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Re:The real Filter Bubble debate by jerf on Friday June 24, 2011 @01:38PM (#2693077)
The real debate is, who gets to decide what the filter is? We have to have one, nobody can handle the full flood of data, so it's not a matter of whether we have one, it's who gets to control it.

Do you let the user control it? That's great philosophically, but I think in practice it will be hardly any different than search engines just intelligently twiddling the settings based on your actions. On the other hand, pretty much any answer other than the user creates even larger problems with conflicts of interest.

Eli Pariser did a great job of selling the idea that we should be exposed to true diversity, but I still fear that in practice the truly gut, visceral reaction that people have to this is that people can end up in $NOT_MY_IDEOLOGY bubbles, and what they really want is going to be less about diversity and more about making sure that people's bubbles put more of $MY_IDEOLOGY into everybody's bubble (as $MY_IDEOLOGY is obviously the one true correct ideology and therefore deserving of special treatment). There are a lot more people claiming to value diversity than there are people who truly want people to be exposed to the best arguments against $MY_IDEOLOGY there is.

Re:The real Filter Bubble debate by Unseelie on Friday June 24, 2011 @02:02PM (#2693182)
I'm not convinced that's a default state of people. We may train ourselves to be that way, and we may have some level of inclination to such..

I'm wondering if we might not be better off if fairly frequently we do get exposed to the best arguments against $MY_IDEOLOGY, and not get trained into the idea that $MY_IDEOLOGY is the one true correct ideology.

Beyond such, being dropped into a bunch of other bubbles will probably force you to come up with stronger arguments for your ideology, which is, all in all, growth and arguably a good thing.

Re:The real Filter Bubble debate by loup-vaillant on Friday June 24, 2011 @07:22PM (#2694343)
As far as I know it is the default state for many many people. The only clear exceptions I can think of is relativism. Even then, people tend to be relativists about particular subjects only (champions are politics and religion, where "respect" for the other's view is paramount, and plain telling them they are mistaken is often interpreted as offensive and intolerant).

The rest of the time, we just have a very hard time abandoning our beliefs. (I know It'd be hard for me to admit that functional programming is not superior to class based programming most of the time, even in the face of compelling evidence. I'd be likely to search for an escape hatch first.) It's truth that's important, but, probably because of the mind projection fallacy, we mistake our beliefs for truth, and therefore holds our current beliefs dear, which is rather silly when you think about it.

By the way, if being dropped in other bubbles compels you to find stronger arguments for your own, beware that those stronger arguments may actually be unjustified rationalizations. That would be a bad thing. Better change your mind in that case.

Fortunately you can train: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/How_To_Actually_Change_Your_M...