Right is Wrong: The Confirmation Bias

Right is Wrong, and other silly brain errors.

For untold millenium the Human Race has been making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Other people can even see these mistakes, and will inform the person that they are making one... But to no avail. No matter the argument, they seem almost deadset on proving it wrong so long as it opposes his current belief.


This is called the Positive Bias, and it is positively the greatest threat to rational thought. It is characterized by the want to be exposed to information and opinions that confirm what they already believe. And to have a desire to ignore, or not be exposed to, information or opinions that challenge what they already believe.
according to Ye Ol' Wiki


To elaborate on how we managed to experiment for thousands of years and never notice this strange cognitive bias, let me share with you a story about Blondlot and his now infamous N-Rays... In fact, let me share it from another rationalist site. http://skepdic.com/blondlot.html

"The story of  Blondlot is a story of self-deception among scientists. Because many people have the misguided notion that science should be infallible and a fount of absolutely certain truths, they look at the Blondlot episode  as a vindication of their excessive skepticism towards science. They relish accounts such as the one regarding Blondlot and the phantom N-rays because it is a story of a famous scientist making a great error. However, if one properly understands science and scientists, the Blondlot episode indicates little more than the fallibility of scientists and the self-correcting nature of science.

Blondlot claimed that N-rays exhibit impossible properties and yet are emitted by all substances except green wood and certain treated metals. In 1903, Blondlot claimed he had generated N-rays using a hot wire inside an iron tube. The rays were detected by a calcium sulfide thread that glowed slightly in the dark when the rays were refracted through a 60-degree angle prism of aluminum. According to Blondlot, a narrow stream of N-rays was refracted through the prism and produced a spectrum on a field. The N-rays were reported to be invisible, except when viewed as they hit the treated thread. Blondlot moved the thread across the gap where the N-rays were thought to come through and when the thread was illuminated it was said to be due to N-rays.

Nature magazine was skeptical of Blondlot's claims because laboratories in England and Germany had not been able to replicate the Frenchman's results. Nature sent American physicist Robert W. Wood of Johns Hopkins University to investigate Blondlot's discovery. Wood suspected that N-rays were a delusion. To demonstrate such, he removed the prism from the N-ray detection device, unbeknownst to Blondlot or his assistant. Without the prism, the machine couldn't work. Yet, when Blondlot's assistant conducted the next experiment he found N-rays. Wood then tried to surreptitiously replace the prism but the assistant saw him and thought he was removing the prism. The next time he tried the experiment, the assistant swore he could not see any N-rays. But he should have, since the equipment was in full working order."

Blonglot's major error was in telling his lab assistant what he intended with the experiments. They were both unknowingly adding to the Positive Bias, and thus every experiment they performed miraculously proved him right. And if a thousand experiments all say that you are correct... You will probably keep thinking that.

It wasn't until Blonglot's famous failure however that the Positive Bias was finally taken serious by scientists across the world, and a new standard of the Scientific Method was cemented. That which can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof. And nothing is ever true, you can only ever prove what isn't true.

For more mind-opening articles on how you are ALWAYS WRONG, or somethng more positive, check out the rest of our rationalist writings. And please support the impoverished writers and their sponsors, and affiliates. And buy my merchandise, i haven't eaten in three days.