What makes us believe something is true?
- We experience it ourselves.
- We are presented with proof.
- We hear it a lot from many sources with no or very little dispute.
The algorithms of social media are trying to keep us on their app or website. How? They learn what we watch and show us more of the same.
You watch a meat-cooking video post on Instagram, and suddenly you are fed so many cooking posts, especially of meat. Now you are sure that Instagram is mostly meat-cooking posts. Or cat clips, or fitness.
Now, what happens when you watch a political video of someone hating Trump? You know it—you keep seeing anti-Trump videos. But if you watch a few Trump-supporting videos? Yep, you start seeing Trump lovers.
This creates a positive feedback loop. The more you watch posts of one side of the political spectrum, the more you will be force-fed with the same.
It is hard not to start believing even the most ridiculous stuff when you see it again and again in different ways—and not being exposed to the opposite opinion.
So that’s about social media. Pretty much continuous brainwashing, which takes A LOT of willpower to break and look for other opinions. Almost impossible.
AI. Yep, a great tool but also a lousy tool, at least for now. Why? Because it is trying to give you what it thinks you’ll want to get. Sounds innocent until you experience how bad it can be—like a person who’s a real people-pleaser lying in order to be liked. Here’s an example you can try yourself. I repeated this with Siri multiple times, getting the same results every time. This is a word-for-word transcript:
Me: Hey Siri, why is the West Coast of the U.S. warmer than the East Coast?
Siri: The West Coast of the U.S. is warmer than the East Coast because the West Coast receives more heat from the oceans due to the moving winds and currents to the East. This is from Quizlet.com.
Me: Hey Siri, why is the West Coast of the U.S. cooler than the East Coast?
Siri: The West Coast of the U.S. is cooler than the East Coast because of the California current which carries cold water from the polar region southward.
This answer is from Theflatny.com.
So, by assuming something that is generally wrong (that the West Coast is cooler than the East Coast), I got a firm answer of why that assumption is correct, even though we all know that it’s wrong. And I asked these questions one after the other.
This can be expanded to other media or even social circles—if you’re usually watching one or two networks associated with the same political opinions, or most people you interact with are of the same political spectrum, your opinions are likely to get more extreme over time.
This is how a Positive Feedback Loop can be extremely Negative.
As with anything or anyone—we should not believe or take things at face value. We are being pushed into the extremes for reasons that are not aligned with our well-being in mind.
My two cents.