Why do people find it so hard to accept the truth?

How many facts you need to know are hidden in those employees who dare not speak up, customers who leave after the trial, partners and family members who hold different opinions from you, and different viewpoints you have filtered out?

Professor Su Dechao, Professor of the School of Philosophy of Wuhan University, Board Member of Notesman PPE Academy, and Western Philosophy Tutor reminds us that information cocoons grow in individuals, in families, and also in enterprises.

Preferences may determine what news can be presented to a person. The more accustomed you are to making decisions based on experience, the more you need to ask what exactly you have missed.

How to make people around you dare to tell the truth and let yourself see a more real world? After reading this article, you may get some inspiration.

I. The deepest information cocoon is not given by the platform, but what you prefer

We are sliding from an era of "being prohibited" to an era of "being guided".

Platforms no longer deprive you of options, but provide you with as many options as possible — the problem is that all these options follow the same logic: maximize your stay time and engagement.

Unfreedom means depriving your options in a rude way.

This new kind of unfreedom does not come from suppression, but from temptation. If there are only options A, B, C and D in a multiple-choice question, I can still pick out the answer with the elimination method; if there are 100 options, by the time I eliminate 99 of them, it is almost time to hand in the paper, but I have only finished one question.

The more options there are, the narrower the way out for people. Because when 100 options are all customized according to your preferences, what you see is not a vast world, but 100 mirrors. When you look in the mirror, what else can you see besides yourself?

1. Daily Me: You can only hear your own echo

Professor Sunstein of Harvard University put forward the concept of "Daily Me" as early as 2007: The Internet has increasingly enhanced the ability of consumers to filter the content they see.

When you register for each APP, you select what you like, and the platform will not push you the content you dislike. Slowly, you will live in your own universe.

The resulting danger is: everyone lives in an echo chamber designed by themselves, cannot hear the voice of the other side, and cannot access information that may challenge their existing cognition.

A possible result is the intensification of political polarization. This is the case in the United States: the left only listens to the left, and the right only listens to the right. In the long run, different groups live in different information universes, which will breed fanaticism and political violence in extreme cases.

When a right-winger suddenly appears in the left-winger's world, he will not think the other side holds a different opinion, but will think the other side is evil, Satan, and should not exist at all.

A well-functioning free expression system requires two conditions.

First, people should be exposed to materials they would not have chosen in advance.

We must have unexpected encounters, which ensures that you are open — you are observing the world, instead of demanding the world to report to you according to your own standards.

Second, most people need to have a series of common experiences.

Even if you say your part and I say mine, but we hear the same thing at the same time, that is a common experience.

The most dangerous consequence of the echo chamber is group polarization: people with similar ideas talk to each other, and eventually tend to a more extreme position that is consistent with their initial tendency.

Polarization itself is a neutral term, but polarization in the cocoon will bring errors at the factual level: if a statement is repeated enough times, you may start to believe it even without any evidence. This is how cyber violence forms.

Most people who participate in cyber violence are kind ordinary people. The problem is not that they are evil, but that they do not have critical thinking and are not open. They just keep listening to the voices they like. The more they listen, the more they feel the attacked person is extremely wrong, and the more fiercely they attack, like a snowball, which eventually submerges the person attacked by cyber violence.

2. Filter Bubble: You cannot see what you are unable to see

American scholar Eli Pariser put forward the "filter bubble" theory in 2011: The new generation of Internet filters focus on what you seem to like, what you have actually done, and what people similar to you have done.

The traditional echo chamber is at least visible: you know who you are talking to, and you can see the face opposite you. But the filter bubble is invisible.

Algorithms are proprietary but opaque. The platform will not tell you who it thinks you are and what it has filtered out from your information stream, even the platform's own employees do not know that.

Strictly speaking, no human being knows who you are, only the algorithm knows. This lack of transparency is the core problem. We want to jump out, but we can't find any trace.

The biggest danger is not "being unable to see", but being unable to see what you are unable to see.

The maxim on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi becomes sharp again in this era: Man, know thyself. You must know that you are ignorant, and you must see that there are still many things you have not seen.

But after the emergence of the Internet and AI, this challenge is getting bigger and bigger, because everything is trying to please us. Scrolling short videos is a typical example: the more you scroll, the happier you are, but the degree of happiness is getting lower and lower, and you can't stop.

Why?

This is a one-way self-reinforcement — marginal returns are diminishing, but there are always returns, so you can't stop. This is addiction, and it is self-addiction.

Platforms use "relevance" to replace "breadth": the more personalized the information is, the narrower the cognition of the world will be. Users mistakenly think that they are making active choices, but in fact they are passively receiving information within a screened range, and their judgment and vision are shrinking at the same time.

So for our children, we must train them to actively access different viewpoints and receive debate training.

Let them learn to ask from childhood: Besides A and B, is there a third opinion?

The world is not black and white. Cognitive training is to constantly open new entrances for yourself.

II. Waiting for him to finish speaking is not equal to listening to him finish speaking

Information cocoons will also hurt families.

At a family dinner, the child wears headphones to scroll short videos, and the parents say "Leave him alone, let him play for a while, after all, what he watches is all he is interested in."

It seems very open-minded, but there are risks in fact.

When every family member is immersed in their own content bubble, the family loses the common information background. Without the news and public events that they all care about, the only conversations left are transactional communications like "Have you eaten?", "Have you finished your homework?" and "Why haven't you slept yet?" Deep communication cannot be carried out, and the ability of children to understand complex social issues cannot be cultivated either.

What's more, if your partner mentions something he likes to you three times and you don't respond, he won't want to mention it to you next time, and he will feel that you two are totally different people.

Many marriages hit the rocks, not because of the problem at the moment when the red light turns on, but because for a long time, both of the two people have lived in their own filters.

So it is suggested that everyone put down their mobile phones when eating at home.

There is another point that is particularly important: it is not waiting for the other person to finish, but listening to him finish. Many husbands say, at most I will shut up and wait for her to finish speaking, and then I will continue to talk after she finishes. What you do is not listening, you are treating your wife as an object that makes unnecessary noises. Your wife will hate you even more.

When you "wait for him to finish", what you think in your heart is: Have you finished? It's my turn now.

When you "listen to him finish", you are really listening, and after listening, you respond to his content.

Of course, in more cases, you don't even want to wait: "Stop talking about this, I don't want to hear it."

Not listening, waiting for him to finish, and listening to him finish are three completely different attitudes.

A good family and a long-lasting relationship are about listening to him and responding a few words. It sounds simple, but it is too difficult to do, because we all have ego, we all want to express ourselves, and we all want to correct the other person's "homework".

III. Enterprises will also fall into their own echo chamber

Information cocoons not only hurt families, but also hurt enterprises.

1. Be alert to these remarks

Enterprises often decline because of strong leaders: the people he promotes are all those he likes, and he rewards pleasant reports. Over time, different voices can no longer be passed up. The development of an enterprise does not depend on the opinion of the strong leader himself, but on the market environment. You must have multiple perspectives.

There are several remarks that every boss should be alert to.

"I don't want to know the details, just tell me the conclusion directly."

If you are short of time, you can say this once; but after you say it for the fourth time, you will never hear the details again. Without details, how can you know that his conclusion is correct?

"Your idea is very good, but don't think about so many negative things, let's focus on how to get things done."

This is a remark we often say. It sounds positive, but what it actually conveys is: this kind of voice is not welcome. Next time, he will not speak up. Employees will gradually learn to report only good news and hide bad news.

It is right for you to say that his "idea is very good", but you cannot deny the negative problems he raised. What you have blocked may be a way for you to observe the real situation of the enterprise.

2. Products will also be kidnapped by "the loudest users"

User feedback is of course important, but the feedback itself may have structural deviation: the feedback providers with the loudest voices are often core users — they know the existing functions like the back of their hand, and require the functions to be deeper, stronger and more professional. But their proportion is not necessarily high.

We should separate "the users who give the loudest feedback" from "the largest number of users", and the two are often not consistent.

① Lessons from Microsoft.

In the early 21st century, Office occupied more than 90% of the office software market share, and its R&D was highly dependent on enterprise-level core users: financial analysts, legal consultants, and senior administrative staff.

They use the software frequently, have strong payment ability, require Excel to enhance macro functions and PivotTable, and require Word to have more professional typesetting and review functions.

Microsoft responded to every request and kept adding functions. As a result, the menus are nested layer by layer, and there are as many as hundreds of function buttons — according to Microsoft's own statistics, ordinary individual users and small enterprise users only use 5% to 10% of the functions, and the remaining functions all increase the software burden and operation complexity.

Ordinary users get annoyed at first sight: I just want to write a simple document and make a basic form, your learning cost is too high, and the interface is oppressive, so I will not choose you.

Real writers don't like Word either. It is too professional and has been reduced to a typesetting software, rather than a blank paper that allows you to enter a state of flow.

Many people prefer to use simpler tools. Google seized this opportunity: cloud collaboration, cutting off most professional redundancies, opening to write immediately, real-time collaboration, no installation required, attracting a large number of mainstream users who are discouraged by the complexity of Office.

In the Apple Store, there are many more updated and concise writing apps, which are so simple that writers can only see the words they type.

Microsoft later launched Office 365, separating the simplified version from the professional version, and this situation gradually improved.

This case shows that even the market hegemon will encounter product challenges once it is kidnapped by core users and falls into the information cocoon of feedback.

The most dangerous sentence is: "New users find it difficult to use, because they have not understood the essence of our design, and they will get used to it after using it for a long time."

The question is, why should users give you such a long patience? People who are blocked out at the first use will never become long-term users.

② Trade-offs made by Xiaomi.

Xiaomi realized this problem very early. Their iron rule for products is: meet 80% of the needs of 80% of users, rather than 100% of the needs of 10% of users.

The underlying logic is: give up the deep niche needs of a few core users, focus on the high-frequency core scenarios of the vast majority of ordinary users, allocate main R&D resources to the most common functions for the public, and directly abandon the marginal low-frequency professional needs.

From the designer's perspective, "novice mode" should be used to replace "expert mode": people who develop and define products must not fall into expert thinking.