Evaporative cooling implies groups tend to radicalise via self-selection.
(Except this is false in cases of groups on the rise in popularity, and groups that are evangelistic, e.g. pop fandoms, political and religious movements.)
Idea innoculation = process whereby first exposure to a terrible version of an idea innoculates them from adopting better versions of the idea later on. This means we often have only one shot to persuade people, since a bad first attempt will innoculate them. So be hesitant to leap across wide inferential gaps.
Avoiding information cascades is the main reason to encourage forming inside views. Topics in Contemporary Epistemology Local and global epistemic virtues
Grain of truth/realizability problem is the same as unknown unknowns, non standard actions, and all point to the importance emphasised in virtue ethics, of having your attentional dispositions pick out the right set of oppourtunities and choices as salient to you. Can also be phrased in the language of mental frames, but this seems to put a dualism between the frame and it’s content, (the choices it selects), rather than a one level, reflexive attentional disposition.
https://kevindorst.substack.com/p/bayesian-injustice This post gives a super clear, uncontroversial example of individually-theoretically-rational decision making that can lead to structural injustice, which plausibly means we should inquire in special ways, i.e. zetetic considerations are distinct from purely theoretical epistemic considerations. What’s the generalisation of this? Tag: epistemic virtue.
- The appendix also cites some more papers where this kind of Bayesian injustice is the background explanation.
- I think this essay by Daniel Carpenter uses the same model to analyse regulatory capture: https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dcarpenter/files/protwoc-apsr-pub.pdf
- Paradoxes of deontology, virtue, and belief
Epistemic cul-de-sacs/attractors is a good metaphor.
Social epistemology See section on evaporative cooling.
Note that data saying epistemic bubbles don’t exist doesn’t mean echo chambers don’t exist
EC victims are often epistemically virtuous, the mechanisms of ECs just twist this into harm, it’s reverse-Mandeville. They make globally-virtuous policies locally vicious {and vice-versa like regular Mandeville??} Smart, P. R. 2017. ‘Mandevillian Intelligence.’ suggests a fable of the bees analogy for social epistemology. - oh cool lol, was wondering whether there are epistemic fables of the bees