How to break Consensual Hallucination
Are we surrounding ourselves with people who agree with us or who make us curious
“Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try” — Dr. Seuss
I personally don’t enjoy it so much when people just nod or agree with me. I have a desire to communicate and converse. I usually end my sentences with the question, “What do you think?” welcoming the opportunity to discuss and see the other persons perspective on the topic. I am not convinced with the popular saying that social media destroyed people’s mindset. Did it? Maybe. Or maybe we were already creating our own echo chamber without social media’s interference. Maybe social media acted as a tool that accelerated the existing social behavior.
“Consensual Hallucination” is what Jonathan Haidt named the real life echo chamber creation. This phenomenon suggests that a group of adults form a community with others similar to them taking the “pill” of agreement. The hallucination is stronger and longer lasting than taking a hallucinogenic. He refers to a “homogenous society” where people gradually surround themselves with likeminded people where everyone has agreed to agree with one another. Is that the utopia that is portrayed in Disney movies? I don’t think so; and Jonathan Haidt clearly would agree.
“Each side lives in a separate moral universe with its own facts. It’s own experts and there is no way to get to the other side. You can’t throw arguments or scientific studies at them … it’s not gonna do anything.”
-Jonathan Haidt
We most certainly don’t need to agree on everything with the people around us in order to live in peace. Quite the contrary, we need to be able to not agree and have a conversation where information exchanges and our synapses fire. This is how personal growth takes place. Our parents or best friends don’t always agree with our decisions but we still love and respect each other due to the truthfulness that brings us closer together. A conversation can only be constructive where both sides know the truth behind their claims. The challenge sneaks up when people don’t actually know what they know and even worse, they can’t be humble about their lack of knowledge.
Who is at fault for this complex behavior?
Is it even anyone’s fault?
The lack of diversity is the failure of any community. Diversity of backgrounds, genders, ethnic groups, and most importantly THOUGHTS. We are lacking a diversity of thoughts. Our older generations have created an echo chamber by moving into the same neighborhood as their fellow like minded buddies. Our generation has grown up with “viral news” or “viral videos” about make-up and the Kardashian family. We live in a “likes and follows” generation, which can be good if used in moderation. The constant attention to what is trending can keep us away from diverse thoughts.
We are an egotistic species. We fear asking a question so we are not looked at as idiots. Growing up I always sat with the adults because I loved it when they started talking politics. It was very interesting to me because there was at least one person in the group who had a different opinion. The formula for handling the other group was to immediately silence them with shameful and guilty comments.
What is the harm of being surrounded by like minded individuals?
We have institutions like universities that bring together like minded people with similar ambitions and goals, so why would being surrounded by like minded individuals be so bad?
There are four key reasons:
- Amplifying cognitive biases: Confirmation biases are the driving force of a lack of diversity in thoughts. As species, we have evolved to rely on our intuitions and find evidence to support it.
- Lack of personal growth: Similar to marriage within a family which results in complications with children, our personal growth will be jeopardized from a lack of diversity of thoughts.
- Lack of empathy for others: When you are surrounded by people who agree with you, it would be difficult to understand the challenges that others go through.
- Lack of creativity: In order to be creative, you need to free yourself from noises in life and focus on what is the truth. Exposure to different perspectives will inspire new ideas.
“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people”
— Leo Burnett
What can we do?
The most important factor to understand in order to surround yourself with growth and creativity is to be conscious of your own biases. Welcoming different perspectives is the recipe for success in all aspects of life. Dr. Donald E. Ingber, the founding director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, got his inspiration for his proposal of the tensegrity structure of cells from an architecture class he took as an undergraduate. This idea of tensegrity “The Architecture of Life” has revolutionized the field of biology and bioengineering. Dr. Ingber’s exposure to the artistic world as a scientist paved the way for technological advances. We have the technologies today to connect and expand our network to be inclusive and diverse. Social media platforms were not the beginning of the echo chamber creation, but our own cognition is the mastermind behind it. Let’s not take the “pill” with people like ourselves instead get out of our comfort zone and invite diversity.
“With automatic spell checkers running unleashed over what we compose, our era is that of correctly spelled typos.”
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
