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Groupthink

Edited by bogus, Grognor, et al. last updated 25th Sep 2020

Groupthink is a very well-documented source of bias in cognitive psychology. It refers to the tendency of humans to tend to agree with each other, and hold back objections or dissent even when the group is wrong.

There seems to be a balance of tensions between evaporative cooling of beliefs leading to groupthink, and extremely biased color politics.

Echo chamber

An echo chamber is a group of media sources that parrot each other by constantly and unquestioningly reporting a single, biased point of view, thus creating the illusion of consensus.

"Virtual community"

In computer-mediated deliberation, the ideology of so-called "virtual community" has been implicated as a damaging source of groupthink. In the real world, a "community" is an ethical and political compromise of values due to a shared need for protection from bodily harm or harm to one's surrounding environment. A "virtual community" has no such natural values but still retains the mind-killing illusion of protection, and is thus liable to turn into a cult.

See also

  • Cached thought
  • Affective death spiral, information cascade
  • In-group bias, conformity bias
  • Goodhart's law
  • Availability heuristic
  • Group rationality
  • Problem of verifying rationality
  • Death Spirals and the Cult Attractor
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Posts tagged Groupthink
2
184Evaporative Cooling of Group Beliefs
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
52
2
183Lonely Dissent
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
91
2
138When None Dare Urge Restraint
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
123
2
130Uncritical Supercriticality
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
174
2
108Epistemic Viciousness
Eliezer Yudkowsky
17y
93
2
77In the presence of disinformation, collective epistemology requires local modeling
jessicata
8y
39
2
72Asch's Conformity Experiment
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
67
2
70On Expressing Your Concerns
Eliezer Yudkowsky
18y
38
2
61Information cascades
Johnicholas
17y
36
2
35Academic Cliques
ChrisHallquist
12y
57
2
27Notes on Empathy
David Gross
4y
2
2
27Boo lights: groupthink edition
Morendil
16y
72
2
24Secret Identities vs. Groupthink
Swimmy
17y
12
2
13[Link] Escape the Echo Chamber (2018)
CronoDAS
3y
0
2
4A problem with group epistemics
Mckay Jensen
3y
4
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