At CDN we get a weird view of the major and growing danger of living in an algorithm-contrived echo chamber… echo chamber… echo chamber… because we’re in the wrong one. For instance, on May 23, MSN sent us, from StarsInsider, “US and other regions that may become uninhabitable by 2070 (or earlier)”. Also from MSN, this time starting with the Canadian Press, also on May 23, “Why is Europe being trapped under a dome in scorching temperatures?” Then on May 26, again MSN, “2026’s Longest Summer Begins With Deadly Global Heatwaves”. (That one vanished quickly even by MSN standards, but not before delivering the frisson of climate disaster.) The reason we have this odd experience, in a world where we hope people are waking up to the dangers of supercharged algorithms and of chatting with obsequious hallucinating AI instead of real, flawed, annoying humans cut from the same cloth as ourselves, is that because we study climate alarmism the obsequious hallucinating AI algorithm assumes we are alarmists so it “curates” for us endless supposedly delicious scenarios of climate apocalypse. Just as they would happily assure anyone who really enjoyed them that Florida might well become Venus in a few decades. And beware, because it will equally obsequiously tell anyone in the skeptical echo chamber that alarmism is an idiotic hoax. In days of yore everyone got the same handful of newspapers with the same (sometimes foolish) content and at least knew that not everyone thought like them. But especially in our Brave New Automated World it’s vitally important to seek out and ponder views you do not share. And no, we didn’t invent that idea, but let us introduce you to someone who explained it better than anyone before or since.

The MSN item that vanished looks as if it came from The Independent, with a new headline curated for our supposed climate disaster obsession. And by the way, speaking of seeing both sides, The Independent advertises itself thusly:

“From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum.”

Talk about an echo chamber. From denouncing Trump to advocating for “reproductive” rights, we show you the liberal side of the issue and the liberal side and are trusted by Americans across the entire liberal spectrum. Is there any other? But again, for us at CDN it’s valuable precisely because it’s not what we already think.

To take a step back, we want to recall a famous passage from John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty about the vital importance of understanding ideas you reject. And when we say “famous” we mean we keep quoting it and hope you have read it though, or indeed because, it is clearly not famous enough. (And in one case because our father kept waving it at us when we jumped to conclusions and positions without examining them thoroughly enough.)

So here it is at great length, from Chapter II:

“He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough, that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. That is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of, else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition, even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess. They do not know those parts of it which explain and justify the remainder; the considerations which show that a fact which seemingly conflicts with another is reconcilable with it, or that, of two apparently strong reasons, one and not the other ought to be preferred. All that part of the truth which turns the scale, and decides the judgment of a completely informed mind, they are strangers to; nor is it ever really known, but to those who have attended equally and impartially to both sides, and endeavored to see the reasons of both in the strongest light. So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them and supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skilful devil’s advocate can conjure up.”

One important advantage of taking this approach, admittedly an arduous, time-consuming and annoying one, is that you are rarely driven at the end to conclude that people who claim not to accept your opinion as soon as you state it are engaged in a hoax or a fraud. Or indeed that they are all fools. Some of the most compelling expositions of flawed and dangerous ideas are also remarkable for the intelligence and eloquence of their defenders. And you must acknowledge it before you can try to do anything about it.

Otherwise you’d not only be convinced by the robots that we were all about to die, you’d enjoy being told it again… and again… and again…