This week I learned about "ideological sorting."
- This week I learned about "ideological sorting[bz]."
- It's a phenomena where over time one dimension of a population comes to be able to predict other, previously uncorrelated dimensions.
- It's a kind of collapse; there becomes one dimension that can neatly sort the entire population into two camps.
- The more sorted the population, the more likely to have highly volatile situations, including civil wars.
- Systems that are highly ideologically sorted are super-critical.
- Engagement-based filtering is a key, causal driver of our modern massive ideological sorting.
- (Surprise!)
- This happens structurally, because the systems assume that if they know about the user in one dimension but not the others, that on the other dimensions the user is likely to be the median for the population on those dimensions, given the known observation.
- This pull towards the average on the other dimensions collapses them, steering them into only the most salient dimension matters.
- This pull is not a massive one; humans have their own intentions and values.
- But it does give a consistent force of gravity that over time pulls things towards it.
- Yet another way that social media is like an intellectual crack cocaine epidemic.