Clear’s Law Of Recurrence: What It Is And How It Describes Communication
We live in times of interaction and communication Technological advancement, to which we are inevitably subjected, makes it possible for anyone to access a huge amount of information in just a few seconds. From the comfort of the place where you live and without much effort.
This rapid development has allowed the events that occur anywhere on the planet to spread at breakneck speeds, immediately becoming a topic of global knowledge from which it is very difficult to remain unaware. It is a totally new scenario in the history of humanity, for which its impact on the way we interpret what surrounds us and the veracity we can grant to our “social knowledge” is not yet known.
Although it is a question that aroused the curiosity of many philosophers in times past, the historical situation we live in impels us to return to it with renewed interest. Therefore, in this article we will address one of the most popular explanatory theories on this point: Clear’s law of recurrence
Ideas, understood as the representation of a phenomenon in subjective terms, have the ability to remain impassive in the face of the passing of time. Those who decide to take on any idea, as living beings, end up giving in to the inexorable finitude to which we are all condemned. However, these last beyond the death of the person who defends them, as if it were a simple vehicle to provide them with the strength they need to travel from the mouth of the person who pronounces them to the ears of the person who listens to them.
Ideas can take infinite forms, as well as being made by any of the fabrics that make up human reality: politics, science, religion or any other. Furthermore, they have the power to unite people in any purpose when they align themselves in the same direction, but also to cause the most unbridgeable of chasms between them. This is why it is said that individuals with similar beliefs tend to feel attracted or, in any case, end up becoming more similar every day as they share time.
Although all ideas are worthy of respect as long as they do not harm third parties, there are also some of them that are directly false or that do not adapt to reality in the best possible way. Sometimes, this imprecision (deliberate or not) extends its negative influence to large individuals or groups, who are degraded by stereotype or stigma. This has frequently occurred among people suffering from certain mental health disorders, unfairly labeled by others as violent or irrational.
Another interesting example of this comes from what has recently come to be called fake news (or fake news). These are dubious rumors, or outright lies, that take on the appearance of truth because they are published in recognized media or because they have been revealed (supposedly) by a person on whom society projects the best expectations.
The most common thing is that the interest of third parties (political rivals, intimate enemies, etc.) ends up being discovered behind them, so the original intention is usually openly malicious.
Certain ideas, good for being fake news or by stimulating social debate, they tend to be the cause of heated discussions in which rarely either party is willing to abandon its position. And the evidence tells us that the purpose pursued by such dialectical frictions is never to reconcile positions to seek a balance between both contenders, but is limited to “achieving reason.” All of this can be explained by the simple fact that they are often enormously distant counterweights in the spectrum of opinion on the issue at hand, thus minimizing any possibility of persuasion or influence.
Clear’s law of recurrence posits something that is undoubtedly very bad news for the party that opposes the idea being debated or discussed, for the end of the scale that would advocate “extirpating” it from consciousness. of every human being: The percentage of people who believe in any idea is directly proportional to the number of times it has been repeated over the last year (even though it is false)
Thus, the moment we decide to participate in a discussion with another person whose thoughts we judge as “abhorrent,” we perpetuate their perspective of things on the “white canvas” of social opinion.
What significance does this have?
The phenomenon we have just described, for which there is abundant empirical evidence in the field of social psychology, It is important especially in the Internet age we live in today And this is because the spaces in which debates once took place have moved to an entirely virtual environment, in which the majority of the subjects who interact are absolute strangers.
This absence of information makes it easier to generate a poisonous attribution for those who say something that offends us, in such a way that the idea about which we disagree extends to the rest of the traits of the person who defends it which we end up judging in a way equivalent to the emotional reaction that its convictions provoke in us.
In situations that occur in “real” life it is much more likely that, in one way or another, we will get to know a little more about those in front of us. This makes it easier to effectively persuade the “rival”, or for him to be the one who convinces us with his arguments, especially if we perceive similarity in personality or values. This is diluted in online conversations, since the lack of knowledge and uncertainty that one has regarding the other is “filled in” through inferences from what he says, embodying in him all the bad things that we attribute to the naked idea he wields. In short: “if you think this it is because, in the absence of more information, you are a bad person.”
This means that, with the aim of maintaining reason and upholding the ideas that we consider most valid or ethical, we participate in intense and irreconcilable discussions that increase the “gross” number of times in which the issue we intend to “attack” is shown before the eyes of others As a direct result of this, the percentage of people who believe in him would also increase; since all of this (according to Clear’s law of recurrence) is related to its availability and its recidivism.
In short, it follows from this law that attempts to combat beliefs that we judge negatively (pseudosciences, political orientations, etc.) are not only ineffective in the vast majority of cases, but also contribute to their unwanted expansion among the population (since increase availability in the scenario where they are usually published). In this way, without even realizing it, we feed through repetition the terrible monster we wanted to defeat.
This is one of the mechanisms through which the virality of the fake news or other events of questionable credibility that become popular on the Internet This is even more evident in the case of platforms (such as Twitter) that allow you to view the issues that are most talked about at a given moment (or trend topics), since their simple appearance on these lists gives them a certain prestige without the need for that goes much deeper into the reason why they are there.
In conclusion, new technologies are an ideal framework for the dissemination of all types of ideas, given that they facilitate an exchange of opinions that is rarely resolved by consensus and that only increases the number of times in which the issue (for better or worse) is mentioned. With this, finally, the credibility that people give it would also be stimulated.
So how do you combat an idea?
Ideas are abstract entities, that is, they are not objectively found in the reality of those who usually deal with them. In that sense, they are only found in the thoughts of human beings and become evident to others through the spoken or written word, this being the only ecosystem in which they remain alive. Silence is a toxic environment for ideas, since in it they lack nutrients with which to feed and related beliefs with which to reproduce. That is, silence is what kills them. Slowly, but mercilessly.
If we want to fight against an idea, because we consider it contrary to our most intimate principles and values, the best way to carry out this task is to ignore it. But not only that, it will also be necessary to give a voice to our deepest convictions, and let them reach the ears of those who want to hear them. The best of all is that, in this process, any attack received will be nothing more than a valuable ally.
