Comment by bumby
5 years ago
>It's easier now to experience perspectives
>the internet has only strengthened those bubbles
I’m having a hard time tracking whether you think things are better or worse now, unless you are asserting the contact hypothesis is wrong
People have to work harder now to maintain bubbles like people had in the past naturally, especially on platforms like twitter.
I don't think this speaks specifically to whether or not "things are better/worse now," it's a criticism of a particular pop-psych trope angle of measuring it.
I think the contact hypothesis is correct. People interacting with people they're bigoted against will generally ease or counteract their bigotry.
I also think that people overestimate the degree to which contact happened in the past and mistake modern forms of 'bubble-friction' (for lack of a better term) being more visible than the silent, implicit kinds in the past for it being new.
Middle class and rich white people literally left north american inner cities to struggle on their own with reduced tax bases to escape having to interact with black people. They did this quietly, and they did it in a way that appeared individualistic and rational.
The effect was far more profound than any possible consequence of being blocked on twitter or yelled at on facebook, but it was very easy to ignore happening.
Thanks for the well-reasoned reply. I think the angle one of the other commenters may have been taking is that the "social filter" (i.e., social network algorithms) reinforce bubbles rather than, as you say, make people "work harder now to maintain bubbles".
I think some of the work by people like Tristan Harris and Renee Diresta support this. The attention economy works in large part simultaneously on outrage and confirmation bias. To some of the parent comment points, not interacting in the real world may short-circuit the ability for us to confront different views while simultaneously acknowledging others humanity.
>white people literally left north american inner cities to struggle on their own with reduced tax bases to escape having to interact with black people.
White flight is a real thing, but I think the plight of these cities is much more complicated than to be distilled to a single feature like race. As an example, Detroit went from one of the wealthiest cities to bankrupt in a generation. White flight is part of this, as is corruption, as is poor economic diversification, and a host of other issues.