Learning From Insider Groups to Gain a More Holistic Perspective
This post is part of a series where we’ll explore how technology can change our perspective by writing and designing novel products every week this year.
9/50
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“I’m going to act illogically today!” are words I’ve never said. I think it’s safe to say that most people haven’t.
Regardless of how strange a behavior might seem, they are committed by rational actors. We often forget that our idea of normal is not universal. How we perceive and act in the world is a result of our context and upbringing.
In the past, understanding each other was much more natural because we had to interact with each other in our daily life. Coffee shops were places to discuss topics of import, rather than a place to experience solitude. Ironically, in the age of globalization, we can live for days without interacting with anyone else. Today, we can live behind screens and only interact with people we want to — often, only with people just like us.
More than ever we need to consider how we can learn from each other — to fend off echo-chambers. We have found ways to talk with friends from across the globe, but in the process, we’ve lost the way to listen to our neighbors who may be different from us.
ThinkingTogether
Thinking Together helps build a better global community by enabling conversations through a defined process which flows between insider and outsider groups in order to provide new perspectives that helps both parties understand the world more holistically.
How it works
When a user signs up for ThinkingTogether, they are placed into a randomly generated group with a size small enough to facilitate a conversation, but large and diverse enough to prevent an echo-chamber. Each user can then tag their profile with ideas they identify with (e.g. cultural, political, religious, and natural identity). Every week, ThinkingTogether will create a temporary group composed of users with a common tag to share a morsel of ideas related to their identity through the entire platform. Every discussion group will then converse within themselves about this idea.
A person and their community
Unlike other social platforms, whose network is generated based on the user’s friend graph or their topics of interest, ThinkingTogether’s network is automatically generated.
Though self-selection is a powerful tool for finding a comfortable space, it is a terrible one for understanding the world holistically, since it isn’t reflective of it. Self-selection can lead to confirmation bias and polarization as a result of groupthink.
Instead, we can create a platform that is both safe and reflective of the larger world by leveraging two networks that intersect around the user. One is composed of people similar to them, and another is composed of people unlike them. Being part of these two groups allows the user to be comforted by familiarity, while being pushed out into uncharted waters.
A group of similar identities
Since a person is an amalgamation of the ideas and contexts that they have encountered, it is important for us to acknowledge the external forces that shape them. In ThinkingTogether, users are able to curate a list of tags that they identify with. It can range from large organizational frameworks such as political, religious, and interest group affiliation, to natural groupings such as race, gender, and sex. These tags not only allow the platform to group similar users, but it also helps other people understand the biases that this user may have.
By having these tags be the way for a user to be part of an insider group as well as having it be their public profile, we can prevent users from hiding behind a facade. If a user wants to share an idea that comes from a group that they are a part of, they can only do so with the disclaimer that they are part of that group.
Insider group knowledge
Although having groups of similar minded people can be dangerous, since it can amplify an idea disproportionately, in the right amount, it can be powerful because it allows people to be themselves. The same force that can amplify an idea unhealthily is the same force that can help bloom burgeoning ideas.
Moreover, groups can temper an individual’s extreme idea. Since individuals identify with multiple things simultaneously and every idea they hold modulates each other, their understanding of any one idea is unique. These small variations in opinions can counter extremism by offering alternative viewpoints.
Ultimately, in providing a space for insider groups to first discuss their ideas, ThinkingTogether allows them to distill an idea into its essence before sharing them.
Getting to know others
The most important piece, however, is to reduce myopia through a diversity of opinions. Once the insider group has formulated the idea to be shared, it is presented to all the randomly generated groups. The random generation of these discussion groups is essential since this allows each group to be a microcosm of the world.
For both the group that shared their ideas and the ones receiving the idea, the discussion that happens within this cross-sectional group is a powerful way to gain new perspectives. The varied experiences of an outsider can bring to light flaws in the insider group’s thinking. Simultaneously, the conviction and refinement of the insider group’s thought can give the outsider a lens that they may have previously glossed over.
Having productive discussions
But having just groups is not enough. Making sure conversations are productive within the group is essential. In order to have a holistic perspective, every member needs to have a voice.
While it may seem counterintuitive to disallow people to express themselves freely, it is important to impose a set of rules to prevent a cacophony.
For example, by only allowing users to comment once a day we can prevent knee-jerk reactions, as well as prevent extroverted users from dominating the conversation with frequency. By limiting the number of words that can be said in one comment, we enable readers to read a lot of different perspectives, while simultaneously, forcing the writer to distill their idea more clearly.
Humility to prevent misunderstandings
Since the platform is based on reading, it would be easy to misunderstand. To prevent people and groups from misconstruing the original idea, throughout the conversation, users can highlight a section and request for clarification. The platform can then reach out to those in the insider group to clarify.
In discussing new ideas, we need to be humble enough to accept that those who live and breathe that idea — those that assume that idea as part of their identity — know better than we do.
Future
Being surrounded by ideas all the time, we have learned to quickly filter out ideas and take shortcuts in understanding others. With new ideas, this can be dangerous since we may assume we know what is being talked about before that is true. Thinking of some kind of captcha system which verifies that a user has read the other perspectives before providing their own would help prevent reaction based on prejudice.
TL;DR
The way we act upon the world is a result of the contexts that shaped our identity. It is important to know our and other’s identity as it provides insight into the biases we each hold. In moderation, groups formed from similar identities can create a safe environment to explore one’s identity. Pairing this with a space composed of dissimilar identities is even better because the latter can provide perspectives on the former.
Though a laborious process, listening to each other — both similar and dissimilar — is an important practice that can help engender empathy and provide us with a more holistic view of the world.
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Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
