EOTO #4

 Confirmation Bias 

EOTO:

    While listening to other group members' presentation's, there was one topic that was addressed and taught in another group that caught my attention. It was on the topic of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out information that supports our pre-existing ideas. What we can boil down confirmation bias into, is the lack of critical thinking. We all have perceptions of the world, all of us, and it is very uncomfortable for any of us to think about the possibility that I could be wrong about something, perhaps even a core belief of mine. Contrary to the post modernist understanding of 'your truth' and 'my truth', which truth be told nobody actually believes once you start talking about serious topics, there is 'the truth' that is objectively and factually true. And oftentimes in society when two people have a staunch disagreement on core, important issues, we are sometimes afraid to go and truly explore those other opinions. Many times we are prone to just tune out any opposing arguments and can't wait to interject with our own beliefs before the other person can even finish. I believe that all of us do this to an extent, myself included, and while I believe it is important to truly trust and believe what you are saying, it is important that at least one point in your life you truly and unbiasedly as possible, looked at the raw evidence on a topic and came to a conclusion that is based in reality and not your own subjective desires. 

     The major issue with something like confirmation bias is that it allows us to be very susceptible to propaganda. If we are taught, programmed, and conditioned from a young age to believe one thing and to ignore any other opinion(s), if we stay in our intellectual bubble, and do not and have not ever wandered outside of that, we will never come to find out that we could've been lied to our entire life and had a false sense of the world. This was a very interesting issue that another group presented on and I feel like this subject is something that needs to be addressed more in the mainstream dialogue, although I don't really see that as likely to happen considering that virtually all media and news outlets are in lockstep together with the same propaganda so, probably not going to happen unfortunately, but in a ideal world it should be.