Nguyen part 1 - Lecture notes 4 PDF

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part 1 on Nguyen- echo chambers...

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Nguyen- Echo chambers Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles     

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An echo chamber is a social epistemic structure from which other relevant voices have been actively excluded and discredited- as described by Nguyen An epistemic bubble is a social structure that isolates other relevant voices, it could be by a legitimate accident. People who are in epistemic bubbles often lack exposure to other views and important and relevant arguments/ information. On the other hand- echo chambers have been actively encouraged to distrust ALL outside information sources that disagree with their ways of thinking. The two main differences are that in echo chambers outside voices are consciously not let in, whereas with epistemic bubbles other voices are not heard, however this may be by pure accidence. It is important to emphasise these differences.

Echo Chambers brief explanation  They can explain the post-truth phenomena.  Echo chambers are far harder to escape than epistemic bubbles. Once in their grip an agent may act with epistemic virtue, however social context perverts those actions.  Escaping an echo chamber will require a stark rebooting of one’s beliefs system. Epistemic bubbles  It is a social epistemic structure which has inadequate coverage through a process of exclusion by omission.  They leave out relevant epistemic sources, they do not discredit them actively.  Two sources encourage this kind of attitude. 1) the epistemic agents’ tendency to seek like-minded sources of opinions. That is natural human nature. - ‘selective exposure’ as its often called by social scientists.  This often occurs non-intentionally on sites such as Facebook or other social media sites.  As humans we tend to like people who are like-minded as us and think like us.  However, the above results in gaps in coverage and possibly a lack of the depth of knowledge being shown.  2) an epistemic agents’ informational breadth can be modified by other agents. E.g. censorship or media control by other states. ‘algorithmic personal filtering’ of online experiences.  Internet searches can see what people are searching and use that to be able to filter a persons feed to suit their interests.  Internet technologies create hyper-individualized, secret filters.  Users do not know about the algorithmic filtering therefore it begs the question as to whether or not this is ethical or not.  Many users do not know to what extent how much of their information is being used to censor their searches....