Confirmation Bias Danger

Dear Editor,

So why is the country so divided? Or why is the other side so dumb and/or evil? LOL!

The truth is that people have a strong natural tendency to believe what they want to believe. It is called “confirmation bias”. The brain naturally screens out a lot of input and selects feedback that confirms what we already believe.

One theory is that it evolved in us to protect us from distraction, otherwise we would be frozen by the infinite world input our senses perceive.

Then there is the prehistorically evolved “fight or flight” instinct. In prehistoric times, if you perceived a sign of a Saber Tooth Tiger near, it was immediate fight or flight, not “let’s think about this”! In other words, cave men that made quick imperfect decisions became our ancestors. Prehistoric hominids that took too long to make the perfect decision became lunch!

Today, information technology has evolved far far past human brain evolution. There is so much electronic information bombarding our senses, we cannot process the information tsunami properly. So, our primitive brains go to default: we believe what we want. We lapse into confirmation bias. “I saw it on the internet”, “I saw a video” ,”a website said”.  The reality is that you can find almost anything you want on the internet to validate what you want to believe.

And, in general, the internet is not policed for truth and obviously can and is hacked. When it is "policed", can you trust the internet police?

Who would have thought that having unlimited instant information at our fingertips or voice command, would actually make us dumber?!!!

Know what you want to believe and be a practiced skeptic of that.  Practice reading the best articles on what you don’t want to believe.

Here is another novel way of looking at how well humans choose their beliefs: 

No religion has a majority of the world believing in it. So, no matter what religion you believe, most of the world believes you are wrong.

Conversely, you believe that most of the world is wrong!

So, what does that tell you about humanity’s ability to discern truth?! 

(But the main thing is that we ‘know’, we have the one absolute truth!)

Hypothetically, confirmation bias could lead to electing a senile old man, a word salad addict, or maybe even an off the charts ego maniac for President.

You just never know!

Leighton Loo

Mililani, Oahu