I’ve heard people say things like “New perspectives are important because they challenge your worldviews” and if you asked me pre-Lit before I started reading blogs more frequently I would have disagreed with you, however, I’ve recently realized that new perspectives force you to reinforce your worldview. For example, when reading the first Literacy Narrative Blogs, a common trend you will see is people who are 1.5 Generation, discussing the difficulties of learning a new language in regards to reading. However, my worldview in terms of determinism was reinforced through the collection of these narratives; people were struggling to adapt to a new language because they were taught another one first, ie issue was caused by factors outside of their control and was fixed through a huge systemic structure that was reinforcing the outcome of reading in English. Despite me reading about an experience that was completely alien to me and didn’t exist in my worldview, I was able to rationalize it through that lens. I was forced to fit this new perspective in my world view and thus it was challenged. That example explains the broader trend in society now, of massive social media machines churning out the perfect algorithms to keep you engaged so they can feed you ads. One of the major problems with these platforms is that they are incentivized to maximize their engagement and ad revenue at the cost of not challenging the worldviews on others. A while ago I read a short article on Epistemic Bubbles vs Echo Chambers, the general idea was that an Echo Chamber was a space where all ideas were constantly reinforced however an Epistemic Bubble was a space where all negative ideas to the contrary of the bubbles belief were absent. All social media sites, even if not intentionally, create Epistemic Bubbles where new ideas cannot enter, a person can exist today so ideologically poisoned on a given issue because they exist in a media environment that not only constantly reinforces their worldview, but a media environment that makes the other side nonexistent. In a way, I was forced to reintegrate a new experience into one of more broader fundamental worldviews whereas Social Media creates a structure where that process is impossible. Most people don’t think in depth about their worldviews, given that most people mold into the worldviews around them; fun fact: the biggest predictor for your religion is, is what your parent’s religion is. The same idea applies to political beliefs as well, however in the online world as opposed to the real world you can create structures that can destroy the knowledge of dissent. To progress on this issue we have to meaningfully vote for a policy that controls this profit mechanism for social media companies to ideologically poison people and make them more politically extreme. Recently the movement for pushing against this mechanism was the Facebook Data Scandal, or the election scandals with Facebook, or the Covid misinformation scandal. While it is important to maximize for a better political more bipartisan electorate, this can only start with the breaking down of institutions that benefit from political extremists, and it shouldn’t come at the cost of free speech. One final note is that these structures aren’t new at all, while Social Media might be extremely politically polarizing it comes from the root of human nature to confirm our own bias’, to seek our “own truth”. It is why the most popular news network in the US, Fox, used political pundits like ex-political pundit Tucker Carlson to further reinforce the more conservative world-view of the world, and it is the sole reason why Fox had to pay the biggest defamation lawsuit in history because of election misinformation caused by Tucker.
The takeaway is, don’t allow your human nature to seek things that feel good and fulfilling to blind you from another perspective or lens you hadn’t considered.