Ways to Burst Your Filter Bubble - Bloomberg View

Ways to Burst Your Filter Bubble - Bloomberg View

Tyler Cowen offers some ideas for how we can overcome confirmation bias, "the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses" per Wikipedia.

Cowen introduces the subject as follows:

Often readers send requests, and last week I was asked for “Good Rules to Avoid the Filter Bubble.” My correspondent meant, how to avoid reading too many of the people he agreed with, maintaining a balanced perspective in a time of increasing polarization. Of course, a “balanced” perspective isn’t always a more correct one (sometimes one side really does have more truth on its side). But still it seems valuable to understand the views of others, and to keep in mind the limitations of one’s own.

The sad thing is, this isn’t as easy as it might sound.

He offers several suggestions. My personal favorite is the ideological Turing test in which "you could write out the views of a Trump or Clinton supporter, or of some other point of view contrary to your own, in a way that would be indistinguishable from the writings of supporters." I also rely on Arnold Kling's Three Languages of Politics because I think his model helps identify the main focus liberals, conservatives and libertarians use when expressing and defending their positions. (Quick summary. Liberals talk about the oppressed/oppressors. Conservatives refer to civilization vs. barbarism while libertarians see things in terms of rights versus coercion.)

For a more detailed analysis of confirmation bias and other factors that affect our ability to be objective check out Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds by Elizabeth Kolbert in The New Yorker.

Do You Want Reagan’s Economy or Obama’s? - WSJ

Do You Want Reagan’s Economy or Obama’s? - WSJ

When my wife and I get together with other couples of our age we almost inevitably end up talking about how our kids won't have the standard of living that we enjoy. We collectively shake our heads as though there is some mysterious malaise that dooms our economy to anemic growth and our kids to a bleak future of living with their parents. This article touches on the reasons I believe why the economy hasn't grown like it used to. I refer to the three Rs: revenue (i.e., taxes), regulations and redistribution. The combination of these three forces have throttled the engine of growth.

I know liberal critics of Reagan will point to the deficit spending and the military buildup of his presidency while conservatives and libertarians will point out that Reagan actually didn't reduce the size of government. He just slowed its rate of growth. Still, Reagan's overall approach and focus differ from Obama's.

For a much more detailed discussion of the malaise we're in see Our Miserable 21st Century by Nicholas Eberstadt in Commentary. Eberstadt doesn't specifically identify the causes of this misery but does catalog the symptoms and outcomes in depressing and disturbing detail.