哲學觀察：從回聲室效應，看網絡時代的人云亦云問題_風聞

【來源龍騰網】

正文原創翻譯：

 

2019年9月

作者為猶他谷大學哲學副教授C. Thi Nguyen

Pick any of the big topics of the day – Brexit, climate change or Trump’s immigration policies – and wander online.

挑選任何一個當下的重大話題：英國脱歐，氣候變化或是特朗普的移民政策，然後去網上逛逛。

What one is likely to find is radical polarization – different groups of people living in different worlds, populated with utterly different facts.

你可能會找到的是兩極分化的激進觀點，生活在不同世界裏的不同人羣，腦子裏填塞着的是迥然不同的事實。

Many people want to blame the “social media bubble” - a belief that everybody sorts themselves into like-minded communities and hears only like-minded views.

有很多人想要歸咎於“社交媒體氣泡”，即相信每個人都會把自己歸入志同道合者的羣體中，並且只聽取志同道合者的觀點。

原創翻譯：龍騰網 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻譯：yzy86 轉載請註明出處

From my perspective as a philosopher who thinks about communities and trust, this fails to get at the heart of the issue.

從我這個思考羣體和信任的哲學家的角度來看，這沒能切中這個問題的要害。

In my mind, the crucial issue right now isn’t what people hear, but whom people believe.

在我看來，當前的關鍵問題並不是人們聽到了什麼 ，而是人們相信的是誰。

Bubble or cult?

是氣泡還是邪教團體？

My research focuses on “epistemic bubbles” and “echo chambers.” These are two distinct ideas, that people often blur together.

我的研究集中在“認知氣泡”和“回聲室效應”上。這是兩個有區別的概念，人們常常會把它們混為一談。

（譯註：回聲室效應在媒體上是指在一個相對封閉的環境上，一些意見相近的聲音不斷重複，並以誇張或其他扭曲形式重複，令處於相對封閉環境中的大多數人認為這些扭曲的故事就是事實的全部）

An epistemic bubble is what happens when insiders aren’t exposed to people from the opposite side.

當內部的人接觸不到對立面的人時，就會出現一個認知氣泡。

An echo chamber is what happens when insiders come to distrust everybody on the outside.

當內部的人開始不信任外部的所有人時，便會出現一個回聲室。

An epistemic bubble, for example, might form on one’s social media feed. When a person gets all their news and political arguments from Facebook and all their Facebook friends share their political views, they’re in an epistemic bubble. They hear arguments and evidence only from their side of the political spectrum. They’re never exposed to the other side’s views.

比如説，一個認知氣泡可能產生於某人在社交媒體上的訂閲。當一個人只從臉書上獲取新聞和政治爭論，並且他所有的臉書好友都會轉發他們的政見，那他們就置身於一個認知氣泡中了。他們能聽到的論據和證據只來自於政治光譜中他們的那一方。他們從來沒有接觸過另一方的見解。

An echo chamber leads its members to distrust everybody on the outside of that chamber. And that means that an insider’s trust for other insiders can grow unchecked.

一個回聲室會引導其成員猜疑這間回聲室外面的所有人。而這就意味着，一個內部人對其他內部人，不經核驗就能發展出信任。

Two communications scholars, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph Cappella, offered a careful analysis of the right-wing media echo chamber in their 2008 book, “The Echo Chamber.”

兩位傳播學學者，凱瑟琳·霍爾·傑米森和約瑟夫·卡佩拉在他們出版於2008年的書《回聲室》中，給出了對右翼媒體回聲室的細緻分析。

原創翻譯：龍騰網 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻譯：yzy86 轉載請註明出處

Rush Limbaugh and the Fox News team, they said, systematically manipulated whom their followers trusted. Limbaugh presented the world as a simple binary – as a struggle only between good and evil. People were trustworthy if they were on Limbaugh’s side. Anybody on the outside was malicious and untrustworthy.

他們寫道，拉什·林博和福克斯新聞的團隊有組織地操縱着他們的粉絲去信任某個人。林博展現給觀眾的世界是一個簡單的二元對立的世界，表現為一種只發生在善與惡之間的鬥爭。只要站在林博一邊，便成了值得信賴的人。任何外部的人都是心懷惡意且不值得信賴的。

（譯註：拉什·林博是美國保守派廣播脱口秀主持人，全美第一名嘴）

In that way, an echo chamber is a lot like a cult.

這樣看來，回聲室是很像邪教團體的。

Echo chambers isolate their members, not by cutting off their lines of communication to the world, but by changing whom they trust. And echo chambers aren’t just on the right. I’ve seen echo chambers on the left, but also on parenting forums, nutritional forums and even around exercise methods.

回聲室會孤立其成員，而這並不是通過切斷他們和世界的溝通渠道，而是通過變換他們所信任的人。而且回聲室不只存在於右派中，我見過左派中的回聲室，它們也存在於育兒論壇、營養論壇，甚至圍繞着鍛鍊方法也會產生。

In an epistemic bubble, outside voices aren’t heard. In an echo chamber, outside voices are discredited.

在一個認知氣泡中，外部的聲音是聽不到的。在一個回聲室裏，外部的聲音是沒人信的。

Is it all just a bubble?

這僅僅是一個氣泡嗎？

Many experts believe that the problem of today’s polarization can be explained through epistemic bubbles.

很多專家相信，現如今這個兩極分化的問題可以用認知氣泡來解釋。

 

Do social media feeds limit people’s ability of being exposed to a wider variety of views?  Daniel Krason/Shutterstock

（圖解：社交媒體上的訂閲，是否框限了人們接觸更多樣化見解的能力？）

According to legal scholar and behavioral economist Cass Sunstein, the main cause of polarization is that internet technologies have made the world such that people don’t really run into the other side anymore.

根據法學家和行為經濟學家卡斯·桑斯坦的説法，造成兩極化的主要原因是網絡科技已經打造出了這樣一個世界，置身其中的人們不會再真正地遭遇到另一方了。

Many people get their news from social media feeds. Their feeds get filled up with people like them - who usually share their political views. Eli Pariser, online activist and chief executive of Upworthy, spotlights how the invisible algorithms behind people’s internet experience limit what they see.

很多人是通過社交媒體上的訂閲來獲取新聞的。他們訂閲的對象擠滿了和他們類似的人，這些人通常會轉發他們的政見。線上活動家兼網站Upworthy的首席執行官伊萊·帕裏澤，讓公眾注意到了人們網絡體驗的背後那看不見的算法如何框限了他們能看到的內容。

For example, says Pariser, Google keeps track of its user’s choices and preferences, and changes its search results to suit them. It tries to give individuals what they want – so liberal users, for example, tend to get search results that point them toward liberal news sites.

比如，帕裏澤説，谷歌會記錄其用户的選擇和偏好，併為了滿足他們的需要而改變其搜索得到的結果。它試圖給到個體他們想要的內容，這樣一來，比如説自由派的用户，就容易得到能把他們指向自由新聞網站的搜索結果。

If the problem is bubbles, then the solution would be exposure. For Sunstein, the solution is to build more public forums, where people will run into the other side more often.

如果這個問題屬於氣泡，那解決方法就是接觸。對桑斯坦來説，解決方法是建立更多的公共論壇，在那裏，人們就能更頻繁地碰到另一方。

The real problem is trust

真正的問題在於信任

 原創翻譯：龍騰網 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻譯：yzy86 轉載請註明出處

In my view, however, echo chambers are the real problem.

然而，在我看來，回聲室才是真正的問題。

New research suggests there probably aren’t any real epistemic bubbles. As a matter of fact, most people are regularly exposed to the other side.

新的研究標明，可能並不真的存在什麼認知氣泡。實際情況是，大部分人經常會接觸到另一方。

Moreover, bubbles should be easy to pop: Just expose insiders to the arguments they’ve missed.

此外，讓氣泡爆裂應該是很容易的：只要讓內部的人去接觸他們錯過的論點就行了。

But this doesn’t actually seem to work, in so many real-world cases. Take, for example, climate change deniers. They are fully aware of all the arguments on the other side. Often, they rattle off all the standard arguments for climate change, before dismissing them. Many of the standard climate change denial arguments involve claims that scientific institutions and mainstream media have been corrupted by malicious forces.

但是，從現實世界中如此多的案例來看，似乎這種做法其實並不奏效。舉個例子，否認氣候變化的人。他們完全明白另一方的所有論點。他們經常會在摒斥之前，一口氣説出所有關乎氣候變化的標準論點。有很多否認氣候變化的標準論點包括了一些主張，認為科研機構和主流媒體已經被惡勢力腐化了。

What’s going on, in my view, isn’t just a bubble. It’s not that people’s social media feeds are arranged so they don’t run across any scientific arguments; it’s that they’ve come to systematically distrust the institutions of science.

在我眼中，正在發生的情況可不只是一個氣泡那麼簡單。並不是説人們的社交媒體訂閲是安排好的於是他們就碰不到任何符合科學的論點，而是他們慢慢開始有組織地不信任科研機構。

This is an echo chamber. Echo chambers are far more entrenched and far more resistant to outside voices than epistemic bubbles. Echo chamber members have been prepared to face contrary evidence. Their echo-chambered worldview has been arranged to dismiss that evidence at its source.

這是一個回聲室。回聲室遠比認知氣泡來得根深蒂固，對來自外部聲音的抗拒，也遠比後者強烈。回聲室中的每一個成員都已經準備好了面對反證。為了從源頭上摒斥證據，他們那有如回聲室一般的世界觀已經作好了安排。    

They’re not totally irrational, either. In the era of scientific specialization, people must trust doctors, statisticians, biologists, chemists, physicists, nuclear engineers and aeronautical engineers, just to go about their day. And they can’t always check with perfect accuracy whether they have put their trust in the right place.

他們也並不是完全失去了理性。在這個科學專業化的時代，人們僅僅為了過好自己的日子，也必須去信任醫生、統計學家、生物學家、化學家、物理學家、核工程師以及航空工程師。而通常，他們也無法去核驗自己的信任是否萬無一失地安放在了對的地方。

An echo chamber member, however, distrusts the standard sources. Their trust has been redirected and concentrated inside the echo chamber.

然而，回聲室中的成員是不信任標準（信息）源的。他們的信任已經被導向過，而且會集中在回聲室內部。

To break somebody out of an echo chamber, you’d need to repair that broken trust. And that is a much harder task than simply bursting a bubble.

為了能讓人從回聲室中擺脱出來，你必須修復已經破碎的信任。而這個目標可遠比僅僅戳破一個氣泡來得艱難。