The basic idea is this:
- Your primary interface with the world is third-hand knowledge gathering.
- First-hand: you experienced it yourself. For example in school, doing lab experiments is important to gain first-hand experience of key scientific principles. This is the best, surest way to learn. Your experience is your own.
- Second-hand: knowledge is relayed from someone who experienced it first-hand. Think reading an autobiography. This is the second-best way. Your experience has been transferred by someone who experienced it themselves.
- Third-hand: your knowledge is relayed from a second-hand source. Think basically every opinion news show. There are some interviews, but they’re soundbite quality. I stop the relay counts here, but this includes any n-hand sources above second hand.
- You primarily interact with the world via a network of worldview-affirming sources.
- If you don’t challenge your worldview, you can’t learn to ask the right questions .
- Every time you accept knowledge relayed by this network, you first stop using your critical thinking skills. Then you start accepting third-hand sources as first-hand sources.
- The knowledge you received meshes with your existing first-person knowledge, so you are inclined to do a “fast review” of it, like a quick LGTM.
- Eventually, you just auto-accept.
- The problem is, Resources/Philosophy/Thinking/CriticalThinking is a muscle, a fast decaying skill.
A filter bubble is functionally an echo chamber