you Googled BP?
I got mostly finance stuff but it may be that the spill is now stale.
I suppose it is wise for one to always be suspicious of what one “knows to be the truth”. I like the policy that once convinced of the truth of a thing, it is time to start trying to prove it wrong. Such is a good defense against spurious falsification but on the other hand it is good to be earlier rather than later to abandon an error.
Michael Craig says:
December 6, 2013 at 9:38 am
Okay, how many of you Googled BP?
I got mostly finance stuff but it may be that the spill is now stale.
__________________
In the bubble man, me too…
Thanks for this introspective post.
On the topic of listening to the other side of an argument:
“You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on.” – Harry S. Truman
“If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.” – Sun
Tzu
The best wisdom is often old wisdom.
Two major problems with this (worthy) process are the difficulty people have on a daily basis *verifying* the information they’re given, and what seems (and likely is) a generalized ramping up of hostility in communication, particularly political.
In other words, there are a lot of lies and a lot of angry people hurtling around, and I actually don’t have any kind of solution to that which would work for most people. You can tell people to do a ton of research on every factoid, but mostly that just isn’t going to happen.
This problem is a real one for everyone interested in the climate issue. What makes it worse is that advocates for each side “preach to the choir”, using assumptions and language and rhetoric that either insults or turns off anyone from the other side who tries to read it. Each time I look at a pro-AGW essay hoping to learn something I seem to encounter an insult, a debatable assumption, and a couple of logical fallacies in the first two paragraphs … so I soon stop reading. I’m sure that the reverse is often also true for any believer who reads a skeptical essay.
Authors in the debate should address their essay to an objective neutral reader, forget the insults and justify their most basic assumptions and “facts” before using that as the starting point for their arguments. The other side might feel comfortable enough to read it then.
Having said that, from what I’ve seen most of the ugliness in the debate appears to be on the “believer” side — they often assume that global warming is a fact and that really there can be no “debate” because whatever arguments the skeptics try to make are necessarily “false equivalencies”, etc., and are not seriously considered and in fact are typically sneered at openly. Even if they have a good argument to make, who wants to read it when it has that kind of tone?
Ditto, but I got the British Pharmacopoeia as well. I have certainly been fretting recently about how the G-corporation is filtering my search requests.
OK, Michael, I got mainly general info, certainly including financials. Mostly company website, including one item about how they’re paying all legitimate (?) claims.
Spill IS now stale.
I got a letter from one sister today saying that the other one, a warmist believer, said that the British were exonerated on Climategate. Remember that whitewash? I replied that the whitewash was over two years old and how was it that she was just now hearing about it?
Your statement that WUWT is read almost equally by both sides of the Climate debate will be a huge help in getting my sisters and other caring people to read WUWT. The fact is, this site is probably the most scientific one in existence on the subject, so getting intelligent people to read it should result in a huge boost in real planetary understanding of the issues.
Okay, how many of you Googled BP?
I got mostly finance stuff but it may be that the spill is now stale.
“We introduce a paradigm to present a data portrait of users, in which their characterizing topics are visualized and their corresponding tweets are displayed using an organic design. Among their tweets we inject recommended tweets from other people considering their views on sensitive issues in addition to topical relevance, indirectly motivating connections between dissimilar people.”
Al Gore has a wonderful new paradigm for your google search! Let’s test it. Use the search term “fair trade coffee.” In seven pages of results, only four or five sites are critical of fair trade coffee. Everything else is in positively glowing terms.
But this is the way the cookie crumbles when you are the one who creates the new paradigm.
bing has one critical article of fair trade coffee in five pages.
Remember, then-Sec of State Hilary Clinton also thought that the internet needed to make sure all people have access to the same information. As a paradigm for internet use, this means that “asymetrical information” is a source of people coming into conflict.
One good thing about living in the state that I do (California) and being in the profession that I have chosen (science teacher in a public high school) is that I am constantly exposed to the “others” whether I like it or not. No better way to hone your thinking, sez I.
“Hello. my name is Alan and I am a Bubble Boy.”
“Hello, Alan.”
I agree in principle, and am discouraged that neither side wishes debate. We claim that we do but often we are as abrasive in our dialog as are the alarmists. This contentiousness does not contribute to the exchange of views or the changing of hearts and minds. The more strident the opposition to your belief system, the stronger one holds to it regardless of the quality of the conflicting point of view. When we do get someone from the AGW side to converse we often treat them as we are treated by the “political” scientists.
Bayesian bullshit goes full circle. And the point is what exactly, is anyone surprised? The guy was a turgid old card shark for crying out loud. Just because we’ve seen a resurgence of this crap since the mid-fifties (and Sergey wotsisname made a buck or two out of it lately) doesn’t make it any better.
Any shmuck who thinks they can run the world on such nonsense has yet to attend their meeting with reality.
tolerance is just so over-rated…. /sarc
Never underestimate the lizard-brain as a motivator in so much of the way we are. Billions of years of evolution is ignored at your peril.
Huh?
‘They’ won’t come off their ‘reservations’ or out of their cloistered hallowed ivory towers!!! What are we to do, stand there with megaphones shouting across the moat?
When was the last time Algore debated anybody?
When we do get ‘one’ here (purported; most come here to troll), they seem to have the mental faculties of a 10 yr old (Sisi?) … I even try to engage the few socialists we have show up in an even-handed non-derogatory manner, JUST to get one under a microscope to see what makes them tick, but, they slink away, choosing not to engage even on a polite level …
.
[ Michael Craig says:
December 6, 2013 at 9:38 am ]
On Bing-Archaeology.About.Com:
Definition of Before Present
http://archaeology.about.com/od/bterms/g/bp.htm
What does THAT mean. I’ve never been on that site? WUWT
Hmmm… I see a problem with this. Back in 2007, I just assumed that CAGW was true, and anyone arguing against was probably an idiot. The truth was, though, that I had never tried doing any digging online about the subject, so at one point I did. I was actively looking for the arguments that were pro-manmade warming, in other words. It didn’t take me long, though, to begin smelling a rat, and the rest as they say, is history. The bottom line is, that if one is searching for the truth, regardless of where that truth leads them, then that is what they will find.
Hum, I listen to NPR, because it is receivable all the way to work. I pick up the Left of the Left, Minneapolis Star, I occasionally turn on our local “Democrat Party News Outlet” (known as WCCO television in Minneapolis) and I’m insular and hearing on the “conservative side” (because I read those dastardly RIGHT WING sources, like DRUDGE, and WUWT.
I KNOW many “liberals” (Through Church, certain social contacts, etc.) MANY of them that I know (with the exception of a couple with Libertarian leanings) TAKE IN EXCLUSIVELY LEFT LEANING, DEMOCRAT PARTY, LIBERAL media sources! (One older Gentleman at my health club, reads ONLY the New York Times, as the Minneapolis Star is “too conservative” for him!)
How do we spell “projection”???
For news I always look at two different sources. Usually Fox News and CNN. I find that somewhere in between lies the truth. When it comes to climate science I can’t say I do the same thing. Since most of this debate occurs on blogs it’s difficult to find blogs on both sides of the debate that allow contrarian views to be expressed. That’s why I like WUWT.
Joe who??
“You can never get all the facts from just one newspaper, and unless you have all the facts, you cannot make proper judgements about what is going on.” – Harry S. Truman
Today, you can never get any facts from any newspaper.
“Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?” – Mr. Phil Jones