How can algorithm-driven technology facilitate extremist and other beliefs? What are epistemic bubbles and echo chambers? What are the good-making features of beliefs? How do you separate a rational from an irrational belief? Notes including theoretical examples and scenarios.
On 6th Jan 2019, Proud Boys member and QAnon conspiracy
theorist, Buckey Wolfe, murdered his brother for being a ‘lizard’
(someone part of the ‘illuminati’). What is worrying is the role
of algorithm-driven tech in facilitating so-called extremist
beliefs and actions. Starting search points on Google, for
example, may lead people in one direction as opposed to
another.
How does algorithm-driven tech facilitate extremist and other
beliefs?
Epistemology
Epistemology is similar to ethics, however, instead of being
about actions, epistemology is more about beliefs.
Epistemologists consider a normative evaluation of cognition
and ask questions such as:
- When is a belief rational vs irrational?
- What should you believe? Which assertions are permitted?
- What does it take to turn a belief into knowledge?
- When is inquiry responsible?
- Which habits are virtuous intellectual habits?
These are really the most fundamental questions that
epistemologists are concerned with. They are fundamental to a
lot of different areas and having a good answer would be really
good for science, humanities, and even everyday life.
What are the good-making features of beliefs?
Imagine a belief as a representation e.g., it’s snowing outside.
The good making features of such a belief include accuracy.
However, accuracy alone is not enough because suppose the
belief was just a guess, arisen from the cold. Support is
therefore another good-making feature of a belief e.g.,
checking outside the window to visually confirm that it is
snowing.
, Suppose you form an action (ethics); the right reasons are
required to form a good-making feature. E.g., helping an old
lady across the street due to having a kind heart, not because
someone offered you money to do so. There is a parallel
between belief and action, and thus, ethics and epistemology.
For an action, it’s not enough that it is ‘good’ for it to be just or
moral, it has to be done for the right reasons.
Rational beliefs
One way of thinking about the support for the belief is just to
replace it with evidence. For example, the belief that there is a
fire down the hall can be backed up with evidence of a fire
alarm, smoke etc. With this evidence, the belief becomes more
and more credible. It seems like in any given case there is a
threshold for rationality. Once a belief has enough support, it
becomes a rational belief. Believing there is a fire down the hall
with no evidence would be considered an irrational belief.
Sometimes, even with evidence, things can go wrong. For
example, someone stating on a tannoid that the fire alarm was
just a drill, would be a ‘defeater’ to the support for your belief.
A defeater removes the rationality from a belief.
Evidentialism
The above is a theory known as evidentialism: A belief that P
is rational when and only when it is supported by the total
available evidence. You should believe P just when P is
supported by the total available evidence. We can draw
connections between belief and action by using the reason-
action principle: I should act as though P is the case just
when it is rational for me to believe that P is the case.
Otherwise, the action is unjustified.
One problem of evidentialism can be shown in the following
scenario: 20 people are in a jail courtyard and 19/20
participated in an attack. The guard pulls one person from the
group and states ‘this person is guilty’. The chances of his
belief being accurate are very high, however, the evidence-
action principle would consider: I (the guard) should act as
though X is guilty just when my total available evidence
supports believing that X is guilty. There is a very high chance
that the statistical evidence supports the guard’s actions, and
we mostly act on probabilities. But would the guard be justified
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