Echo Chambers

 A word that gets thrown around quite a bit these days in media jargon and any type of intellectual discourse is a social media "Echo Chamber". Many people believe that most forms of radicalization in the current world can be attributed to such echo chambers. An echo chamber is a system where a person starts receiving opinions that strengthen their own and invalidate others' opinions that conflict with theirs. In other words, it is a self-fulfilling confirmation bias.

There is a lot of debate about such echo chambers. In the first place, do they even exist? People do not like to be proved wrong and also like to feel that their thoughts (and hence, actions) are perfectly rational and unadulterated. They insist that their radical opinions are formed solely on the basis of facts and that those accusing them of being in an echo chamber are trying to curb certain feelings among them so that they cannot form a united front to campaign for their demands. They feel that the accusers try to create a shred of self-doubt in them, which makes them second guess themselves continuously.  They also feel that the very objectivity of facts is being attacked in this post-truth era and that the only delusional people are those that are accusing them. The accusers tell them that this is what someone caught in the echo chamber would say and in this manner, it turns into a meta debate, which ascends levels of abstraction with each round and no conclusion is reached. Each side blames and attacks the political motivations of the other side for their actions and accuses them of being in their own echo chamber.

Another important question is, what exactly defines an echo chamber? whenever a person criticizes someone for their actions or calls out their "hypocrisy", are they isolating the listener into an echo chamber? How does one develop any opinion without being influenced by an echo chamber? Doesn't this render any and all opinions useless? In such a case where all opinions are equally worthless, the only thing that matters is what one believes and how good others are at articulation and persuasion; If there is no real truth, we believe what suits our internal narrative. The battle again comes down to objectivity vs subjectivity. Do you believe that objective truth exists? Who do we trust to give us this objective truth if it exists? How do we recognize that we are inside an echo chamber and get out of it if we are?

It is hard to argue that no echo chambers exist at all. There are many mediums through which outrageously fake information is passed off as genuine. The fact that some people believe this news is itself a testament to the fact that these echo chambers exist. However, establishing even the fakeness of these messages is possible only because we are able to verify them or dismiss the information as being too far from the realm of reality. Whenever we begin to try to quantify the effect on one's political or philosophical views, the discussion becomes very complex. Would the person be less radical if not for the echo chamber? If two sources publish the same facts but interpret them differently, how can we say that one source is more 'trustworthy'?* If a person aligns with a certain interpretation of the facts and also get all the facts from a certain source, is it obscuring the truth in any way? Should no one in the world try to push their narrative?

The most obvious effect of these chambers is of course radicalization. If you develop an opinion about something and get caught in an echo chamber, it works like a feedback loop and ends up radicalizing you. It also systematically invalidates the opinions of those contradicting you. However, echo chambers can vary in size and density from epistemic bubbles** to a cult-like organization and the effects also vary accordingly.

In retrospect, the post contains many rhetorical questions and not many concrete answers, and that is because the topic is one where an individual must form their own opinion. I believe, that in today's world, the belief in the existence or non-existence of objective truth is a precursor to one's political opinion. Once you have answered that question for yourself, your opinion about the echo chamber becomes clear. In most cases, this also influences your political opinion to a substantial extent.

To conclude, I'd like to draw attention to another fact that is plainly seen but hard to accept. The more time we spend online, the more likely we are to be caught in some kind of echo chamber. Each second of our time spent online is like a cry to the social media overlords. Their algorithms refine our cries and the websites echo it back. Ironically, the only surefire way to get out of echo systems may be to stop reading about how to get out. Thank you for reading.

Footnotes

*one way, of course, could be by trusting the popular opinion. But again, whose opinion is the popular opinion?

**where knowledge about certain issues does not reach you. This is technically a little different than an echo chamber.