More than at any time in the last five years, I’ve been thinking of quitting social media. A lot of this is driven by the unpleasant experience of the presidential campaign, and the immediate aftermath of the election. Far from creating a more robust kind of democratic discourse, in which a broader array of citizens … More Quit Social Media?
Ah, 2012: when I lamented how civil discourse was being replaced by “ideological segregation,” as the Left and Right engaged in “epistemic closure.” That phrase came from Julian Sanchez, who had observed that, among many conservatives, “Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with … More Conservatives for Progressives to Read (revisited)
Over at his Patheos blog, Christian Piatt is attempting a rather ambitious ranking of the “Top 25 Christian blogs you should be reading,” using a crowdsourcing/curating tool called Listly. It’s an interesting experiment that’s already yielded thousands of votes and over 250 nominations. Check it out if only to stumble across a blog you might … More On Ranking Christian Blogs
Last Monday I encouraged readers to reject the temptation to expose themselves only to those sources that reconfirm their own opinions, as if they have nothing to learn from those with whom they disagree. Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute called the phenomenon a type of “epistemic closure” in a series of 2010 posts … More Rejecting Epistemic Closure: Progressives for Conservatives to Read
In the wake of the 47% fiasco, I very much hope that Republican readers took seriously Michael Gerson’s critique of the “libertarian nonsense” too commonly escaping the lips of GOP politicians these days, and David Brooks‘ conclusion that Romney “has lost any sense of the social compact” and joined other Republicans in shifting “from the … More Rejecting Epistemic Closure: Conservatives for Progressives to Read
The Pietist Schoolman 