| >I have no idea how to fix this. I don't either, but I'd love to get some brainstorming started. Some naive solutions (and, please, feel free to point out why each of them won't work -- any maybe what you'd change to get closer to a solution!): 1. News "aggregator" sites that pull from both sides of the spectrum -- though people would probably just pick and choose which articles they read and which they raged over (assuming they didn't just revert back to CNN/Fox immediately) 2. Some neutralizing layer on top of all news sites that pulls out glittering generalities, biased phrasing, etc -- though you'd still have the issue of which stories are being reported on, and those "neutered" articles could easily be less interesting to read (and of course this would be difficult to get right, but I don't think difficulty to implement should be a barrier to trying something) 3. Some gamification of understanding and debate, that rewards people for taking the time to read posts from the other side and thoughtfully sharing their opinions on why they agree/disagree, or pairs people up with someone in private to have a discussion over it (just saw something on HN the other day for this), or something else to facilitate seeing things from someone else's POV 4. A more traditional game (as in, actually a game) that mirrors the real world (in the same way the Stock Market Game mirrors stock market prices) in which you play as someone with a different point of view (e.g. you're given a fictional character and role-play as them) and try to make compromises with other players to achieve peace in an evolving fictional world One other question is this: how do we get people to want to escape their echo chambers? Many people enjoy or are just fine being surrounded by people that agree with them. Lots of people actually go out of their way to remove those who disagree with them (as is popular on e.g. Facebook and G+ right now). How do we convince people that, yes, sometimes it's good to hear dissenting ideas? I see so many people upset right now, and it's clear there's a myriad of deep-set problems at work that can't be fixed with a simple bandaid solution. It's frustrating when you see a problem like this and have no idea how to fix it. |
The million-dollar questions are: How do you combat the addictive effects of anger (it is a very addictive emotion), and the human predisposition towards tribal conflict (e.g., the us vs them dynamic)?
If we had a good answer to those questions, then we could craft a media environment that, while still biased, presented a good sampling of viewpoints[1].
After which, we would need to figure out how can that be made economically sustainable?
I would be very interested to tackle those problems, but fear the economics.
[1] Right now, most media outlets present "the other side" solely as a strawman/weakman argument to be knocked down.