What it is: The confirmation bias is when you look for and only use “facts” that support your pre-existing beliefs while, at the same time, ignoring any information to the contrary. This is often thought of as “cherrypicking,” although cherrypicking facts to support one’s views is usually done consciously. Confirmation bias happens unconsciously.
The strange—but fascinating—thing about the confirmation bias is that it seems to run rampant when information is more available to people.
Well, no. The existence of the confirmation bias actually predicts the opposite: more information creates more opportunities to cherrypick the “facts” we use to support our beliefs. So, exposure to more information actually polarizes beliefs. This explains, in a nutshell, why the internet is a festering shit-heap for political discourse. Instead of changing our beliefs to adapt to new information, we adapt new information to fit our beliefs.
In fact, the easy availability of confirmation bias online has created what researchers call “echo chambers,” where people continually only get fed information that supports their pre-existing views. Echo chambers are good for the big tech companies because they keep you fat and happy on their platforms. But they’re bad for truth.
@markmanson
Original post: https://markmanson.net/cognitive-biases-that-make-us...
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