Knowing the truth is important, but knowing your bias is the only way you will find the truth. How do we know it when we hear or read the truth unless we understand what is truth to us, what our blind spots are, and what part our emotions play in recognizing the truth? Are we open to the truth?
Confirmation bias
"Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.[1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. Confirmation bias is of particular current interest because of the increasing polarisation between left-wing and right-wing political viewpoints, and the gullible acceptance of the current rapid spread of fake news.[2]
People also tend to interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing position. Biased search, interpretation and memory have been invoked to explain attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a greater reliance on information encountered early in a series) and illusory correlation (when people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
VERY USEFUL TED TALKS (FOR ME, AT LEAST)
PLEASE LISTEN TO THEM-THEYARE LESS THAN 20MINS EACH
Julia Galef - "Why you think you're right - - even if you're wrong" -Soldier and Scout mindsets, all based on emotional thinking
https://www.ted.com/talks/julia_galef_why_you_think_you_re_right_even_if_you_re_wrong?language=en
Ted Talk by Alex Edmans - "What to trust in a "post truth" world"
https://www.ted.com/talks/alex_edmans_what_to_trust_in_a_post_truth_world?language=en
Chad Frischmann - "100 solutions to reverse global warming"
https://www.ted.com/talks/chad_frischmann_100_solutions_to_climate_change
A friend asked me to look at Thomas Sowell's commentary, myths of economic inequality and other topics and cost-effective approaches to save the environment - Bjorn Lomborg.
Wow! I went down a very educational path in my research on the two leads my friend gave me.
Thomas Sowell's thinking is extremely conservative, almost White Nationalist / Supremacist, and despite his education and renowned expertise on economics, he lacks basic knowledge of sociology, anthropology, and political perversion of welfare programs and the purpose, rationale for, and accomplishments of Affirmative Action.
Thomas says blacks who score in the 75th percentile on the standard entrance exams should not be allowed into college to compete against students who scored in the 90th percentile because it guarantees them failure. He doesn't feel that is fair. There are many things wrong with this thinking:
1. if 50% succeed, it is a win,
2. the standard tests are biased for white kids,
3. the entrance exams do not measure motivation or emotional intelligence,
4. maybe Thomas is a lazy teacher and does not want to work hard to help 75th percentile kids,
5. while he thinks a lot of himself, maybe Thomas is, simply and sadly, a bad teacher,
6. while Thomas made good life choices, I guarantee they were not all good, so he had some luck along the way escaping his life choice to quite school and go to work (he got a job!),
7. he may think he is better than those other blacks because he did not get any Affirmative Action help, but that ignores any possible success from the Affirmative Action program for those blacks whobenefitted from that program.
There are responses to Thomas Sowell on You Tube saying "Everything Thomas Sowell Thinks is Wrong."
After going to Ted Talks about finding truth in a world where truth is evasive, I have a way to understand Sowell. He's partly right, and partly, perhaps mostly, wrong as he uses data and evidence poorly, and is singularly, sadly guilty of extreme confirmation bias. Thomas Sowell is a "soldier" [explained later here - basically find evidence that supports your argument] and those of us who refute him are "scouts" [explained later in this blog as well - basically find the evidence to prove whatever is true].
Thomas is black yet he decided black men do not like family life so they leave, and had the ignorance to compare family life choices of Americans to Asians to prove his point. Thomas is "intelligent," yet he wants blacks to coddled from having to compete with higher SAT scoring students who are Asian or white or whatever other color.
Thomas Sowell says we entitlements are welcome by lazy people. What? I am not lazy as I get social security. Maybe he meant welfare? OK, but isn't it too easy for people who do not need entitlements to cut entitlements? Why blame the poor and elderly for Congress giving DoD too much money?
Thomas Sowell appears to have no desire to address how rich white men tend to get all the breaks in our economic system, or how rich white men tend to get light prison sentences for serious crimes and black men can get life for shoplifting underwear if it is their third strike in California.
Thomas Sowell wrote an article "A Censored Race War?"in 2012 about roving gangs of black boys beating whites. This was not true and madness by Thomas. Thomas was provoking a "whitelash" that could be a basis for a Civil War.
Thomas suffers from a conservative person's views looking for confirmation of his beliefs.
Bjorn is in the same category, although eh at least admits the environment is under attack and sea levels will rise 2-3 feet in the next 10 years. Bjorn's problem is he uses numbers to plan non-humane responses to climate change and global warming. Millions of people Bjorn does not know will die and have to migrate when the floods come! To Bjorn this is not a time to panic, but for those people who will be flooded it is a time to panic.
Bjorn is the guy who suggests frogs stay in the water while the heat keeps coming until the watr boils, and the frog dies.
VERY USEFUL TED TALKS (FOR ME, AT LEAST)-PLEASE LISTEN TO THEM-THEYARE LESS THAN 20MINS EACH
Julia Galef - "Why you think you're right - - even if you're wrong" -Soldier and Scout mindsets, all based on emotional thinking
Ted Talk by Alex Edmans - "What to trust in a "post truth" world"
Chad Frischmann - "100 solutions to reverse global warming"
