Popping the [Information] Bubble
I’ve been watching what’s going on at Twitter with a lot of professional interest; my job is around helping organizations become healthier versions of themselves, and what Musk is doing breaks many of the rules I typically frame up around that. Which means I’m seeing a real-world test take place right now, and it keeps me wondering – ‘what if I’m wrong’ and ‘what’s going to haopen’?
But it’s super difficult to get a clear picture of what’s really going on there and what it really means, because there are robust information bubbles being enforced right now. And so all the information we see is either reinforcing the “Elon is a Genius and Can Do No Wrong” narrative, or the “Elon is an Evil, Worthless, Fool Who Never Has Done Anything” one.
You literally can’t talk about this without people enforcing one take or the other, and all the comments and stories I see are spun so hard by their narratives they might as well be gyroscopes.
And that’s what I want to talk about here. Because today, we’ve handed much of our thinking over to narratives and that’s worrisome. Here’s why.
Years ago, I took photography pretty seriously. I sold some photos; a few even went out on wire services. I had two great photo teachers in college – one was Joe Czarnecki.
The first day of class he did an exercise on us…yes ‘on’ was deliberate.
He took his exposure meter, held to the wall of the classroom, and got a reading. He told us what it was. Then he had each of us go up and calibrate our meters against the wall.
The values we all shared were pretty close to his.
But mine had shown a value about 80% higher than he’d told us, puzzling me. I assumed mine was wrong, and when it was time to share, trimmed it within 10% of his.
When we were done, he went back to the wall, checked again, and said “Oh. Look. It’s actually [number very close to what I’d measured].”
He turned to us and said that was the last time we’d be chickenshits in his class. He expected us to look with our own eyes and measure what we saw however it came out.
That was a long darn time ago, and it’s still bright in my memory.
This is a classic example of ‘groupthink’ – where the desire to be a member of a group causes us to lie.
Later, studying philosophy, we discussed ‘epistemic closure’ – which has a very specific meaning but has become abused to mean a prevalent form of groupthink that enforces compliance in speech and deed.
I prefer the phrase ‘robust information bubbles’ – all of us have them; some of us work to burst them and look at the world without them (or more accurately with as thin a bubble as humanly possible). And right now, I see the walls of these bubbles thickening to an insane extent. Why does that matter?
Because it keeps us from actually seeing reality – from accurately measuring.
And while it doesn’t matter much when we talk about it, it matters a lot when we actually take the picture.
Reality always wins. Whatever we can do to better see reality is really important.
And if anyone at Twitter wants to invite me to spend a week up there and watch what they’re doing…I’d love to see it.