Tom Baker on confirmation bias

You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common.  They don't alter their views to fit the facts.  They alter the facts to fit the views.  Which can be uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

~ Tom Baker, actor who plays the Fourth Doctor in Doctor Who episode "The Face of Evil - Part 4," which aired January 22, 1977

John Kenneth Galbraith on confirmation bias

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.

~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Joel Litman on confirmation bias in the media

In many cases I think the media, they come up with a narrative and then they find the data to support it. It's the opposite of the scientific method. 

~ Joel Litman, "A 'Not-So Secret Weapon' in Finance," Stansberry Investor Hour, 30:35 mark, September 19, 2022

Jeffrey Tucker on how the coronavirus has "opened up a barrel full of toxic ideology"

It’s been extremely difficult in these times to think clearly as a professional medical service provider might. To them, this is a virus and the people who contract it need to be identified, isolated, and treated. Maybe that doesn’t sound complicated but sometimes the hardest thing is to think simply. It’s darn-near impossible when a perfect storm of media mania, political ambition, and public ignorance combined to open up a barrel full of toxic ideology that has poisoned people’s ability to be rational.

Even now, many people aren’t reading news or looking at data. They are confirming their biases. Our political culture has fully bled – a tsunami of blood – into one of the most essential tasks of civilization: caring for and curing the sick, and hence drowning rationality, science, and medical professionalism, and doing so at the expense of a billion lives.

Yes, that’s the tragic cost of an ideologically obsessed culture. Instead of defeating the virus, we are using its presence among us to defeat each other.

~ Jeffrey Tucker, "Coronavirus as Ideology," AIER.org, March 30, 2020

Allan Stevo on news and confirmation bias

There’s an aspect of confirmation bias that marketers have long understood as significant: the more education you have, the more successful you’ve been inside a system, the less likely you are to see contradictory information from unfamiliar sources as valid. Also, the less likely you are to approach the ideas presented to you by a trusted source in a circumspect fashion.

Basically, if you’ve got a PhD, you eat most of what’s fed to you, as long as it’s fed to you by the right people.

And the news doesn’t just have a way of getting people opinionated, it has a way of making one feel educated, almost expert on a topic.

~ Allan Stevo, "Suddenly Everyone is a Coronavirus Expert," LewRockwell.com, March 13, 2020

Kevin Duffy on confirmation bias

We all tend to filter information to feed our bias.  Few are biased towards openly seeking answers; most presume to already know the answers.

~ Kevin Duffy

Bertrand Russell on confirmation bias

What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires -- desires of which he himself is often unconscious.  If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it.  If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.  The origin of myths is explained in this way.

~ Bertrand Russell, Roads to Freedom

John Stuart Mill on knowing both sides of an argument

He who knows only his side of the case, knows little of that.

~ John Stuart Mill



(Cited by Sheldon Richman.)

Peter Atwater: headlines "on the front page always confirm the bias of the reader"

When somebody picks up The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, whatever they do - and you can do it online - is to step back and say, as you're reading these headlines, "why are they here?"  "Why are these on the front page?"  And they're on the front page always to confirm the bias of the reader.  It is very, very rare that you'll see on the cover of The Journal, the Financial Times, the New York Times, something that is challenging, that's going to cause the crowd to step back.   What they want is for you to start reading and keep reading from there.  So the front page is telling you, "this is the consensus view."

So often you will have seen a story that a week ago was on page B-18 move to the front page of the B section, to move finally to the front page of the front section.  So that migration is telling you that the  story has legs, that it sticks and that the momentum is now peaking.  I think it's important to recognize that front page acreage is incredibly expensive.  So nothing can last there.  It hits and goes.  So this is the editors capitalizing on the frenzy, and once it's there it's done.

~ Peter Atwater, "Indicators Hiding in Plain Sight," interview with Grant Williams on Real Vision, 17:30 mark

Phil Duffy on the pursuit of truth

We're all entitled to our own opinions.  We're not entitled to our own facts.

~ Philip Duffy

(This is not an original quote, but one borrowed, perhaps here: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts."  ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan)

Albert Einstein on the pursuit of truth

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks should be.

~ Albert Einstein

Ray Dalio on confirmation bias

I think most people, too often, they start with an opinion.  There are psychological tests that show that people start with an opinion and filter information that comes to them to be consistent with their opinion.

~ Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates ($160 bil hedge fund), interview with Tim Ferris, September 13, 2017

Thomas Sowell on honesty and flattery

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

~ Thomas Sowell