Post 7: Silencing

Silencing can occur in any group decision as well as in many other social interactions in everyday life. An frequently occurring reference of this self censorship in Infotopia is the "Daily Me." Sunstein argues that if citizens only view news and information that already agrees with their current views, then they will not have all of the relevant information to truly make the best decision and furthermore, will not be well-informed or well-rounded in general.

In another one of Sunstein's books Why Societies need Dissent, he states that "People silence themselves not because they believe they are wrong, but because they do not want to face disapproval." I think this is certainly true in group decision making processes and this disapproval can be either overt or subtle. This type of silencing most certainly occurred prior to the war in Iraq, as well as in the Columbia disaster.

Silencing is a problem that mostly occurs in social deliberations, but it can even happen in a market system. Just recently on the news I heard a low-level executive at one of the major recently failed banks talk about how after she argued against the bank's aggressive encouragement of selling loans, she was discouraged from speaking again, and eventually fired. The strong motive of profit was not enough to keep the problem of silencing at bay or enough for the stock market to accurately gauge the worth of these banks' assets.