I’d also be interested in a communication channel

Glad you enjoyed it!

Ha, thanks bot

Hey, I’m running a community here on Lemmy that is focused on the topic of echo chambers and the way they form, and I think you might like it:

!bridgingthegap@unilem.org

Excuse my shameless plug, lol

Completely on the dot! A couple of years ago during Covid I landed into the far right echo chamber. The way it happened: I was looking for answers to all the craziness that was unfolding, and found my source for answers. Apparently, it was all just a big conspiracy, and there was a group of satanist elites that were trying to take over the world. Terrifying stuff, and even more terrifying, apparently they had so much power that they managed to gain control of all big news channels! Don’t look at the news anymore, and beware of contradicting news sources, they might be controlled opposition! I was in it for about two years and learned about all kinds of weird stuff, Freemasons, MK Ultra, Adrenochrome, Archons, Reptilians, you name it. Recently, through discovering contradictions, I’ve been re-assessing my beliefs and have come to the conclusion that most of it is nonsense.

The grip is very strong once it’s got you. Its whole schtick is in systematically closing off all your access to contradictory information and getting you hooked on sources from the inside, based on fear of the “powerful elites”. It’s a self-controlling system of more of the same, leading to more and more rigidness and nonsense as you get sucked deeper into the belief. At the same time it is actively trying to gather new members. This is why it can live on so many separate channels, even outside of the internet. No moderators are even needed to control the information from its members, as members themselves already do the job on their own. It’s the perfect epistemic loop, and the thought that you’re in one won’t even cross your mind.

I’m afraid that TV stations, Fox News and the church are not the primary spreaders of this belief. It might not necessarily be spread top-down. The echo chamber can be compared more to a living organism, which self-corrects and evolves based on its environment, to grow and gain members. Scary stuff, the way it traps people looking for answers.

For me the solution has been a new belief system: one where I am aware of the way echo chambers work, and am actively looking for them in my own life so I can escape them, with daily practices and all to assist me in this. A lot of our problems are built on echo chambers that we build ourselves. I’ve been experimenting with this for about half a year now, with some really great success. I’m making posts about this here on Lemmy if you’re interested:

The principles of all echo chambers: https://unilem.org/post/120862

Haha, same for me in middle school. I loved to debate, it was just a shame that debating was not like I imagined it was. I have a memory of making a point on a topic, and the other side giving a very strong counterargument. I mostly agreed with this counterargument, but wanted to add some nuance to it, so I started my argument with “I agree with your point, but”. The whole class immediately laughed at me, like I violated some debate rule or something and showed weakness.

This taught me an important lesson, that debate often doesn’t have the goal of getting to an agreement somewhere in the middle, but that the goal is often just to “win”. This is a big deprivation of the potential that debating has. It can be such a great tool for getting to a compromise or learning about the other side, but instead it’s misused in such a way just to impose ideas onto others. I see it used in this way far too often, and to me it appears like a sign of mental weakness instead of strength. It’s just closedness and unjustified competition.

It’s turning a potential nonzero-sum game into a zero-sum game, and if you’re familiar with the prisoner’s dilemma, you can understand why this is problematic.

I’m personally fresh out of a very far-right echo chamber which I came into during Covid, combined with a New-Age echo chamber that I was part of for a longer time. I stumbled upon some other sources about half a year ago, and this knocked me straight out of these echo chambers. I’m now in a weird position where I don’t really know what my views about the world are. Contradicting ideas are still bouncing and settling. I’m in a mental no-man’s land, if you get what I mean.

Btw, thanks for teaching me a new word, cantankerous. Never seen that word before.

Interesting, you’re right. Often there’s not really a clear “danger” but just a dislike of other people’s opinions, but you could argue that that would still qualify as a threat to someone’s beliefs. Maybe the first principle then needs to be a bit less severe.

I hadn’t considered that not all echo chambers actively try to gather more members or to contain them. The echo chambers I’ve been part of always had gathering more members and keeping the members stuck in the belief system as agenda. Think of those “Wake up people! We need to revolt!” kinds of echo chambers. They always had techniques in place to get you hooked on their own news sources and to distrust your previous news sources, so you would go deeper and deeper into the beliefs. They actively tried to contain you, they were traps for people looking for answers. Makes you wonder if it was consciously designed that way or if it just naturally evolved like that, but who knows.

Neurodivergency could definitely play a role. People with autism are often sensitive to change, so that could cause echo chambers to form on forums.

I completely agree with you, even if it is a bit ironic. On one hand it’s very comforting to get affirmation that your beliefs are correct by other people, but on the other hand this can go so far that it can mentally blind you to things that go against this belief, just based on the way knowledge fundamentally works. Often, rejecting contradictions is also used as a way to keep beliefs coherent, but I’ve found that it’s actually completely the inverse, that actively seeking out contradictions creates way better mental models of the world.

I’m not sure if anything changed, but today setting images works. If anybody changed something, thank you!