We all think we’re smart. We all think that our perspective is more complete and more insightful than those who disagree with us. And we are all, also, subject to confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to look for information that confirms what we already believe. Confirmation bias blocks intellectual rigor, inhibits personal growth, and imprisons us in a false sense of certainty.
Those who newly learn about confirmation bias tend to wield it like a weapon against “the other side”—foolishly, of course, considering that if you look to see how those who disagree with you “are trapped in confirmation bias,” you are quite trapped in it yourself. And knowing that you’re trapped in it is humbling, but not enough. Just like “knowing” that push-ups help you get stronger, but not doing them, or “knowing” about meditation but not practicing it daily, “knowing” that you are trapped in confirmation bias is meaningless if you don’t act on the humility that that knowledge brings.
Because truly knowing that we’re trapped in confirmation bias allows us to stop arguing altogether (including even in our own minds), since we realize our arguments are nothing more than foolish, naive, anti-intellectual, emotional tantrums, whereby we scream, “Why can’t you think, feel, believe and behave like me?!”
So how can you know if you’re trapped in confirmation bias? Here are some clear ways to tell:
If you cannot legitimately criticize your own side, you are trapped in confirmation bias. If you only criticize your own side by following it up with, “Yes, but…” and then minimize or otherwise excuse whatever’s been done, you are trapped in confirmation bias. If you seek to defend clear wrongs done by those who agree with you (or who are on “your side”), you are trapped in confirmation bias. If your thought right now is about how those you disagree with are trapped in confirmation bias (so you can “prove” them wrong), then you are trapped in confirmation bias.
“Geez, Doc, your articles are cutting to my ego,” one person recently texted me; and then he followed it with, “But I’m grateful for you, because I know it’s truth, and I want to be better.” I appreciated him reaching out. I told him I practice what I teach, and the information I have I use to challenge my own ego first and foremost.
One last humbling thought:
If you condescendingly scoff at those who think differently from you, know this: Your arrogance is blinding you so much that you’re missing out on just how incomplete your information is, and just how foolishly you’re acting while you’re doing this.
We can all do better. I believe we owe it to ourselves to at least try.
Sending everyone who sees this, and everyone who doesn’t, much peace.