10th November 2022
Some places – like courts and legislatures – have shared rules for discourse.
But courts and legislatures are not “echo chambers”.
Certain things are not readily said, and certain hard things are to be said softly.
This is not because there are not disputes – and some differences may be fundamental and life-changing.
It is because shared rules for discourse enable constructive engagements and facilitate important exchanges.
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But.
For some on the internet, the slightest suggestion that there can be shared rules for discourse triggers (ahem) the instant accusation that you want to be in an “echo chamber” or that you “want to preach to the converted” or want to be in “a bubble”.
These phrases – clichés – are usually substitutes for thought.
Yet so accustomed are many to the shoutiness and rancour of internet exchanges that the merest suggestion that there can be shared rules for discourse is seen as some sort of assault on “free speech”.
Shared rules are not, however, undermining of dialogue – they instead make meaningful dialogue possible.
Shouting at people – either in real life or on the internet – is a form of monologue, especially if it inhibits the other person from engaging, or saying something they would like to say.
As such the real echo chambers and preached at choirs are not platforms where there are shared rules, but places where such rules are disdained.
Places like Twitter.
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On this blog I will write things which a number of readers will disagree with: Brexit (where I am ultimately neutral in principle, though critical in practice), codified constitutions (where I am sceptical), electoral reform (where I am wary), and so on.
And the commenters on this blog – many of whom provide comments that are better quality and more informed/informative than my head post – will engage, often with other perspectives.
You can then form your own view.
Pre-moderation and my “irksome” rule prevents comments derailing the discussion.
(And, in practice, few comments are not published.)
As such, I do not think this blog is an “echo chamber”, or that I am “preaching to the converted” (though I sometimes wish I could convert more of you to my idiosyncratic views).
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In practice, accusations such as “echo chamber” and “preaching to the converted” can be rhetorical devices to shut down unwanted forms of discourse.
The important thing is that if you want a platform that suits you then you should be free to use a platform that suits you.
And do not be afraid of comments such as “echo chamber” and “preaching to the converted”.
I joined Mastodon recently and, to be honest, have been delighted with the friendly and collaborative approach I have witnessed.
Not every toot I have seen has been an agreement with the original post, but because of the tone used in response, a mature and thoughtful discussion ensues.
So different to the shouty abusive place that the bird can often be.
The problem with the free speech debate is that nobody seems the address the concept of the listener. I have no problem with people saying anything with the exception of pointless rudeness and insults. But why do I have to listen?
Because sometimes you may need to hear what is being said. For example, when people were campaigning against slavery it was important that everyone heard the arguments even if they didn’t want to – just in case they might be persuadable.
I think you’ve clarified my thinking (which has changed over time).
Twitter may facilitate echo chambers – for example, by suggesting trending posts and accounts based on your history; but it doesn’t make them compulsory.
I want to avoid something along the lines ‘guns don’t kill people, people do’ – but having an echo chamber is ultimately a matter of choice.
Lots of people successfully manage to avoid echo chambers and may actively seek out different views.
Twitter may make a contribution, but it’s not the root cause.
As I read your measured remarks and reflected on my week on mastodon, I wondered if humanity divides into those who believe they have a right to impose their beliefs behaviours and needs on others and those who prioritise coexistence between diverse groups and believe in mediation as they respect the right to differ. This division is not unique to a particular cultural or political profile as far as I can see.
“I wondered if humanity divides into those who believe they have a right to impose their beliefs behaviours and needs on others and those who prioritise coexistence between diverse groups and believe in mediation as they respect the right to differ. ”
I don’t think there’s any debate about this: it is – to put it simply – the tension between unenlightened self-interest vs. altruism, a dichotomy which is seemingly thrown into sharper focus each day as the gulf between Right and Left widens.
I take “self-interest” to mean “that which, objectively, is in the best interests of oneself”. I wouldn’t trust the unenlightened to be objective.
Here’s the rub: To be enlightened is to have no idea what your best interests actually are and to be perplexed by the sanguine vigour with which others fight for them regardless.
Shades of Yeats poem The Second Coming
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of of passionate intensity.”
I think the rules of discourse can actually help prevent an echo chamber. The people who go on about free speech, often in a bad faith way, tend to complain that any attempt to exclude them amounts to people forming an echo chamber.
But the same shouty bad faith arguments form their own echo chamber that excludes people who don’t want to get involved with arguing.
Struggling to express exactly what I mean there.
Quite. The internet (or any platform making up a part of it) is not a bastion of free speech. Certain segments are better than others, but should you ever challenge the orthodoxy, you will be quickly mobbed (largely by the highly opinionated, but ill-informed mob). It has become an article of faith that “the climate is changing” (as if the climate has ever been fixed in the history of Earth) and is doing so at the puny hand of man. Anybody with the temerity to suggest otherwise is instantly derided as “a denier” – giving one comfortably comradeship with many a scientist since the dawn of reason (although they tended to be accused of heresy.
Being called “a heretic” is not enough to make somebody correct though. The evidence of man-made climate change is against you. It is not “an article of faith” but an assessment of evidence.
Galileo and others accused of heresy could point to evidence, that is why their view prevailed. Galileo did not think himself right just because he was persecuted.
Doctorates have been awarded in many disciplines and for many reasons. My own profession has long had it as an honourary title. And being doctored at one date does not guarantee continuing performance.
But it would be a rare science PhD immune to the idea that if wherever he presents an idea he is told it is wrong, the reason is that he is wrong.
Around the time of the penultimate King Charles the Admiralty started measuring water temperatures around much, and eventually all, of the world, using the thermometers the Royal Society standardised. They’ve not stopped, others joined in, and it has spread to land, air, and above.
Anyone who starts by questioning whether the world has warmed is wrong, and if they get tedious about it they are a denier, for whatever reason.
The ‘puny hand of man’ is an opinion not supported by science. If you want to argue against the climate change narrative, please attempt to do so with evidence; scientific fact that bis open to scrutiny. Otherwise, that opinion is no more than conjecture.
Listening to Tim Harford speak, he said if you go into a discussion to change someone’s mind you will be disappointed (I paraphrase). The harder people push their view on us, the louder they shout, the further into our position we go. Facts don’t change that and abuse or aggression guarantee it. I liked Twitter for all its flaws, as it was a forum where I read all points of view (sometimes through gritted teeth and yes sometimes I blocked them as I could not bear to read anymore!). But all out abuse, untruth and inaccuracies cannot be part of a real discussion- (which is why the so-called debating in the HOC is fundamentally flawed). I think, when I have properly worked out Mastodon, it will be equally interesting but maybe without the stuff we all hate, which adds nothing to discussion?
“I think, when I have properly worked out Mastodon, it will be equally interesting but maybe without the stuff we all hate, which adds nothing to discussion?”
I disagree.
For myself it’s not opposing opinions per sethat I hate: any such reaction on my part is entirely dependent on how they’re presented; and their degree (or lack) of intellectual honesty and rigour.
Respect – and sometimes enlightenment – comes from reasoned, informed argument: get that right, and everyone is happy.
I think this is the point. On Twitter constructive disagreement is rare, so it is war or circle the waggons or cower behind the sofa. I hope mastodon will be better.
I love your posts . You manage to shine a light on muddled issues and unravel them without destroying their complexity.
While not as formal as a courtroom, we also have pretty strong norms of social decorum (kind of what Freud called the Id – although I’m not sure he really figured it out). These are more flexible from person to person and context to context – but we all know that person in the local that we try not to talk to.
Part of the project of the right (e.g. Steve Bannon) is to undermine these norms – because they see these norms as being defined by and fueling the liberal progress we’ve made since WWII (and well before). Bannon and his ilk are pretty open about this and their intentions. There’s an interesting paper on exactly this https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09579265221095407
The internet in general – and social media in general – provides a place for ‘that persons’ to talk and be heard by like-minded persons. And it’s well suited to amplifying small divisions to create moral panics that can shift that underlying norms.
Blogs are curious animals, they are born, grow and die and they attract an audience, not a random selection every week but the same folk regularly. A clustering that changes but slowly.
A “platform that suits you”, nicely put OGH.
Frank and open discussions are rather rare things. One might say something about xyz and then see it spread over the tabloids – as a comedian recently found. All politicians have a-view-as-publicly-stated and then they have something more approximating to the truth. And as we know ‘a trial is not an exercise designed to discover the truth’. We live in a strange world filled with traps for the unwary – ‘does this dress suit me?’.
To speak one’s mind can be career limiting which is a pity, Confucius had something to say on this. Never mind, skirts on piano legs saved a bit of dusting.
“Does this dress suit me?”
“That dress would suit anybody………………………Ouch! What was that for?”
You never express an opinion that is not considered. Whether or not I happen to share your viewpoint on any particular issue is immaterial. I may or may not change my viewpoint based on your rationale. All this is fine IMO. Keep on keeping on.
Which happy state of affairs perfectly demonstrates the value of – light and consistently applied – rules and moderation to internet discussion, I think.
To be effective, all markets – of good and services, or ideas and information – need rules of one sort or another, express or implied.
Absence of sufficient rules – about merchantability of products, or about the veracity of information, for example – leads to chaos and disruption, and destroys the market. But rules can also be vehicles of oppression – “red tape”, or suppression.
The difficulty is striking the right balance – instituting enough rules to make a market effective but not too many that it stops working properly.
I hope Mastodon manages to maintain its rules of its social contract amid the current influx of new participants who may not have been socialised to follow its rules. I’ve never done Twitter or Mastodon in earnest, but I have heard of “eternal September”, when a sudden opening up of Usenet in 1993 effectively destroyed it within a few years.
I agree that curation is necessary if you want to foster healthy, useful discussion. Failing to do so will cause bad speech to drive out good, because considered, thoughtful, people do not want to be in the same room as the kind of people who scream epithets at each other.