During this podcast episode I discuss what I call your “Information Bubble”. I describe this as who you follow in your electronic or cyber world. The information that you are exposing yourself to on a daily basis. In real life, the classic saying is that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. I take that one step further and relate it to the top five social media or electronic accounts you give the most attention to. I go though different biases and the relativeness of opinion and correctness. The different points of view that you are and are not exposed to. I pose the question that if your friends or family or employer or prospective romantic partner saw what you see on your social media accounts for one day how would that change their opinion of you? How would that change their opinion of whatever topic in general. Would your employer fire you? Would it help you better relate to others by better understanding where they are coming from? Then flip the script, what if you saw what your friends, family, and co-workers saw? How would that change your point of view? I go on to talk about that an in-person human conversation is somewhere between 60%-70% (if not more) of non-verbal communication. So when we have online written conversation we are missing out on all of the facial expressions, hand motions, verbal tones, and emotions that are present during in-person interactions. This means that conversations on social media are probably around 10% the quality of an in-person conversation. I argue by relating to the book 1984 by George Orwell that the people in power, the governments, want these 10% conversations to happen. They do not want people to be able to relate to one another and to keep us arguing amongst ourselves instead of against the increasing powers that control our daily lives. In the beginning of the book Oceania is at war with Eurasia and has always been at war with Eurasia and allies with Eastasia. This is what all of the publications and history books say. By the end of the book Oceania is at war with Eastasia and has always been at war with Eastasia and allies with Eurasia. They change all the history books and publications to keep people pitted against each other. When the main character Winston sees the prisoners of war paraded through the streets he is able to see that they are just like him. They have the same faces and human qualities that his comrades do. My call to action is to analyze your own top five accounts and how they impact you and the information that you receive and the opinions that you formulate. Do they go against the scientific method and discourage scrutiny and questioning? Or do they use phrases such as “in my opinion” or “come to your own conclusions”? Listed below are my top five accounts, and more. Enjoy.
https://goauf.com/ga5/