It’s fun to learn things that help complete a thought that you’ve been having. Putting into words ideas that have been floating around but you haven’t quite been able to say what they are.
Confirmation bias is a word that I learned today that I think well articulates an annoyance I’ve had over the last several weeks. The definition for confirmation bias is: “the tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories.”
The idea being that you make decisions before you’ve even heard all of the evidence. It kind of seems like people on all sides of the political side are having a severe case of this. There are so many things that most people don’t have a full understanding on, yet everyone thinks that since they have a phone and tv that now they are an expert who can speak on the subject.
I’m all for free speech, and I’m even glad that it’s here so that in some ways it’s hard to cover up lies, but just because you have more evidence than we would have had 20 years ago, that doesn’t mean that you are now an expert who can speak about everything.
It’s easy to want to attach what you read to what you already believe. Anything that can fit into the puzzle you’ve made. It’s also easy to shy away from anything that seems to disagree with your own views.
It’s impossible to be completely diplomatic, but the faster we start looking at things with an open mind and a willing heart, the better suited we will be to start dealing with the larger issues.