Latest Issue of the MindBrainEd Think Tank + (ISSN 2434-1002) 4 MindBrained Bulletin Think Tank Conf Bias Apr 20 | Page 8

Think Tank:
Confirmation Bias
Curtis Kelly
Why confirmation bias is natural, universal and…
beneficial
You. You forever. Only you. You are first, every time, every place, every situation.
Two important concepts I learned last year were: a) how emotion works in cognition
and b) confirmation bias. Both had a large impact on my thinking.
To start with, confirmation bias. It is very easy to understand how people cherry pick
science to confirm a pre-existing belief, and we can see examples of this all around
us. Both Brexit and Prexit (US Presidential fiasco) are ripe with confirmation bias.
The stronger a confrontation is, the stronger the biases become, in what is called the
Backfire Effect.
I have friends who are absolutely certain that the World Trade Center attack was
really a US plot, that vaccines cause autism, and that the US government has secret
Astral Travellers. I present them with the heaps of contrary evidence, from respected
sources, but with virtually no effect on their theories. I just don’t get how these
otherwise smart people can be so dismissive of other information and so inflexible. It
is obvious they are selecting data that confirms their existing beliefs, and ignoring
the good science. That’s what cognitive bias is all about.
Now I don’t want to be the guy who says my way of thinking is right, just because it is
my way of thinking, so I try to be as open and scientific as I can. Being “open” means
listening, subduing my gut reactions, and trying to accept. Being “scientific” means
adopting a way of thinking void of concepts like “true,” “proven”, “right” or “wrong.”
(In fact, if I see those terms in an article title, red flags go up.) In other words, I can