Confirmation bias. IMHO the single biggest problem our society faces.
Christopher Mims, a Technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal wrote about this recently.
Social media and the algorithms of all the other major internet players lump everyone into buckets and then give them information based upon previous interest. This works because nowadays people only want information that confirms their viewpoints. Even if something polarly opposite is lucky enough to break through, it's ignored.
Mims called these buckets echo chambers. "When inaccurate information infects one of them, for example, that vaccines cause autism, there are few checks on its spread."
"The end result is systems that—whatever their makers’ intent—are highly optimized to make us believe things that aren’t true. Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc. along with a few other tech companies, have built history’s biggest, farthest-reaching and most profitable delusion machine.
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Confirmation bias. IMHO the single biggest
problem our society faces.
Christopher Mims, a Technology columnist for The
Wall Street Journal wrote about this recently.
Social media and the algorithms of all the other
major internet players lump everyone into buckets
and then give them information based upon previous
interest. This works because nowadays people only
want information that confirms their viewpoints.
Even if something polarly opposite is lucky enough
to break through, it's ignored.
Mims called these buckets echo chambers. "When
inaccurate information infects one of them, for
example, that vaccines cause autism, there are few
checks on its spread."
"The end result is systems that—whatever their
makers’ intent—are highly optimized to make us
believe things that aren’t true. Facebook Inc.,
Alphabet Inc. along with a few other tech
companies, have built history’s biggest,
farthest-reaching and most profitable delusion
machine.
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