Who’s Living in a ‘Bubble’?

Excluding the Obituaries and most articles in the Sports section of the NYT, it does not seem possible to read an article or an op-ed without reference to President Trump. This is a reality to which be design the NYT cannot let go...

Isn't this null hypothesis. I could be wrong. I say wryly.

Seeking to expand my understanding of different ideas has been both rewarding and completely exhausting. Reading, on almost a daily basis, The Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, National Review, The Federalist, American Conservative and the Economist (on its weekly release) is incredibly time consuming. It's probably an unreasonable amount of papers, and it's certainly expensive as I pay for 4 of those subscriptions on a shoestring budget. Is it bursting my filter bubble? I don't know, but I hope it's at least nominally improving me as a person to hear a wider group of voices than I had previously.

The tulip mania was certainly a bubble. The fact that only a small number participated in it, and that the government bailed out the losers [at the expense of the winners] does not make it not a bubble. By the way, bailing out the individual losers was probably a good thing to do; it even has a biblical precedent - see Nehemiah 5. Too bad Obama and Geithner apparently never read Nehemiah.

What sets humans apart from other animals is our way of seeing the world and dealing with it. If we did not think and if we did not have opinions life would be bland. Seeking neutrality in people is foolish. We all have biases. My favorite color is red, yours may be red too, but it could be green. And? Even robots have critical sense. If machines are made by humans and humans has values then machines have biases too. Just remember the autonomous cars that must choose who to kill in a critical situation. They will choose the targets that we think should be eliminated. The world is not nor white neither black, the world is grey.

The author makes good points; I agree fully that there is a modern tendency to see cultural values you dislike or disagree with as mere products of an echo chamber. But I think the article is off the mark as to what most people mean by 'bubble', in the economic sense. I see it in practical, operational terms - if I have a workable approach to cheat people out of money, whether by selling overpriced real estate or an 'initial coin offering', and if the same scam is effective against a broad slice of the populace, I am probably taking advantage of some sort of psychological bubble. The apparent lack of evidence that no one went bankrupt during the Tulip craze does not mean that there weren't a lot of people who were cheated!

To paraphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and all those guys, "I wish I had known this some time ago." Let's be honest - the only reason 'bubbles' exist is so that we can point to them backwards in time and say "that was a bubble"

We actively construct our "reality". We do not "see" and then "believe." Rather, we believe first, and then we "see" what confirms our belief. Importantly, we do NOT see what refutes that belief. Because reality is a construct, a unique construct for each individual, we cannot ever share someone’s view because we literally cannot see what they see. Our shared environment is consensual and not truly "common". This is Buddhism 101. That stuff is not irrelevant. It is essential.