Sunday, February 27, 2022

Post #10: Echo Chamber

 

Echo Chambers


In our modern well-connected society, it has never been easier for us to be able to look for ideas we wish to believe or find people that share out ideas and while this can be great it does put us at risk of falling into a pit where we only the ideas we wish to.

This idea of only surrounding ourselves with the ideas and people with which we agree with it becomes known as an echo chamber. These echo chambers on the surface don't appear to be too large of a problem as it is often viewed as simply finding friends or a community but as the chamber begins to echo more and more people become unwilling to agree to or even listen to other ideas that aren't in their chamber. The primary issue with this is that you will only ever listen to one side or a small part of an argument that is entirely within your echo chamber. While this holds to the rights a person has under the first amendment, it decreases the ability of the opposing ideas to express their own first amendment rights. This can become a major issue with media outlets, journals, or governments as they only publish one of the possible ideas and can control the lives of thousands to millions based off of only one side of a potential topic or issue.

The best course of action to stop ourselves from falling into an echo chamber is to simply be willing to listen to the other side of a potential argument and agree to disagree. 

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