The influence of self-segregation on the mind and communication

Much to the irritation of many utopianists, Americans tend to self-segregate by education, profession, religion, race, ethnicity, class, orientation, etc. It is a simple fact of life with many reasons for occurring and it is not inherently bad but it drives utopianists crazy because it departs from the supposed ideal of everyone enjoying an equal opportunity to experience diversity.

But one of the challenges of self-segregation is the echo-chamber problem. If all you see and hear is of one color and one note, you begin to lose awareness that there are many other notes and colors. Jonathan Haidt (with others) has a new paper on this issue, Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science. While I think he is right, I would not constrain it to an issue of Political Diversity. There are innumerable vectors of diversity as listed above.

This inclination to unconsciously cut oneself off from exposure to other ideas and experiences is very common. Not only is it common but we are blind to it. A couple of examples popped up in the past couple of days.

Scott Alexander has had a series interesting and deeply reflective pieces dealing with romance, perceived privilege, nerds, prejudice, projection, aggression, etc. including Radicalizing the Romanceless, Untitled, and several others.

Bryan Caplan responded to Untitled with Shy Male Nerds and the Bubble Strategy. Both Caplan and Alexander are smart, relatively conservative, intellectual individuals responding to the repressiveness and aggression of radical feminism and asking how should a smart person respond to such aggression.

Caplan basically suggests to Alexander to ignore the aggressive strident noises of the repressive radical feminists. Caplan's recommendation is to implement a bubble strategy, filtering out friends, feeds, etc. which contain all the aggression. To which Alexander responds that that is easier said than done.

Even on the purely academic/intellectual level, this [Caplan's Bubble strategy] is difficult. I have got a bunch of programs that filter the input I get from social media and the news, I've blocked all of my friends who reblog the worst stuff, and I still can't really get away from it.

To which Caplan responds with Shy Male Nerds and the Bubble Strategy: Reply to Scott Alexander saying that it isn't that hard to create a bubble. Caplan notes, regarding the difficulty of screening feminist attacks:

With all due respect, this is hard to believe. I've been a nerd for decades. 95% of my friends are male nerds. My friends tend to be unusually young and single because many of them are my former students. Yet Scott's pieces on feminist abuse of nerds are virtually my sole exposure to the problem. This isn't surprising when you look at the data: Feminism is a minority position, even among women.

Commenter Zubon points out the problem with Caplan's position. Caplan and Alexander live in different bubbles and Caplan is self-segregated in a conservative university whereas Alexander is on the front lines of political correctness and left wing worldviews.

Bryan, you're at GMU. Scott's friend group is based out of Berkeley, CA. At least one of his girlfriends self-identifies as a "SJ feminist." In Scott's case, creating a bubble that excludes triggers would involve much higher costs than you might expect. "Abandon my entire friend group" is not hyperbole in this case.

What I find interesting is that Caplan and Alexander are probably reasonably congruent in cognitive capability and to some degree in core beliefs. Even so, they have a markedly different interpretation of the severity, prevalence and impact of the problem substantially because of their respective degrees of self-segregation. That is an echo chamber effect.

This does not negate Caplan's arguments but it does mean that his arguments are less robust, simply because he has less exposure to the issue than does Alexander.

The other instance of echo-chamber effect was What leading feminists want to accomplish this year by Ruth Tam. A piece thoroughly mocked in the comments for its lack of self-awareness and detachment from reality. The commenters point out that most of the stated goals, whether in isolation or together, are virtually unintelligible, unimportant and/or unachievable when they aren't simply loaded with entirely predictable negative unintended consequences. Again, this is an echo-chamber effect. These "leading" feminists who nobody recognizes are all academics, writers, or activists. All notoriously isolated communities prone to listening to one another and no one else.

You look at what the population at large is concerned about (Cluster of Concerns Vie for Top U.S. Problem in 2014 by Lydia Saad) and the Venn diagram of popular concerns and those concerns of "leading" feminists and the intersection is essentially blank space.

Click to expand.

I find it notable that many of the commenters are calling out the feminists for not being able to communicate in a language (Gender Studies Speak, a modern dialect of Newspeak) that can be understood outside of the humanities department of select universities.