29 Matching Annotations
  1. Oct 2023
    1. Obviously, recently, it no longer had any sources within Hamas. Its blindness is no less astonishing. For example, journalists had reported in recent months that many Hamas militants regularly went out to train on motorbikes, and even learned to fly light aircraft; and yet the Israeli services saw nothing of it. This is a major flaw for which they will have to answer one day.
      • for: confirmation bias, confirmation bias - hamas attack on Israel
    1. Are both governments more incentivized to the status quo than a true peace? Yes. Because mortal enemies help us justify the things that we already want to do.
      • for: confirmation bias, example - confirmation bias
  2. Aug 2023
    1. The participants in both the 2018 and the retracted 2023 studies were recruited from online communities that were explicitly critical about many aspects of gender-affirming care for transgender kids.
  3. Jun 2023
    1. Think of branches not as collections, but rather as conversations

      When a branch starts to build, or prove itself, then ask the question (before indexing): "What is the conversation that is building here?"

      Also related to Sönke Ahrens' maxim of seeking Disconfirming Information to counter Confirmation Bias. By thinking of branches as conversations instead of collectives, you are also more inclined to put disconfirming information within the branch.

  4. Oct 2022
    1. The third and probably most serious difficulty in making good reflective decisions is confirmation bias.

      Confirmation bias can be detrimental when making solid reflective decisions.

  5. Jul 2022
    1. It feels like « removing spring » is one of those unchallenged truths like « always remove Turbolinks » or « never use fixtures ». It also feels like a confirmation bias when it goes wrong.

      "unchallenged truths" is not really accurate. More like unchallenged assumption.

  6. Feb 2022
    1. The velocity of social sharing, the power of recommendation algorithms, the scale of social networks, and the accessibility of media manipulation technology has created an environment where pseudo events, half-truths, and outright fabrications thrive.

      As it has been stated by Daniel Kahneman, we all are "cognitively lazy." This a very telling statement that helps to reveal the different reasonings of why we are in a world full of "half-truths" but, deeper than that, why we all continue to accept these half-truths. A lot of times we do not want to take the necessary time it takes to evaluate information instead of just accepting things to be true.

    1. Reading, especially rereading, caneasily fool us into believing we understand a text. Rereading isespecially dangerous because of the mere-exposure effect: Themoment we become familiar with something, we start believing wealso understand it. On top of that, we also tend to like it more(Bornstein 1989).

      The mere-exposure effect can be dangerous when rereading a text because we are more likely to falsely believe we understand it. Robert Bornstein's research from 1989 indicates that we will tend to like the text more, which can pull us into confirmation bias.

      Bornstein, Robert F. 1989. “Exposure and Affect: Overview and Meta-Analysis of Research, 1968-1987.” Psychological Bulletin 106 (2): 265–89.

    2. The linear process promoted by most study guides, which insanelystarts with the decision on the hypothesis or the topic to write about,is a sure-fire way to let confirmation bias run rampant.

      Many study and writing guides suggest to start ones' writing or research work with a topic or hypothesis. This is a recipe for disaster to succumb to confirmation bias as one is more likely to search out for confirming evidence rather than counter arguments. Better to start with interesting topic and collect ideas from there which can be pitted against each other.

    3. “I had [...]during many years followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever apublished fact, a new observation or thought came across me, whichwas opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of itwithout fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such factsand thoughts were far more apt to escape from the memory thanfavorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raisedagainst my views, which I had not at least noticed and attempted toanswer.” (Darwin 1958, 123)

      Charles Darwin fought confirmation bias by writing down contrary arguments and criticisms and addressing them.

  7. Jan 2022
    1. In the new film, she has been in the city for years, caring for her father (it’s hinted that he died), and she expresses, in a single line, a desire to go to college. Bernardo is now a boxer just beginning his career. Chino, an undefined presence in the original, is now in night school, studying accounting and adding-machine repair. But nothing comes of these new practical emphases; the characters have no richer inner lives, cultural substance, or range of experience than they do in the first film. Maria still has little definition beyond her relationship with Tony; she remains as much of a cipher as she was in the 1961 film.

      The writer is purposely making these characters seem way different while ignoring that the movie was made in a completely different era to relate more to today's problems rather than problems in 1961. The speaker fails to recognize that the movie is going to have a different look because it is a new producer.

  8. Dec 2021
  9. Nov 2021
  10. Oct 2021
    1. What the world is seeing now, through the window provided by reams of internal documents, is that Facebook catalogs and studies the harm it inflicts on people. And then it keeps harming people anyway.

      One of the flaws of Mark Zuckerberg's spectrum disorder is that he either has no sense of shame or his confirmation bias and loss aversion biases are incredibly large.

    1. 02:18 So we gave people information and as a result it caused polarization, it didn’t cause 02:23 people to come together.
  11. Jul 2021
  12. Jun 2021
  13. May 2021
  14. Feb 2021
    1. Frame of reference has been manipulatedCrime statistics are often manipulated for political purposes by comparing to a year when crime was very high. This can expressed either as a change (down 60% since 2004) or via an index (40, where 2004 = 100). In either of these cases, 2004 may or may not be an appropriate year for comparison. It could have been an unusually high crime year.This also happens when comparing places. If I want to make one country look bad, I simply express the data about it relative to whichever country which is doing the best.This problem tends to crop up in subjects where people have a strong confirmation bias. (“Just as I thought, crime is up!”) Whenever possible try comparing rates from several different starting points to see how the numbers shift. And whatever you do, don’t use this technique yourself to make a point you think is important. That’s inexcusable.

      This is an important point and when politicians are speaking it, they should cite their sources meticulously.

  15. Sep 2020
    1. Consider, for instance, the footage that has been circulating from a New York City Council hearing, held over Zoom in June, which shows Krug in her Afro-Latinx pose. She introduces herself as Jess La Bombalera, a nickname apparently of her own making, adapted from Bomba, an Afro-Puerto Rican genre of music and dance. Broadcasting live from “El Barrio,” and wearing purple-tinted shades and a hoop in her nose, she lambasts gentrifiers, shouts out her “black and brown siblings,” and twice calls out “white New Yorkers” for not yielding their speaking time. What stands out, though, is the way Krug speaks, in a patchy accent that begins with thickly rolled “R”s and transitions into what can best be described as B-movie gangster. This is where desire outruns expertise. The Times, in a piece on Krug’s exposure, last week, nonetheless called this a “Latina accent,” lending credence to Krug’s performance. (The phrase was later deleted.) The offhand notation is a tiny example of the buy-in Krug has been afforded her entire scholastic career, by advisers and committee members and editors and colleagues. They failed to recognize the gap not between real and faux, so much, as between something thrown-on and something lived-in. That inattentiveness was Krug’s escape hatch.

      If nothing else, this is indicative of human cognitive bias. We'll tend to take at face value what is presented to us, but then once we "know" our confirmation bias will kick in on the other direction.

      I'm curious if there were examples of anyone calling out her accent contemporaneously? We're also stuck with the bias of wanting to go with the majority view. When you're the lone voice, you're less likely to speak up. This is also evinced in the story of her previous colleagues who had "gut feelings" that something was wrong, but didn't say anything or do any research at the time.

  16. Aug 2020
    1. The real enemy of independent thinking is not any external authority, but our own inertia. We need to find ways to counteract confirmation bias – our tendency to take into account only information that confirms what we already believe. We need to regularly confront our errors, mistakes, and misunderstandings. 
    1. Confirmation bias is pretty much what you think it is. You get an idea in your head and you go looking for evidence to confirm that it’s true. If any evidence comes up to challenge it, you cry “Fake news!” and move on with your life.

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  17. Jun 2020
  18. May 2020
  19. Jul 2018
    1. Scholars have known for decades that people tend to search for and believe information that confirms what they already think is true. The new elements are social media and the global networks of friends who use it. People let their guard down on online platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, where friends, family members, and coworkers share photos, gossip, and a wide variety of other information. That’s one reason why people may fall for false news, as S. Shyam Sundar, a Pennsylvania State University communication professor, explains in The Conversation. Another reason: People are less skeptical of information they encounter on platforms they have personalized — through friend requests and “liked” pages, for instance — to reflect their interests and identity.
  20. Mar 2017
    1. they’d identified websites online that “proved” their beliefs.

      For anyone interested a good discussion of Confirmation Bias can be found in this (somewhat old) article