This may be a somewhat tangential, and incomplete, answer: but I worry less about filters or filter bubbles, and more about enhancing the quality of people and ideas I engage with. I do this in two ways:
1. Online and off I have absolutely zero time for abusive, rude or condescending people. They may well have great ideas and so on, but they are rarely worth the pain involved, and are often relentlessly unproductive to engage with. So I brutally filter out sources, titles, and people who are assholes. Which might seem prone to the creation of 'filter bubbles', especially given the tremendous popularity these days of confident assholes who are seen as some kind of courageous guardians of the truth. But the benefit of social media is that there are still plenty of intelligent people out there who you can agree and disagree with in a civilized manner. Also, I have noticed that some people who are utterly insufferable online are far more agreeable in person or via email. Some are worth the investment. So as an extent of all this I have constructed a filter bubble of politeness around me, as much as possible. The benefit of this is that polite people of any political persuasion generally tend to share a diversity of views, even things they disagree with. Nothing makes me happier than people who share stories that they only agree with partly, and then explain why. 2. I try to read entire magazines/newspapers cover to cover. This, at least partly, gets around the social media problem of only the very best and very worst articles getting filtered to the top in our timelines. But in fact, I have noticed that is often the stories that sit in between that are the most interesting. Also, unless you are reading utter tosh, reading magazines or newspapers in full also helps to broaden the kind of things you are receiving and enhance serendipity. Overall the idea I try to follow every day is to consume news, ideas and people in the most active and positive manner I can. As an old teacher once told me, be kind to your brain. On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 11:59 AM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > I've been thinking about the whole issue of 'filter bubbles' and their > various effects, including the death of serendipity, the inability to see > things (like e.g Trump) until they hit you in the face and, more > philosophically, cutting oneself off from many potentially interesting > people and ideas. > > How do people here deal with this? As a start point, when was teh last time > you changed your opinion on something non-trivial, and how did that come > about? > > Udhay > > -- > > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) >
