CONFIRMATION BIAS

If you like audiobooks or audio shows, check out a free trial of Audible. Just click the link in the description. This is Bruce McGuire, coming at you today with confirmation bias vs. learning. So what's interesting is in the course of your life, you're going to encounter a bunch of different types of people with a bunch of different types of opinions, obviously. Now what's interesting is in all these conversations you have with people, take note how many people are actually interested in learning about something or someone pointing out whether they had limited information or their opinion might not have been informed about something as well informed as they thought it was. Now obviously Dunning-Kruger and the Dunning-Kruger effect, this is something I suppose needs its own dedicated explanation. But just real quick, most people just have a much higher opinion or evaluation of their own abilities or understanding than they actually do. You can see this every day in life. It's like everybody always thinks they're right, everybody has a hard time fathoming that they might not know as much as they think they do or some of their core beliefs might be incorrect about something. And nobody really wants to examine the base premises of any of their beliefs. I mean there's strong cognitive dissonance when it comes to examining the validity of any kind of major tenant of someone's belief system, regardless of what it is, whether it's religious, whether it's scientific, pseudo-scientific, scientismic, is that a new word, scientismic, related to scientism, instead of scientific, scientismic, that's funny. So yeah, when you're talking to somebody about something, normally they're much more interested if you say something that reaffirms their existing belief or opinion instead of offering new information that they might not have because they're always going to be desperately scrambling trying to validate their own belief because somehow, I guess, they're such slaves to their ego and the mental weakness is so extreme. By the way, I'm not talking about everybody. I'm just talking about, I don't even know if I'd say majority, but I guess if we're talking about more than 50% of people, I would have to use the word majority because more than 50% of people, even if it's only 51% of people, it seems like the vast majority operates this way. Some people call them sheep or online, a popular term now is NPCs, non-unplayable characters. They don't have a lot of brain activity. They believe whatever propaganda they see on TV and all of these things as seen on TV. But yeah, they haven't studied history or propaganda, how any of that works. So with various things, I mean, conspiracy theory is a trigger word. That's something that has been gone over on the Mindshock podcast quite extensively on how the propaganda against so-called conspiracy theorists, I mean, nothing more than critical thinkers examining anomalies and alternate possibilities instead of just swallowing the status quo official establishment institutionalized dogmatic viewpoints that can't be questioned. So yeah, most of these viewpoints that people have, they're not really interested. Most people are not interested in re-examining their core beliefs. So an interesting question you can ask people whenever you get into any kind of discussion about anything with opposing viewpoints is, are they open to being wrong? Because most people are just, they're too insecure with themselves. Their ego dominates them to such a degree, they're not even open to the possibility of being wrong about a core belief. If you notice, they might actually be open to being wrong about certain small details as long as it justifies the core belief. Because if their core belief is still correct, then it's okay with them to be wrong about something smaller. But most people can't handle their core beliefs to be wrong. That's why I usually take some kind of life or death, some kind of near-death experience or just some major, major radical life event to shake someone up to the point where they can re-evaluate their belief system. For example, atheist physicists who come to believe in God, things like that. Obviously there's people who do it, there's a slow burn type process, and then there's the epiphany type process. And the epiphany type, all of a sudden, moments, those usually come in life or death situations, near-death situations, or just major traumatic life events of some kind that shake people from their dissonance. They're able to overcome cognitive dissonance. It's almost like it stands down to a certain extent because there's so much, there's sensory overload or emotional overload or some kind of an event that allows someone to, for the first time, see things in a new light. I mean, born-again Christians are similar to this. By the way, I'm not advocating religion or anything like that, I'm just citing examples of how this can happen. So yeah, it's quite interesting. At the beginning of a discussion, especially online with social media, it's pretty crazy because people just seem to just want to argue. If you go on Twitter after any major news event, especially if it's a traumatic one where lives were lost, nobody is actually really listening to anybody else. They're just trying to get their own beliefs on either side of anything. It's affirmed that they're not really interested in learning. Now, why is that? I would even cite, I mean, we can go the MBTI route, we can go to different personality types. Different personalities have different affinities for learning or re-examination or logical discussion, whereas other personalities, they just want to fit in with the crowd. They just want to have the opinion that matches everybody else's, some kind of group think-herd mentality justification. And whether it's for, I mean, I would use the word unfortunately, I guess. I mean, the world would be a much more interesting place if people were more open to learning and they were opening to re-examining. I mean, I'm not advocating everybody just immediately thinks they're wrong about everything all the time, although that could be an interesting experiment. I mean, listeners out there, you can try this yourself. Go into every interaction with every single belief about anything from the position that you are completely wrong about everything and see how fast you learn. I'm not sure that's 100% healthy, but just as an experiment. But what I advocate, of course, is a truly scientific position, which is neutrality. You could be wrong. You could be right. But the evidence speak for itself. So if you're presented with new information, then it's time to re-evaluate. Obviously you don't take the new information on blind faith. You verify to the best of your ability and especially you verify your existing core beliefs. Maybe the information that supports your core beliefs is not as sound as you thought it was or you were led to believe by whatever source you trusted in order to form the belief. And a lot of this happens, a lot of this is subconscious, of course. So it's things that you might not necessarily have complete control over as a lot of these core belief systems are formed in early childhood by people around you, by adult figures, by societal influence and things like that. On MindShock, I'll be going over social engineering and its dangers, but it's very interesting to think about how many of your core beliefs are even really yours that you came to independently using critical thinking, logic, deductive reasoning, and basically the abilities of the human brain to discern. Did you really use them in forming all of your core beliefs? And going back and re-examining them, there's nothing wrong with that. Especially if you're a secure, intelligent, strong individual, there's nothing wrong with that. However, if a lot of people in the world, if you're allergic to logic, if you're too insecure or mentally weak to examine all these things, and that might not even be a bad thing, is that just nature protecting your brain from going insane? Because think about it, a lot of people, especially older generation, they're always resistant to change. I mean, that old saying, there's no fool like an old fool. You can't teach an old dog new tricks, things like that, which are obviously not true because there's examples. If there's enough willpower, anything can be done. But or logic, if there's enough logic, a logical old people, once again, the wise man knows he knows nothing. The fool thinks he knows everything, or the more knowledge you have, the more you realize you don't know anything, things of that nature. But yeah, is this a protective mechanism of the brain? Because you need to survive, so you need to hunt, or gather food, or build things, whatever you need to do, you need to do these things to survive. So some of these radical ideas, even if they're true, if there's certain developments of psychology, of how human psychology works, maybe it's in the best interest of certain individuals to actually, cognitive dissonance is a good thing, it protects their brain, it keeps them from going insane because they just can't handle living in a world where things are too vastly different from their indoctrinated beliefs. So being dogmatic is almost like a self-preservation mechanism for them. And if you view things in that light, it's almost a little easier to understand some of these people who just can't logically accept, they just, they can't let logic in because it threatens their existing belief system too much, and they might go completely insane. What is the solution? I mean, it might be like anything. If you're going to run a marathon, you're not just going to, if you're obese and you weigh 500 pounds, rolling off the couch with a bag of Doritos right to the starting line of a marathon, probably not a good idea. You're probably going to drop dead of a heart attack before you finish the race or some other medical complication. The best way to do it is probably slowly build up to it, you know, start just, you know, walk around the block, walk halfway around the block, slight improvements to the diet. And then over the course of quite some time, you might get to the point where you can run a marathon, or at least a half marathon, or at least walk a half marathon. I mean, that's a reasonable goal. So, but you have to build up to it. So same thing with logic. Sometimes if you're just slamming these people who are not, and obviously, I think all of us have been guilty of doing it in certain areas where you might have vastly more knowledge or information than someone you're talking to, and you just blast them with something that's quite advanced, but you don't think it's advanced because you've spent so much time on it. I mean, it's true, it's relatively basic, but for the average individual who just heard an opinion on a talk show or on a news broadcast, and they think they're informed because that's how the masses operate, when you blast them with some kind of hard truth that it might not be as basic as you think it is, and it might be too radical for them to accept, even if it's obviously true, even if it's empirically, even if it's an empirical fact, they might not be able to handle it. It might be a more nuanced approach might be necessary. So just important things to keep in mind when viewing the world and dealing with most people in the world, it's almost like they've been conditioned to, you know, they want that pat on the back. They want that affirmation, oh, you're doing the right thing, you believe the right thing, and that's where all this virtue signaling and all these other things come in, where, you know, and the shirking of personal responsibility that seems to be rising in a culture that is quickly turning vapid, in the West at least, and, yeah, it's quite bizarre to observe, but things to keep in mind, people really, really like having their belief systems reaffirmed, and they don't like reexamining the core beliefs or the core tenets of their belief systems, because they don't want to even consider the possibility that they've built a belief system on something that's not true, especially if it was some kind of fraud. I'll close this out with, once again, a quote attributed to Mark Twain, now I wasn't around when he said it, I don't know if anybody was, so, but it goes like this, it's easier to fool someone than convince them they've been fooled. Once again, that ego really is pulling the strings of most people in life. The death of your ego is the beginning of your real life. This is Bruce McGuire, signing off. If you like audiobooks or audio shows, check out a free trial of Audible, just click the link in the description. This is Bruce McGuire, coming at you today with confirmation bias versus learning. So, what's interesting is, in the course of your life, you're going to encounter a bunch of different types of people with a bunch of different types of opinions, obviously. Now, what's interesting is, in all these conversations you have with people, take note how many people are actually interested in learning about something, or someone pointing out whether they had limited information, or their opinion might not have been informed about something as well informed as they thought it was. Now, obviously, Dunning-Kruger, and the Dunning-Kruger effect, this is something, I suppose, needs its own dedicated explanation, but just real quick, most people just have a much higher opinion or evaluation of their own abilities or understanding than they actually do. You can see this every day in life, it's like everybody always thinks they're right, everybody has a hard time fathoming that they might not know as much as they think they do, or some of their core beliefs might be incorrect about something, and nobody really wants to examine the base premises of any of their beliefs. I mean, there's strong cognitive dissonance when it comes to examining the validity of any kind of major tenant of someone's belief system, regardless of what it is, whether it's religious, whether it's scientific, pseudo-scientific, scientismic, is that a new word? Scientismic, related to scientism, instead of scientific, scientismic. Ah, that's funny. So, yeah, when you're talking to somebody about something, normally they're much more interested if you say something that reaffirms their existing belief or opinion instead of offering new information that they might not have, because they're always going to be desperately scrambling, trying to validate their own belief, because somehow, I guess, they're such slaves to their ego, and the mental weakness is so extreme. By the way, I'm not talking about everybody. I'm just talking about, I don't even know if I'd say majority, but I guess if we're talking about more than 50% of people, I would have to use the word majority, because more than 50% of people, even if it's only 51% of people, it seems like the vast majority operates this way, and some people call them sheep, or online, a popular term now is NPCs, Non-Playable Characters. They don't have a lot of brain activity. They believe whatever propaganda they see on TV and all of these things as seen on TV. But yeah, they haven't studied history or propaganda, how any of that works. So, with various things, I mean, conspiracy theory is a trigger word. That's something that has been gone over on the Mind Shock podcast quite extensively, on how the propaganda against so-called conspiracy theorists, I mean, nothing more than critical thinkers, examining anomalies and alternate possibilities, instead of just swallowing the status quo official, establishment, institutionalized, dogmatic viewpoints that can't be questioned. So yeah, most of these viewpoints that people have, they're not really interested. Most people are not interested in re-examining their core beliefs. So an interesting question you can ask people whenever you get into any kind of discussion about anything with opposing viewpoints is, are they open to being wrong? Because most people are just, they're too insecure with themselves, their ego dominates them to such a degree, they're not even open to the possibility of being wrong about a core belief. If you notice, they might actually be open to being wrong about certain small details, as long as it justifies the core belief. Because if their core belief is still correct, then it's okay with them to be wrong about something smaller. But most people can't handle their core beliefs to be wrong. That's why I usually take some kind of life or death, some kind of near-death experience, or just some major, major radical life event, to shake someone up to the point where they can re-evaluate their belief system. For example, atheist physicists who come to believe in God, things like that. Obviously, there's people who do it, there's a slow-burn type process, and then there's the epiphany type process. And the epiphany type, all of a sudden, moments, those usually come in life or death situations, near-death situations, or just major traumatic life events of some kind, that shake people from their dissonance. They're able to overcome cognitive dissonance. It's almost like it stands down to a certain extent, because there's so much, there's sensory overload, or emotional overload, or some kind of an event that allows someone to, for the first time, see things in a new light. I mean, born-again Christians are similar to this. By the way, I'm not advocating religion or anything like that. I'm just citing examples of how this can happen. So, yeah, it's quite interesting. So, at the beginning of a discussion, especially, I mean, online with social media, it's pretty crazy, because people just seem to just want to argue. Like, if you go on Twitter after any major news event, especially if it's a traumatic one where lives were lost, nobody is actually really listening to anybody else. They're just trying to get their own beliefs on either side of anything. It's affirmed that they're not really interested in learning. Now, why is that? I would even cite, I mean, we can go the MBTI route. We can go to different personality types. Different personalities have different affinities for learning, or re-examination, or logical discussion, whereas other personalities, they just want to fit in with the crowd. They just want to have the opinion that matches everybody else's, some kind of group think herd mentality justification. And whether it's for, I mean, I would use the word, unfortunately, I guess, I mean, the world would be a much more interesting place if people were more open to learning, and they were opening to re-examining. I mean, I'm not advocating everybody just immediately thinks they're wrong about everything all the time, although that could be an interesting experiment. I mean, listeners out there, you can try this yourself. Go into every interaction with every single belief about anything from the position that you are completely wrong about everything and see how fast you learn. I'm not sure that's 100% healthy, but just as an experiment. But what I advocate, of course, is a truly scientific position, which is neutrality. You could be wrong. You can be right. Let the evidence speak for itself. So if you're presented with new information, then it's time to re-evaluate. Obviously, you don't take the new information on blind faith. You verify to the best of your ability, and especially you verify your existing core beliefs. Maybe the information that supports your core beliefs is not as sound as you thought it was, or you were led to believe by whatever source you trusted in order to form the belief. And a lot of this happens, a lot of this is subconscious, of course. So it's things that you might not necessarily have complete control over, as a lot of these core belief systems are formed in early childhood by people around you, by adult figures, by societal influence, and things like that. On Mind Shock, I'll be going over social engineering and its dangers, but it's very interesting to think about how many of your core beliefs are even really yours that you came to independently, using critical thinking, logic, deductive reasoning, and basically the abilities of the human brain to discern. Did you really use them in forming all of your core beliefs? And going back and re-examining them, there's nothing wrong with that. Especially if you're a secure, intelligent, strong individual, there's nothing wrong with that. However, if a lot of people in the world, if you're allergic to logic, if you're too insecure or mentally weak to examine all these things, and that might not even be a bad thing, is that just nature protecting your brain from going insane? Because think about it, a lot of people, especially older generation, they're always resistant to change. I mean, that old saying, there's no fool like an old fool, you can't teach an old dog new tricks, things like that, which are obviously not true because there's examples. If there's enough willpower, anything can be done. Or logic, if there's enough logic. Logical old people, once again, the wise man knows he knows nothing, the fool thinks he knows everything. Or the more knowledge you have, the more you realize you don't know anything, things of that nature. But yeah, is this a protective mechanism of the brain? Because you need to survive, so you need to hunt or gather food or build things, whatever you need to do, you need to do these things to survive. So some of these radical ideas, even if they're true, if there's certain developments of psychology, of how human psychology works, maybe it's in the best interest of certain individuals to actually, cognitive dissonance is a good thing, it protects their brain, it keeps them from going insane, because they just can't handle living in a world where things are too vastly different from their indoctrinated beliefs. So being dogmatic is almost like a self-preservation mechanism for them. And if you view things in that light, it's almost a little easier to understand some of these people who just can't let logic in because it threatens their existing belief system too much. And they might go completely insane. What is the solution? I mean, it might be like anything. If you're going to run a marathon, you're not just going to, if you're obese and you weigh 500 pounds, rolling off the couch with a bag of Doritos right to the starting line of a marathon, probably not a good idea. You're probably going to drop dead of a heart attack before you finish the race or some other medical complication. The best way to do it is probably slowly build up to it, start just walk around the block, walk halfway around the block, slight improvements to the diet. And then over the course of quite some time, you might get to the point where you can run a marathon or at least a half marathon, or at least walk a half marathon. I mean, that's a reasonable goal. But you have to build up to it. So same thing with logic. Sometimes if you're just slamming these people who are not, and obviously I think all of us have been guilty of doing it in certain areas where you might have vastly more knowledge or information than someone you're talking to, and you just blast them with something that's quite advanced, but you don't think it's advanced because you've spent so much time on it. For you, it's relatively basic, but for the average individual who just heard an opinion on a talk show or on a news broadcast, and they think they're informed because that's how the masses operate. When you blast them with some kind of hard truth, it might not be as basic as you think it is, and it might be too radical for them to accept. Even if it's obviously true, even if it's empirically, even if it's an empirical fact, they might not be able to handle it. It might be a more nuanced approach might be necessary. So just important things to keep in mind when viewing the world and dealing with most people in the world. It's almost like they've been conditioned to, they want that pat on the back. They want that affirmation, oh, you're doing the right thing. You believe the right thing. And that's where all this virtue signaling and all these other things come in, and the shirking of personal responsibility that seems to be rising in a culture that is quickly turning vapid, in the West at least. It's quite bizarre to observe, but things to keep in mind, people really, really like having their belief systems reaffirmed, and they don't like reexamining the core beliefs or the core tenets of their belief systems, because they don't want to even consider the possibility that they've built a belief system on something that's not true, especially if it was some kind of fraud. I'll close this out with, once again, a quote attributed to Mark Twain. Now, I wasn't around when he said it. I don't know if anybody was, but it goes like this. It's easier to fool someone than convince them they've been fooled. Once again, that ego really is pulling the strings of most people in life. The death of your ego is the beginning of your real life. This is Bruce McGuire, signing off.