One reason is that I want every government in the world to accept it. That’s probably not possible, but at least no one would be able to say that some subset of the available information was being ideologically privileged in some way.

I also think that curiosity — “what else am I missing?” — is the only plausible route for large-scale shifts in belief. There’s increasing empirical evidence that just telling people that their worldview is wrong doesn’t work, see e.g. this discussion of a recent study.

First of all, is that even possible? The idea of plural voices isn’t neutral. If you want to say “within the Western pluralistic tradition, let’s be non-ideological” that’s another thing (which excludes pretty much all religious believers).

Secondly, the ultimate source of ideology in the mass media is its institutional bias. Certain sources are privileged, others are ignored. It’s got very little to do with the ideology of the people that produce the program; it’s about what’s economically possible and what’s institutionally permissible. The same constraints will apply to any machine algorithm as well, so it will have its ideological biases too.

Even with all this said, I think the mapping concept is a really cool idea and would have real benefits. I’m still not sure people will use it the way you intend, like “oh, what else am I missing”. It might just become a vetting tool, a way of enforcing dogma. Like, “why are you over there halfway to libertarianism? Get back into the mainstream of Democratic thought or else”.

I guess I just don’t see the problem as a failure to expose different ideologies. Differing ideologies are all that we GET nowadays. It’s that we don’t have news institutions that are motivated to examine claims for veracity or make long term investments in the same.

It’s also not just a question of “coloring” the same facts but the broader issue of what stories get reported — not just reported by anyone, but reported to you in particular with your particular expressed preferences.

So despite the increasing wealth of resources available to everyone, the rise of customizable information delivery suggests that this problem of information-world balkanization might actually get worse before it gets better. This is a real possibility that needs to be addressed, and maps are my best answer to the problem. Anyway, as you know I am a fan of information visualization in general — I think it’s a key way of understanding the modern world.

I’ve followed the issue of climate change on both sides and still do just because the wealth of information about it and the range of opinion is so rich and there is much to understand from the point of science. Still, as far as politics go I can’t say I venture on a really wide range of news/opinion sources, I normally stick around with my dear Economist and a couple of other things as far as mass media go.