What is it exactly? It is a term used in psychology that explains what the humans rationalitation process does. It is a type of cognitive function often used by the frontal cortex (a.k.a. the more rational part of our brains) to extract information from memories or things that we learned to confirm what we already and or currently believe in. This is often the case when our brain cannot accept a new information that contradicts what itself truly thinks/believes to be real and comes from facts. This is also one of the many reasons why people tend to believe so much in an information they see on the internet if it somehow suits their conditions or the things they are trying to explain.
Now, i am not going to go in depth into the whole explanation of confirmation bias. You can do that on your own time reading in Google or Wikipedia, or whatever other sources you may have at your disposal. But it is really interesting to talk about the implications and what this behaviour of ours brings about in our daily life. Let's say you the reader, felt like you have an illness or something of the sort. You feels like a pile of crap waking up at 3 a.m. in the morning, wanting to puke, feeling dizzy, and in general just really not that well. You opened up the web, googled your symptomps and for some reason your symptomps matches that of a super dangerous and deadly disease. In this case, the brain normally goes to panic and interprets everything in 2 sets : 1. That can't be real right? and 2. But what if it is though? These 2 sets are contradicting each other, and whichever ones you truly believe your disease to be, that's where your rationalisation tends to go to and that will make you believe even more that you're either dying, or simply having a bad start to your day. But whatever the case may be, one thing remains about this function of our brains that tells us a little bit about ourselves. We humans tend to think ourselves as the righteous one. The correct stand point, the better part of human race, all the while demeaning that in which we ourselves don't agree with. We take pity for ourselves in some sense, and gathers as much evidence as possible to support what we want to happen or what we believe in.
I am not saying 100% of us do this 100% of the time, but more often than not, we do these things. Even after we learned about this function of our brain, and how it affects us, we still believe that we are righteous, that we are correct. We fight for a "good" cause, we make decisions based on the "greater good" a.k.a. that which benefits the majorities. And after that we only need to simply gather our reasoning to convince us and or others that what we did or currently are doing is completely A-okay. Does it tells us that we cannot trust our own brain? that we are not what we made us out to be? or that whatever we do we will never truly speak from the facts? Good question, and the answer is both yes and no. The yes part is pretty self explanatory. But why no? Because we need to remember that this cognitive function of ours exists through an evolutionary process. Wait a minute what? Yes that's right, can you imagine if you were to not be able to trust your own brain for like, forever? All you do everyday is going down into the well of self-doubts, which probably means you going to your bedroom and hide under a blanket while you question everything there are about yourself. It is in a sense, what makes us human, sane. Or at least for a little bit, like a password you put on your phone hoping your mom/dad/friends won't find out so that you can keep it's content a secret, so that at least you can tell yourself that everything is good and they won't see it.
In conclusion, there isn't a "good or bad" label on confirmation bias. It is both good and bad, we just need to be more careful of when and how we use it. It is of course not easy, considering all of the above, but we can always try to ask ourselves the question of whether or not what we are doing and or saying is based on objectivity or is it our brains playing tricks on us to make us prove our own reasoning? But don't get too caught up in that web, or you'll end up, like i said, in a well of self-doubts. Have a nice day, and thank you for reading
Now, i am not going to go in depth into the whole explanation of confirmation bias. You can do that on your own time reading in Google or Wikipedia, or whatever other sources you may have at your disposal. But it is really interesting to talk about the implications and what this behaviour of ours brings about in our daily life. Let's say you the reader, felt like you have an illness or something of the sort. You feels like a pile of crap waking up at 3 a.m. in the morning, wanting to puke, feeling dizzy, and in general just really not that well. You opened up the web, googled your symptomps and for some reason your symptomps matches that of a super dangerous and deadly disease. In this case, the brain normally goes to panic and interprets everything in 2 sets : 1. That can't be real right? and 2. But what if it is though? These 2 sets are contradicting each other, and whichever ones you truly believe your disease to be, that's where your rationalisation tends to go to and that will make you believe even more that you're either dying, or simply having a bad start to your day. But whatever the case may be, one thing remains about this function of our brains that tells us a little bit about ourselves. We humans tend to think ourselves as the righteous one. The correct stand point, the better part of human race, all the while demeaning that in which we ourselves don't agree with. We take pity for ourselves in some sense, and gathers as much evidence as possible to support what we want to happen or what we believe in.
I am not saying 100% of us do this 100% of the time, but more often than not, we do these things. Even after we learned about this function of our brain, and how it affects us, we still believe that we are righteous, that we are correct. We fight for a "good" cause, we make decisions based on the "greater good" a.k.a. that which benefits the majorities. And after that we only need to simply gather our reasoning to convince us and or others that what we did or currently are doing is completely A-okay. Does it tells us that we cannot trust our own brain? that we are not what we made us out to be? or that whatever we do we will never truly speak from the facts? Good question, and the answer is both yes and no. The yes part is pretty self explanatory. But why no? Because we need to remember that this cognitive function of ours exists through an evolutionary process. Wait a minute what? Yes that's right, can you imagine if you were to not be able to trust your own brain for like, forever? All you do everyday is going down into the well of self-doubts, which probably means you going to your bedroom and hide under a blanket while you question everything there are about yourself. It is in a sense, what makes us human, sane. Or at least for a little bit, like a password you put on your phone hoping your mom/dad/friends won't find out so that you can keep it's content a secret, so that at least you can tell yourself that everything is good and they won't see it.
In conclusion, there isn't a "good or bad" label on confirmation bias. It is both good and bad, we just need to be more careful of when and how we use it. It is of course not easy, considering all of the above, but we can always try to ask ourselves the question of whether or not what we are doing and or saying is based on objectivity or is it our brains playing tricks on us to make us prove our own reasoning? But don't get too caught up in that web, or you'll end up, like i said, in a well of self-doubts. Have a nice day, and thank you for reading
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