How Do We Break the Filter Bubble?

I recently watched a video essay about Run Run Shaw’s 6,013 buildings.

Shaw — the Hong Kong media mogul turned philanthropist — funded 6,013 school buildings across China over several decades. Charitable giving on that scale, sustained for that long. Zero corruption scandals.

The video’s argument was simple: there were no scandals, not because everyone involved was virtuous, but because the mechanism was well designed. Shaw’s money was clean — private wealth, beyond reproach. Local governments had to put up matching funds before receiving any of his money. The Ministry of Education vetted each project. Funds were released in tranches, tied to construction milestones. Every building carried his name — which official would dare leave a building bearing the donor’s name unfinished? And final inspections were deliberately delayed: poor performance in one province could hold up funding for the next.

No step relied on human goodness. Every step worked with human nature.

I’ve become increasingly convinced of a principle: a vision can be noble, but you must never believe the world is noble. To achieve anything at scale, over time, you have to see human nature clearly — its darkness, its hunger for profit — and design incentives around that reality, so that doing the right thing becomes each participant’s rational choice.

Emissions trading applies the same logic at a planetary scale. Firms bear the costs of cutting emissions, while everyone shares the benefits — little incentive to move first. Emissions trading translates “morality” into “profit”: firms can sell the allowances they free up by cutting emissions; if they don’t have enough allowances, they have to buy more. When the value of the allowances saved exceeds the cost of cutting emissions, cutting emissions pays. Participants don’t have to become virtuous for the system to improve. It took me years to understand why carbon pricing won a Nobel. Then it clicked: the prize wasn’t for cutting emissions. It was for the method — translating a moral appeal into an incentive mechanism.

Which is why, for years now, I’ve asked every interesting person I meet the same question. One I’ve thought about for a long time, and still can’t answer:

How do we break the filter bubble?

On the capability side, the better information technology gets, the stronger the machinery for building bubbles becomes, and the denser the bubbles. That’s a one-way street. The harder problem is incentives: the internet runs on advertising. Platforms make money by attracting attention and deciding where it goes, so “give people more of what they already like” is the Nash equilibrium of the current economy. No participant will defect unilaterally. Everyone knows the bubble is harmful, but change can only come from moral appeals — and moral appeals are exactly what the two cases above proved don’t work.

Emissions trading didn’t give me an answer. It gave me something better: a possible way forward. There must be a way to design incentives that make escaping the prisoner’s dilemma more profitable than staying in it — pushing the system toward a different equilibrium. Philanthropy found its version in Shaw. Emissions found theirs in carbon markets. I haven’t found the equivalent for information.

This piece isn’t announcing an answer. I’m looking for people to think this through with: economists, engineers, policymakers — or anyone who simply hates the bubble.

I don’t have an answer to this one. Do you?