Escaping Filter Bubbles Requires Training. Here's the Guide...

00:00:00.000 | All right, let's do one last question.

00:00:02.000 | This one comes from Glenn.

00:00:04.800 | Glenn asks, "How do you think about thinking?"

00:00:09.600 | Glenn goes on to elaborate,

00:00:12.700 | "I was intrigued by a recent podcast

00:00:14.660 | "where you described how, when COVID started,

00:00:16.840 | "you sent out daily emails to your family,

00:00:20.020 | "helping them think about

00:00:20.900 | "what you and they were experiencing.

00:00:22.860 | "You mentioned a couple of reliable sources

00:00:24.640 | "for news about COVID, people you had learned to trust.

00:00:27.800 | "Selfishly, I'd be interested in hearing

00:00:30.020 | "who your trusted sources are.

00:00:32.880 | "But for the purposes of your podcast,

00:00:34.380 | "I would love to hear about how you think about thinking.

00:00:37.780 | "What I mean is, how did you decide

00:00:39.280 | "what was and was not a trusted source?

00:00:41.060 | "How do you distinguish between conspiratorial thinking

00:00:43.140 | "and good thinking?

00:00:44.660 | "When do you trust the science

00:00:45.940 | "and when is it proper to have some skepticism?"

00:00:49.180 | Well, it's a good question, Glenn.

00:00:52.580 | So I did do that newsletter for my family.

00:00:54.500 | It was positive news surrounding the COVID pandemic.

00:00:59.280 | It was trying to counteract

00:01:01.400 | all of the negativity out there.

00:01:02.960 | I stopped that after vaccines.

00:01:04.540 | So after my family had been vaccinated,

00:01:09.600 | after it was clear from the statistics

00:01:11.620 | that our risk was small,

00:01:13.180 | comparable to other things that we face on a daily basis

00:01:15.720 | and don't care about,

00:01:17.000 | I wanted to shift my focus away from COVID.

00:01:20.640 | And the reason is, of course, I mean, life is a gift

00:01:24.080 | and you don't wanna waste it, right?

00:01:26.860 | You don't wanna waste parts of your life

00:01:28.400 | that you could avoid not wasting.

00:01:30.320 | And it seemed to me that an excessive concentration

00:01:34.760 | on COVID as a unique threat,

00:01:36.680 | once we knew statistically that it wasn't a unique threat

00:01:39.660 | for us compared to other things,

00:01:41.400 | was in some sense,

00:01:42.880 | felt like we were dismissing the beauty that was life.

00:01:46.760 | To remain, I think, stuck and obsessed and anxious

00:01:49.720 | about just this one thing

00:01:52.720 | longer than we had to.

00:01:54.800 | And it was completely reasonable at some point,

00:01:57.680 | but to do that any minute longer than was necessary

00:01:59.720 | seemed like it was wasting this resource

00:02:02.000 | that we had been gifted.

00:02:03.120 | We wanted to see people experience art, enjoy experiences,

00:02:06.640 | like get back to the things that make human life human.

00:02:09.720 | So once we were no longer in that period of acute threat,

00:02:12.720 | I stopped that newsletter.

00:02:14.860 | You know, and I see it,

00:02:17.080 | I would say the bubbles in which people

00:02:18.700 | are excessively anxious about COVID have really shrunk

00:02:22.120 | as it was everyone, and then it shrunk.

00:02:25.880 | This is very crude.

00:02:27.240 | At some point it shrunk to, I guess, just blue states,

00:02:29.480 | and now it has shrunk to certain like metropolitan areas.

00:02:33.440 | And there's only a handful of them left.

00:02:35.800 | Our Deep Work HQ is in one of those areas.

00:02:38.220 | There's like a surprising amount of sort of people

00:02:42.600 | walking by themselves with high filtration mask on.

00:02:45.560 | And I just have a lot of empathy.

00:02:46.880 | I mean, I understand anxiety

00:02:48.440 | and something about viruses can tap something primal

00:02:52.320 | and create a really hard loop to break.

00:02:54.320 | And I am fortunate enough

00:02:55.920 | that we were able to break out of that loop

00:02:57.880 | and be able to go and basically live the best life we can

00:03:02.520 | in whatever the constraints were at the moment.

00:03:04.340 | But let's get to the bigger question here.

00:03:06.720 | How did I convince myself of that?

00:03:08.880 | How did I navigate the sea of COVID information?

00:03:11.560 | And more generally, how should people find good sources

00:03:14.920 | when it comes to any sort of issue that is important to you?

00:03:18.980 | How do we burst out of the filter bubbles

00:03:22.000 | that can put us into some sort of intellectual isolation

00:03:25.520 | and in doing so, perhaps lead to a narrowing of options

00:03:30.520 | or a dimming of what's possible in life?

00:03:33.260 | My big recommendation here is to luxuriate in the dialectic.

00:03:40.760 | You have to clash smart, convincing, good people

00:03:45.520 | on different sides of issues together.

00:03:47.480 | You have to do that.

00:03:49.280 | As soon as you stop doing that,

00:03:51.920 | you're in great danger of falling into a filter bubble

00:03:55.400 | where this is super true and this is super wrong.

00:04:00.340 | And I can't even believe those people can wake up

00:04:03.280 | in the morning knowing how wrong they are.

00:04:05.400 | And I just think as soon as you fall into a filter bubble,

00:04:08.180 | life narrows, options constrict, anger and anxiety raises,

00:04:12.500 | and you can fall into these negative loops

00:04:15.740 | like the people who like right now

00:04:18.860 | could be embracing what is good about life

00:04:21.120 | and still is very nervous

00:04:23.380 | about having someone into their home.

00:04:25.180 | And so filter bubbles can be a problem.

00:04:27.520 | So the dialectic is how you get out of this.

00:04:29.720 | Let me get someone who's convincing

00:04:32.020 | on the other side of this thing

00:04:33.000 | that kind of feels like right or what I've been hearing.

00:04:35.260 | Let's put them together.

00:04:36.400 | Let's collide them.

00:04:37.240 | Every time you do that,

00:04:38.280 | you get a deeper, more nuanced understanding

00:04:40.400 | of what's true.

00:04:41.320 | I did that all throughout COVID and you know what?

00:04:44.000 | The experts shifted.

00:04:45.960 | Like there was a time very early in COVID

00:04:48.780 | where there were certain commentators

00:04:50.860 | who were coming more from the conservative

00:04:52.440 | end of the spectrum that had critiques of lockdown policies.

00:04:56.520 | And I would steel man them

00:04:58.560 | and steel man their lockdown policy justifications.

00:05:01.280 | And I'd hit them together.

00:05:02.880 | And I'd come away and be like,

00:05:03.720 | "Hmm, there's something a little bit weird going on here."

00:05:06.560 | I think, and it's a complicated issue.

00:05:09.200 | But I was like, "Let me keep some of these sources

00:05:11.480 | in my queue of things I'm listening to."

00:05:12.840 | Because I think the front page of the New York Times

00:05:16.120 | or the Washington Post,

00:05:16.960 | there was things that was,

00:05:17.920 | there was angles that were being purposefully ignored.

00:05:22.120 | Information has been emphasized.

00:05:23.160 | I was like, "Okay, this is kind of,

00:05:24.240 | there's something interesting going on here."

00:05:26.060 | Those same sources that maybe I was looking at

00:05:28.320 | as the convincing counter examples to the lockdown policies

00:05:31.600 | later on became much less convincing

00:05:35.720 | when it came to things like vaccines.

00:05:37.160 | There's certain specific sources I can think about

00:05:39.600 | who they, for whatever reason,

00:05:42.920 | had a particular thought on vaccines.

00:05:45.000 | And when I would steel man that

00:05:46.160 | against the best other thought,

00:05:47.440 | they were just blown out of the water.

00:05:49.880 | It's like, "Oh, this is incredibly non-convincing

00:05:53.200 | and selective.

00:05:54.040 | And I can see you're ignoring this.

00:05:55.760 | And I'm reading the other side."

00:05:56.600 | And so it was the same people.

00:05:57.600 | Then they were no longer that trusted for me.

00:05:59.400 | Then there were sources that I thought were very useful

00:06:01.280 | early in vaccination that were very good about immunity

00:06:04.480 | and the immune system.

00:06:05.400 | These were often sources that came out of HIV medicine.

00:06:08.000 | People that came out of HIV were very useful

00:06:09.960 | in this sort of immediate post-vaccine moment

00:06:14.760 | because they, first of all,

00:06:16.200 | HIV knows a lot about harm reduction policies,

00:06:20.080 | which is quite different than what we were doing with COVID,

00:06:21.840 | which was more about risk elimination policies.

00:06:23.800 | And they knew a lot about the immune system.

00:06:25.560 | So here's what's gonna happen with a vaccine

00:06:27.480 | or prior infection.

00:06:28.840 | And that felt really useful.

00:06:31.160 | And when I was pushing them against other people

00:06:34.600 | who had different views on the vaccine,

00:06:37.000 | it's like, "Oh, I really understand more about immunity.

00:06:38.680 | That was very useful."

00:06:39.720 | And now there's other doctors who,

00:06:41.680 | I don't follow the news on COVID as much anymore now,

00:06:43.600 | because again, I'm trying to live life.

00:06:45.840 | And I think I can not think as much about it.

00:06:47.920 | But the point is dialectic, collision, collision, collision.

00:06:51.480 | And you get this nuanced view.

00:06:55.680 | And so early on, it's like,

00:06:57.840 | I see what's going on with the lockdowns,

00:06:59.160 | but I have these points of skepticism.

00:07:00.800 | And it's because I was putting these two things together.

00:07:03.640 | And if you looked at either of those sides in isolation,

00:07:05.440 | you'd be in a real extreme.

00:07:06.920 | You'd be either in the extreme of like,

00:07:09.240 | why can't we do what China's doing?

00:07:10.840 | If we could do that, COVID would go away.

00:07:12.960 | Or you're on this other extreme that was like,

00:07:15.680 | this is all a plot to, I don't know,

00:07:18.040 | some great reset plot.

00:07:20.800 | And there's no reason to be doing any of this.

00:07:22.880 | But you'd nail the most convincing people

00:07:24.520 | from both sides together, you get nuance.

00:07:27.040 | And you feel settled, you feel confident.

00:07:29.960 | With immunity, with all these different issues,

00:07:31.840 | always hit them together.

00:07:33.320 | And here's my, the big point I wanna make

00:07:35.360 | about this general filter bubble bursting approach

00:07:38.120 | is that you're not gonna be tricked.

00:07:39.920 | Exposing yourself to the other side of an idea,

00:07:43.800 | the other side of what seems instinctually right

00:07:45.640 | or what your tribe supports

00:07:46.800 | is not gonna trick you into the wrong information.

00:07:49.720 | As I talked about just multiple times here

00:07:51.800 | in these COVID specific examples,

00:07:53.200 | there is people that I was once kind of listening to

00:07:56.400 | that wilted, wilted under this exercise as time went on.

00:08:00.840 | I mean, it is a great identifier of true intellectual depth,

00:08:05.280 | intellectual honesty, accuracy.

00:08:07.560 | It really works very well.

00:08:08.840 | And it's not, you're not gonna be tricked

00:08:10.200 | into some weird conspiracy.

00:08:11.440 | It's actually gonna make your beliefs

00:08:12.880 | and the things you believe in stronger.

00:08:14.360 | It's gonna give you more confidence.

00:08:15.840 | It's probably why today I'm an extreme moderate with COVID

00:08:19.400 | because I've been doing this the whole time.

00:08:22.120 | And I feel confident in my risk assessments.

00:08:24.360 | I'm not super alarmist, I'm not super dismissive.

00:08:26.520 | And I think we've done the right things

00:08:27.800 | to keep our family risk low, but also I'm living life.

00:08:30.800 | And I think it's statistically valid that I am.

00:08:33.160 | And it's because I kept hitting these things

00:08:35.480 | against each other.

00:08:36.320 | And I didn't get captured by either side.

00:08:37.680 | I actually ended up in a sort of alt middle position

00:08:39.880 | that would end up, I think, being pretty useful.

00:08:43.200 | So I think that's what we need to do

00:08:44.160 | in this age of information abundance.

00:08:47.840 | When everyone is going through

00:08:49.840 | the same homogenized interface platforms

00:08:51.960 | like Twitter, Instagram.

00:08:53.000 | And so the crazy guy down the street,

00:08:54.760 | his tweet looks the same as the scholar of 50 years.

00:08:58.280 | And we're trying to sift through this

00:08:59.480 | and figure out what makes sense and what doesn't.

00:09:01.960 | That's the best thing you can do.

00:09:03.800 | Take the thing that sounds most convincing,

00:09:05.280 | take the thing that sounds most convincing

00:09:06.480 | on the other side, hit them together and repeat.

00:09:08.680 | That is how you burst out of filter bubbles.

00:09:11.280 | That's how you find what you really believe in.

00:09:12.680 | It's how you find nuance.

00:09:13.560 | I really think it's the way to go.

00:09:15.920 | And in doing that, the final thing I would say

00:09:17.880 | is be very wary of complete tribal allegiance.

00:09:21.320 | If you see in someone you're looking at

00:09:23.240 | as a source of information, an incredible, consistent,

00:09:28.160 | whatever that tribe says on the opposite.

00:09:30.680 | And even if it contradicts itself down the line,

00:09:34.120 | you see that going on, then don't even bother

00:09:38.160 | with that person in a dialectical collision.

00:09:41.000 | When I say convincing, you want someone who looks like

00:09:42.960 | they at least appear to be intellectually honest.

00:09:45.680 | If you see complete tribal allegiance,

00:09:48.800 | like I will keep, what does my team believe?

00:09:52.040 | That's what's right.

00:09:53.080 | What does that team believe?

00:09:54.080 | We're the opposite.

00:09:55.160 | That should be, you could filter those people out right away.

00:09:57.840 | But for the people who remain,

00:09:59.400 | dialectic, dialectic, dialectic,

00:10:01.960 | I think we all should be doing that.

00:10:04.400 | And if you do that, I don't know,

00:10:05.800 | you get a much more sophisticated, nuanced view of life.

00:10:09.280 | You won't end up at extreme, you won't end up tricked,

00:10:11.760 | and you'll probably end up in a better place.

00:10:13.680 | All right, well, a better place for us in this episode,

00:10:16.000 | I think, is to wrap it up as we went a little bit long here.

00:10:19.560 | I thank everyone who sent in their questions.

00:10:23.960 | As I like to say, if you like what you heard,

00:10:26.040 | you will like what you see at the show's YouTube channel,

00:10:30.080 | youtube.com/calnewportmedia.

00:10:32.200 | Full episodes and clips of every question

00:10:34.360 | and segment done on the show can be found there.

00:10:36.480 | You'll also like what you read

00:10:37.560 | at my long running newsletter.

00:10:39.520 | You can subscribe at calnewport.com.

00:10:42.080 | We'll be back on Thursday with a Listener Calls episode.

00:10:44.640 | And until then, as always, stay deep.

00:10:47.800 | (upbeat music)

00:10:50.400 | [MUSIC PLAYING]

Escaping Filter Bubbles Requires Training. Here's the Guide... | Deep Questions Podcast

Chapters