Illustration courtesy https://www.someecards.com/
In reply to The Conservative Skeptic’s and my ongoing examination of modern skepticism–what it is, what it isn’t, and what it should be–I wanted to touch upon Jim’s assertion that we all suffer from confirmation bias to one extent or another. Unfortunately, and much to my dismay, that is true.
https://consskep.com/2019/05/11/what-is-skepticism-can-we-know-anything/
I say unfortunately because I like to think of myself as pretty neutral, open-minded and open to belief revision. However, it seems, based on research, that will likely not happen because I have a brain that tends to want to be right.
Simply put, confirmation bias is the idea that we, as humans, tend to search out information that confirms our suspicions and beliefs. Why? Because it feels good to our brains and it reduces what is known as cognitive dissonance.
So what is cognitive dissonance? It’s a feeling that makes us uncomfortable, a feeling that we what we thought was true is not. We try to avoid it because it’s unsettling. This can apply to beliefs about people, places, things, ideologies–it provokes negative feelings to discover that what we believed to be true was no longer true or never was true.
Confirmation bias has been further complicated by social media. For example, we tend to have our beliefs confirmed if we only interact with people on social media sites that tend to agree with us. Some people refer to this as an echo chamber, where we only listen to voices that confirm what we want to hear. Many times you will see, for example, someone on Twitter who blocks everyone who disagrees with them. If you’re on Facebook, your friends tend to be people you are friends with in real life, so you are probably someone in agreement with them already or you wouldn’t be friends.
Another aspect of reinforcing confirmation bias comes through powerful tech companies such as Google. Google gets to know you, know your patterns and what you tend to like or dislike, and then tailors search results to fit that bias. YouTube will also push you in a certain direction that it predicts based on an algorithm that no one really understands.
So, when Jim brings up confirmation bias, it really is an issue we as skeptics must address. I think I may have more to say on this at a later time, but for now, I’d like to recommend an interesting documentary on this topic called The Creepy Line. The documentary is quite interesting in the exploration of the control Google and Facebook have over how we see information. I found it to be a good learning experience and I would say it has changed the way I use Google in particular.
The Creepy Line Documentary Warns of Social Media Manipulation & Privacy Concerns