Anne Applebaum Quotes

People want a reality that tells them they're right all of the time.

In an ideological, polarized political environment, people see the reality that they want to see.

People like what is not true and they don't like what is true.

We have more information than ever before, and it is harder to avoid actually seeing what the other side is saying. Yes, we in Business insider focus on publications that we feel speak to us, but that is the same way it was 20 or 100 years ago. In the US, two million people have subscribed to the New York Times and many more millions think it is a terrible, liberal paper they would never read. We can choose to put ourselves in a bubble of only people who agree with us, but in the digital world there are many more ways of saying "Hey, here is something you might want to consider".

People would believe propagate, spread rumors or conspiracy theories in order to protect their own system of denial.

For too many of us, it's become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or on college campuses, or places of worship or especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it's true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there.

People are consuming the news that is comfortable for them, not necessarily the news that is real or that they need to know.

I always think there are people looking not so much for information as for reassurance and reaffirmation of their views.

We only now talk to our own, on Facebook and social media we talk to people, we friend and we like and we follow people who agree with us and rather than engaging with people who disagree with us, we unfollow them, we block them, we non-platform them.

Today, despite free speech and the mass media, the prevailing social vision is dangerously close to sealing itself off from any discordant feedback from reality.

What Americans seem to prefer — or at least the subset of them who live on social media — is a private square of people who already agree with them. The most successful of these preachers we call “influencers,” which basically means they get paid to manipulate you, and somehow you listen to them anyway.

People of a certain political view tend to read material of only that point of view … except to cast contempt on the other points of view.

Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices.

Not only is our electorate polarized, but their sources of information are polarized. Voters choose the sources of information that tells them what they want to hear.

Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.

Everyone feels entitled to their own facts.

I'm a simple country neuroscientist, not an expert on democracy, but I do know something about how the brain works and how opinion-reinforcing bubbles can distort the picture of reality we build from the information we encounter on a daily basis.

The separation of audience into tribes preferring to reinforce their own views with media of similar ideological stripe makes true debate impossible.

Technology has allowed the creation of media echo chambers, so that a person can reinforce, rather than debate, viewpoints.

I think there is a danger when it comes to fake news because there is some fake news out there, but there's also a danger when you only hear back to you the beliefs you already have.

I don't really believe that people read just the stuff they agree with.

Groups become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs and polarized from others when members only exchange information that reinforces their views and filter out all else or never learn of alternatives. Thus they narrow their options, and magnify each other's prejudices and misconceptions. This trend leads to blind spots in decision making and to extreme behavior, even terrorism.

If you're always in the company of people who agree with you, you're going to think of people who don't agree with you as venal or stupid. I constantly tell my students that if they're in the company of people who always say "amen" to what you say, find other company. And that is the source of illiberalism, when you are unable to listen to someone who thinks differently. That's when democracies are in trouble.

The Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see.

People who believe their unquestioned thoughts cannot see what is obvious and directly in front of their faces at all times, because they are invested in what they believe to be true. As long as they live out of an unquestioned mind, they must continue to argue with what they believe is happening rather than the reality of what is really happening.