Computer Ethics

Epistemic Bubbles and Echo Chambers

Christopher L. Holland

Saint Louis University

October 22, 2024

What’s the difference between an epistemic bubble and an echo chamber?

• Both are social epistemic phenomena
• Both are problematic social structures

Epistemic Bubbles

Epistemic Bubbles

“An epistemic bubble is a social epistemic structure which has inadequate coverage through a process of exclusion by omission” (Nguyen 2020, 143).

• Exclusion through omission
  • Selective exposure: I seek out like minded sources.
  • External filtering: Another agent modifies my informational landscape.
• Bootstrapped Corroboration

Selective exposure:

We usually like people who are similar to us, and such similarity makes coverage gaps more likely. Friends make for good parties, but poor information networks. We now have a straightforward account of one way in which epistemic bubbles can form. We can build a structure for one set of purposes—maintaining social relations, finding—and then proceed to use it for an entirely different purpose, for which it functions badly: information gathering. (Nguyen 2020, 144)

External Filtering:

Includes “systematic censorship or media control by the state or other actors” but also “algorithmic personal filtering of online experiences” (Nguyen 2020, 144).

Bootstrapped Corroboration

• Corroborating evidence: Two or more independent sources agree
• Copying: Sources agree, but they are not independent
• Bootstrapped Corroboration: Selection bias (from the epistemic bubble) compromises the value of corroboration.

Users of social networks and personalized search technologies will encounter agreement more frequently and so be tempted to over-inflate their epistemic self-confidence. This danger threatens because, in general, corroboration is often a very good reason to increase one’s confidence in the relevant beliefs (Nguyen 2010, 2018a). But corroboration ought to only have weight if it adds something epistemically, rather than being a mere copy. To borrow an example from Wittgenstein: imagine looking through a stack of identical newspapers and treating each next newspaper headline saying p as a reason to increase your belief that p (Wittgenstein 2010: 100). (Nguyen 2020, 144)

Epistemic Bubble Summary

An epistemic bubble is an epistemic network that has inadequate coverage through a process of exclusion by omission. That omission need not be malicious or even intentional, but members of that community will not receive all the relevant evidence, nor be exposed to a balanced set of arguments.

   — Nguyen (2020, 145)

Echo Chambers

Echo Chambers

“An epistemic community which creates a significant disparity in trust between members and non-members” (Nguyen 2020, 146).

• excludes non-members through epistemic discrediting
• amplifies member’s epistemic credentials
• agreement with core beliefs is a prerequisite for membership
• core beliefs must include beliefs that support that disparity in trust

Epistemic Discrediting

“Non-members are not simply omitted or not heard, but are actively assigned some epistemic demerit, such as unreliability, epistemic maliciousness, or dishonesty.”

Amplifying Epistemic Credentials

“Members are assigned very high levels of trust.”

Disagreement-reinforcement Mechanisms

“Members can be brought to hold a set of beliefs such that the existence and expression of contrary beliefs reinforces the original set of beliefs and the discrediting story” (Nguyen 2020, 146).

For a depressing real-world example, consider Pizzagate. Pizzagate is a conspiracy theory that boiled out of a right-wing online forum on Reddit, which included beliefs that Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant, was the site of a child sex trafficking ring owned by a liberal conspiracy involving Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Eventually, Edgar Welch, a member of that forum, forcibly entered the pizza parlor armed with an assault rifle to investigate; when he satisfied himself that the restaurant contained no child slaves, he gave himself up to the police. The online forum, however, did not take this as contrary evidence. Instead, they leaned on their belief that the liberal conspiracy had total control of the mainstream media, and was willing to stage fake events to discredit the right-wing. The forum took Welch’s claims that there was no sex trafficking ring as evidence that Welch was a paid actor, and thus as further confirmation of the existence of a powerful cabal of liberal child sex traffickers (Mengus 2016; Vogt and Goldman 2016). (Nguyen 2020, 147)

More on misinformation and the spread of false beliefs

“Polarization and Hydroxychloroquine” by Cailin O’Connor, UC Irvine, Logic and Philosophy of Science

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7K1LKIoY0Q

Sources

Jenkins, Ryan. 2023. “Emerging Technologies Lesson 1: Is Technology as ‘Neutral’ as We Think It Is?” Wireless Philosophy. May 4, 2023. https://www.wi-phi.com/modules/emerging-technologies/#D1.

Nguyen, C. Thi. 2020. “Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles.” Episteme 17 (2): 141–61. https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2018.32.