A Metaphor For Epistemic Closure

Trevor Macomber offers one:

It’s like when [warning: rich white boy anecdote ahead] you’ve been skiing for awhile with your goggles on and after a few runs have forgotten that the world doesn’t actually have a vaguely orange tint to it, such that when you finally pull the things off again before trudging into the lodge for an overpriced, over limp hamburger, you’re astonished to remember just how white the snow truly is. And just as it doesn’t take your eyes long to normalize a previously alien discoloration, or your nose long to accustomize itself to your rank-ass dorm room — which smells perfectly fine to you but which drives out all comely coeds within seconds of their arrival — so, too, would a single homogeneous news source eventually taint all of your perceptions about the world around you in ways you wouldn’t even realize. Call it a modern application of the old boiling frog chestnut, if you’d like.