The Echo Chamber

 It has been a while since it have posted.  I have been enjoying the holidays with family and generally taking a break from the focused thinking that is required to create these posts.  Here is wishing everyone a safe and prosperous New Year.  Taking a break from the focus does not mean that I have had blinders on for the last couple weeks.  There has been a number of events that have caught my attention the past couple weeks and now I feel compelled to comment on them.  These events have got me thinking about the concept of an "echo chamber" and how they affect our lives.

From this wikipedia site

echo chamber is an environment or ecosystem in which participants encounter beliefs that amplify or reinforce their preexisting beliefs by communication and repetition inside a closed system and insulated from rebuttal

A possible synonym for echo chamber could be "group think".  Again to emphasize; the purpose of this blog is to focus on making decisions.  It is not to debate who is right or who is wrong.  As an individual who is responsible for himself and others how do I navigate the decision process.  Once navigated make a decision that serves the best interests of myself, my family, my friends and my community.  I have posted about financial decisions heading into retirement.  I want to make decisions to ensure that my wife and I are financially independent.  I do not want to be a financial burden to my adult children.  That would negatively affect their lives.  I feel a responsibility to be a role model for others.  I am not a billionaire but I do feel that I have received my share of blessings.  To be irresponsible with those blessings would belittle my friends and neighbors that were not as blessed as I have been.  I also have to use my financial resources to care for and provide enjoyment for my wife and family.  After all they have lived a lifetime with me and they deserve some reward (LOL)!

How do echo chambers affect the decision making process?  Well some affects are self evident.  If one only hears one side of an issue that person is unlikely to be aware of any contradictory ideas or thoughts.  You would have the belief that "everyone" holds a particular belief.  One way to address this isolation is to listen to other views.  However this is where things become just a bit tricky.  It is very likely many of the sources of information may have primed you to discount contrary information.  This priming is usually done very subtlety.

The best way to describe this priming is a selling technique I was taught many years ago. As a sales person I was expected to know the strengths and weaknesses of our products.  This understanding allowed you to best present your product to a prospective customer.  That seems to make sense.  However it was equally important to know the strengths and weaknesses of competing products.  Why would knowing your competitors strengths and weaknesses be important.  Potential customers never liked sales people that directly disparaged a competitors product.  A sales person that did that was thought of as brash and arrogant. The technique I was taught was much more covert.  For example let's say I was selling accounting software and our product was very good at addressing yearly changes in the tax code.  The competing products did not have the ability to handle tax code changes.  I would as part of an initial sales call ask the potential client something like: " How do you handle the inevitable yearly tax code changes?".  I could then present the features that our product has to handle these changes.  The real beauty of this occurs when the sales person from the competitor meets with the prospect and the prospect ask: "How does your software handle tax code changes?"

We called these "land mines".  A good sales person could also see these when talking to prospective customers and could make a pretty good guess as to what sales person had been there before them.  They would have an answer to the primed question thus avoiding the "land mine".  BTW I was never close to being a good salesman.

I see these types of landmines in our echo chambers.  They affect us when we breakout of our chambers and try to listen to other perspectives.  One example is when someone will say "they will always play the race card".  So you naively go off and seek an alternate view.  Chances are that the source will mention race.  They may not even "play the race card".  Since you have been so primed by your echo chamber the mere mention of anything to do with race will immediately start you down the path of discounting anything you hear.  Another example: if you are an advocate of restricting gun ownership your echo chamber has no doubt primed you to the phrase "thoughts and prayers".  So anytime a gun rights advocate uses the phrase "thoughts and prayers" your ears close up and you head back to the echo chamber.

The difference between these public "land mines" and the sales technique is that the sales ones are deliberate and tactical.  The public ones I cited are due to the fact that we have been having the same disagreements over the same issues for decades.  It is pretty easy to predict what any public figure will say at any time on any issue.  So in some ways we are already prepared to discount any opinion contrary to our echo chamber.

So what to do?  If we are already primed to disregard contrary thoughts how do we make decisions and be sure that we have properly assessed all the salient information.  Well being able to recognize that we are disregarding information is a first step. Easier said than done.  It is too easy to listen harder.  Some of our biases are pretty deeply ingrained.  I think the first step to meet and engage with people that may have differing views.  It is usually harder to disregard someone you are face to face with.

As for online there one thing I have found quite interesting.  It has the elements of face to face interaction as well as differing views.  I came across this Youtube video of Ben Shapiro and Anna Kasparian.  These two people are on opposite sides of the political spectrum.  Anna is a host on The Young Turks a left leaning news show and Ben is the main host of the Daily Wire a right leaning show.  I am not charmed by either of these people.  Individually I do catch clips of them on Youtube from time to time.  This clip however is the two of them discussing a variety of issues.  I found it much easier to listen to both sides of issues through the two of them.  The two of them sit face to face for about an hour and 40 minutes and discuss the issues.  They agree on some points and disagree on others.  In short they behave like all adults should.  In fact, the first five minutes is them discussing echo chambers and how important it is to get out of our echo chambers.  Sadly, however there are very few of these clips around.