Online Dialogue is Basically Just Projection
How we seek to fulfill our assumptions and what to do about it
Often it seems that the internet is where good dialogue goes to die. The lack of any personal connection makes even the most ridiculous of statements seem profound because the person don’t see the expression of incredulity on the other’s face. There’s just something less viscerally important to be felt by a digital text.
Then there’s the incredible amount of information to be found and plumbed for one’s psychological need for consistency. People wrongly attribute to dopamine a version of “reward” that is positive in nature, but the reward is simply a behaviorist way of expressing reinforcement. If one believes A, and engages in behavior B that leads to the support of A, then the person is going to keep doing. This is the fundamental rule behind search algorithms, and it has absolutely zero to do with critical reflective exploration of nuanced ideas.
Basically, the internet is a tool for the sole purpose of supporting confirmation bias. Lest you think you’re the rarest of people who uses it to be better informed, please understand that such cognitive tendencies, better understood as heuristics or ways of collating information into manageable forms, is an indelible part of your humanity. The cognitive habits that can be put in place to challenge the effects of bias never get rid of it, they merely exist as a counter-balance to the effects. This is why I shake my head in a fair amount of amusement at the truly obscene lack of self-reflection that occurs in those who declare they “only think logically” or are “guided by the evidence.”
Let’s be as clear here as possible: your brain is not interested in truth like some philosophical soothsayer entering the expanse of the informational highways. It has one purpose and one purpose only, to make a best guess at the likelihood of one’s trajectory in life given the choices available, and manage personal resources to deal with the effects, where those resources include the nature of experience itself.
“The idea is that human brains are prediction machines. They are evolved organs that build and rebuild experiences from shifting mixtures of expectation and actual sensory evidence.”
The Experience Machine, by Andy Clark
Online interactions are, like any other, about projection. By this is not meant some simplistic “you’re just projecting” that is used to dismiss another person’s criticism. No, it’s projection in the sense of casting forward in the mind’s eye a preconceived notion of what any interaction will look like. Behavior exists to help this projection become supported.
The desire to feel right is supported, pushed along and given constant reinforcement by our daily interactions with others. The nature of those interactions, whether in-person or online, provide different content, but the goal is still the same, to feel that one’s view of the world is accurate. The capacity of online groups to be established quickly and easily control membership is one reason why more and more interactions are ending up there, despite a parallel result of an increasing sense of loneliness. It would seem that simply feeling like one is right doesn’t quite solve the need for community, but that’s a long-term effect mitigated by the reinforcement of online rage. This may in fact be a reason why online mobs happen so quickly, filled by the desperate desire to feed one’s self-righteous fury and see the mutually-reinforcing behavior of likes, comments, and similar wording from others that says to each person who reads it: “we belong together.”
Community Reinforces through Communal Thinking
Stepping back a bit into the point on loneliness, when an interest in ideological purity trumps that of expanding understanding, the result is an isolation of an increasing number of parts of ourselves. Remember, in our innate desire to be right and in seeking out the reinforcement of our projections, the feedback loop is constantly tightening as we avoid more and more differences in opinion. There is no single idea or human action exists in a void of its own making. There is always an interconnected context, always a relational reality in which idea and deed are embedded.
Proselytizing is the attempt to convince someone of the rightness of one’s position, with zealotry focused on a shift in language towards agreement rather than an engagement in expansive dialogue. These terms are often used in a religious context, but their practice is not contained there. Due to that context, the notion of proselytizing often gets a negative feel, but our lives are often defined within that term, having decided we're right about a thing, we fervently seek to spread that truth. The extent of our promotional behavior is not based on our feeling of being right, as that exists almost always. Rather, the degree to which we act is limited by the depth of importance we give to the opinion and how supported we feel.
An increase in either importance or support is why we seek community. However, because such a focus becomes ever more restricted the result is a loss of seeing the bigger picture. The zealot is never more dangerous than when at the front of a mob, nor ever more fervent in their righteousness than if the opinion is deemed cosmically important. Lost is recognizing the nature of truth being relational, an interactive dynamic between the reality-universal and the reality-subjective. Focusing only on a particular understanding or way of viewing a situation is staring so closely at one tree that the forest of variation ceases to exist.
All dialogue contains the subjective precisely because it is communion between two or more human beings, each possessing a phenomenological, or what it feels like, experience. The rightness of one’s opinion has little bearing upon the acceptance of it by any other person. In focusing so strongly on the rightness of one’s opinion, the recognition of the other person's concerns, fears, development and existential progress tends to be forgotten. Any of us who have fought valiantly against an opinion only to at some point in the future find ourselves agreeing with that very point can attest to truth's acquisition being partly contingent upon one’s place in life.
We cannot avoid the need for confirmation any more than we can avoid seeing the world through projective guess work. By acknowledging these limitations to the building of a broader human experience, we can endeavor to mitigate the extremes. Granted, this assumes that broadening one’s experience is a worthwhile goal. It certainly comes with consequences, not least of which is an increased uncertainty and therefore the felt sense of anxiety. As with so many choices, the issue is a matter of what consequences you’re willing to face. Will it be an increasing isolation fueled by anger and an othering of a larger pool of human beings, or will it be an elevated sense of uncertainty fueled by a dedication to epistemic humility?
Helpful strategies:
Don’t assume you know the person, because you likely don’t (especially online). Rather than engage in arm-chair psychological analysis and mind-reading, ask clarifying questions.
Every topic has multiple points to explore. It’s quite possible to disagree on one and agree on another.
Seek commonality, even if it’s only in the shared capacity to care about the topic. You’re both trying to make sense of the world from innately limited perspectives.
Have as your goal the ability to articulate the other person’s perspective in such a way that they would agree, rather than proving them wrong. This keeps the focus on an exchange of views rather than a conflict of ego.
There is a time for standing on one’s ground with feet firmly planted, but more often than not dialogue should be less about being right and more on living a life filled with by challenge and illumination. Celebrate the process of sharing and expansion that is generative dialogue. Our connection to others may result in a greater appreciation for the forest of human existence.
Explore further by reading: Invisible Influence by Jonah Berger