Online Polarization: Suffocated By My Overgrown Green Beard
[Content note: this post contains brief discussion of a suicide attempt] In 2007, Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote an essay in which he argues for a social physics understanding of group extremism. Why do cults often become stronger after the failure of a prophecy? How do online forums become echo chambers? Yudkowsky makes a physical analogy to evaporative cooling: