In Defense Of Echo Chambers

Jordan Peterson once said that sanity is socially constructed. If you believe X and your entire ingroup believes Y…if you go right but your entire ingroup goes left…you’ll eventually start questioning your sanity. Or theirs.

Our access to reality is not direct but socially mediated. We don’t just see and believe. We see, we float hypotheses in conversations, we cross-check our gut reaction with the gut reactions of people we like, and then we believe. IF your hypotheses are always shot down, if your instincts never sync up with the instincts of your ingroup, then you’ll start feeling alone and crazy.

Now—what’s the opposite of an echo chamber? A chamber that never echoes back what you say. No affirmation from your environment, no sanity. Who would actually want that? But let’s first iron man the other side.

The common critique of echo chambers goes something like this: People come to believe monstrous falsities when everyone in their niche little groupchat agrees with them. Collectively, the echo chamber reinforces its false notions because it is airtight. No fresh air of critical thought wafts in. Instead of echo chambers, you should live in the free marketplace of ideas. You should be surrounded by people who disagree with you and vote against you and might even hate you because they won’t have your blindspots. You won’t have theirs. In your contentious back and forth with them, you will find truths you’d never find otherwise. And they will too.

Now here’s the problem with the free marketplace of ideas. All the important disagreements in this world are over spiritual visions, not over technical details. By trading facts and arguments, you’re wasting time.

Take two people with different spiritual visions, give them the exact same dataset, and they will analyze, interpret, and “reason” their way to vastly different conclusions. Now if they’re in the free marketplace of ideas, they’ll try to make their own conclusion stand. They’ll badger, bloviate, and bully each other. They’ll pretend to have a logical argument to evade the fact that they’re actually on the cusp of a spiritual battle. All spiritual battles are violent, but they’re not willing to pick up arms yet. Eventually they’ll have to—or they’ll have to stand behind people who are not so cowardly. Until then, they’ll stand in the marketplace of ideas, they’ll “process” information, they’ll “consider” the other side, and they’ll turn oxygen and sunlight into a loud collective din that grates against the skin.

I’d rather not be in the marketplace of ideas, because I’d rather be on the battlefield of convictions. And the one thing you don’t do on a battlefield is turn up alone.

Which brings me back to echo chambers. You can’t turn up to a battle alone, but you also can’t turn up in a group where everyone is as spiritually splintered as you are. That’s actually worse than turning up alone. And so, where the media and the lolbertarians and the self-proclaimed centrists see “echo chambers,” I see groups with meaningful spiritual alignment. I see tribes the way tribes have always existed: with shared worldviews, shared Gods, and shared enemies. And sure—where there are tribes, there is tribal warfare. But sometimes the choice isn’t between war and peace—sometimes the choice is between war and submission to pathetic masters. Sometimes war is the nobler option. 

If you’re in a room that never echoes back your own views to you, you’re not just in the wrong room, you’re actually on enemy territory.

How often should an echo chamber echo back your ideas to you is a technical question, and therefore a boring one, and therefore outside the scope of the current essay. The balance-worshippers will say it should be 50% agreement, 50% disagreement. I would set up the ratio differently. But over and above the technicalities lies the fact that echo chambers are good, actually. Echo chambers make you sane and effective. Echo chambers are the birthplace of shared anthems, shared goals, and shared warcries. And where we are headed, you will need those things.

Share this essay with your echo chamber.

Thank you for reading.