Have you ever stood in a big room and yelled a word to hear the reverberations bounce back to you? Each repeat of the word gets slighter and slighter until you can’t hear anything. Then, if you’re anything like me, you probably just shout the same word to hear it all over again.
This is exactly how most social media often works. Empty words thrown across a “wall” or “feed” that provide zero challenge to our opinions (either that or you deal with the people who just can’t seem to stay away from fighting anything as long as they’re behind a keyboard). Most of these interactions are unproductive because we already know what we think. Sure, reassurance is nice, but you also need to be challenged on your assumptions or else you wind up blindly clinging to your beliefs without a shred of knowledge that there is merit to a dissenting opinion out there.
Each side will have its evidence (or else the idea would be dismissed like the Ancient Greek gods), but rarely does either side attempt to understand the other. Echo chambers naturally form through the cultures we choose. After all, when we choose our surroundings, we automatically choose people who share our values and those to whom we can relate. However, even though this is our natural tendency, that does not mean that it is the way things should be.
“Is” does not mean “ought” and “does” does not mean “should.”
Echo chambers are dangerous because they can lead to blind obedience and radicalization of beliefs. Without dealing with the other side, we often forget to consider any other evidence because we aren’t exposed to it.
Let me say this as bluntly as possible.
Your ignorance does not justify the opinions you hold.
My ignorance of a subject cannot justify my opinion on that subject. The only way I can come to a reasonable conclusion is by considering as much evidence as I can before deciding on a stance on the matter. Echo chambers perpetuate this ignorance, they do not alleviate it. We cannot consider evidence contrary to our beliefs if we are consistently avoiding it and only listening to those voices who share our convictions. We wallow in our ignorance and refuse to grow out of it.
What does this mean for you and me? We can learn as much as we can about topics relevant to our lives and interests. It also means that when we refuse to do research, we must defer to the experts and trust that they are the ones who know how to solve a problem. I wouldn’t want an English professor as my neurosurgeon any more than I would want that neurosurgeon editing my articles and books. Experts exist so we can trust their judgments when we decline learning about the topic ourselves. And we must decline at least some topical knowledge in favor of others. However, when we hold our own opinions in dissent to the rest of culture and experts, we must be able to rationalize our viewpoints using evidence. We cannot hide behind ignorance while claiming we know the right way.
And in this day and age, when there is so much information out there, how could we possibly rationalize our ignorance?
Micah Davis
The Soapbox 