Deliberately seek out different opinions to avoid falling in love with our own ideas
Summary
- Deliberately seek out different opinions to avoid falling in love with our own ideas
Details
- The internet may allow us to only get information from people who share our own ideas
- When forming a group of friends, look for diversity of viewpoint
- there is a natural drift toward homogeneity of thought.
References
Quotes
Although the Internet and the breadth of multimedia news outlets provide us with limitless access to diverse opinions, they also give us an unprecedented opportunity to descend into a bubble, getting our information from sources we know will share our view of the world. We often don’t even realize when we are in the echo chamber ourselves, because we’re so in love with our own ideas that it all just sounds sensible and right. In political discourse, virtually everyone, even those familiar with groupthink, will assert, “I’m in the rational group exchanging ideas and thinking these things through. The people on the other side, though, are in an echo chamber.”
We must be vigilant about this drift in our groups and be prepared to fight it. Whether it is the forming of a group of friends or a pod at work—or hiring for diversity of viewpoint and tolerance for dissent when you are able to guide an enterprise’s culture toward accuracy—we should guard against gravitating toward clones of ourselves. We should also recognize that it’s really hard: the norm is toward homogeneity; we’re all guilty of it; and we don’t even notice that we’re doing it.
First, the Heterodox Academy effort shows that there is a natural drift toward homogeneity and confirmatory thought. We all experience this gravitation toward people who think like we do. Scientists, overwhelmingly trained and chartered toward truthseeking, aren’t immune. As the authors of the BBS paper recognized, “Even research communities of highly intelligent and well-meaning individuals can fall prey to confirmation bias, as IQ is positively correlated with the number of reasons people find to support their own side in an argument.” That’s how robust these biases are. We see that even judges and scientists succumb to these biases. We shouldn’t feel bad, whatever our situation,
The BBS paper, and the continuing work of Heterodox Academy, includes specific recommendations geared toward encouraging diversity and dissenting opinions. I encourage you to read the specific recommendations, which include things like a stated antidiscrimination policy (against opposing viewpoints), developing ways to encourage people with contrary viewpoints to join the group and engage in the process, and surveying to gauge the actual heterogeneity or homogeneity of opinion in the group. These are exactly the kinds of things we would do well to adopt (and, where necessary, adapt) for groups in our personal lives and in the workplace.