You Are Not So Smart

A Celebration of Self-Delusion

It had to happen. Someone finally announced what us netsurfers and bloggers already know - most of the time we're not looking for information on the Net, we're looking for confirmation.  We don't look for or post articles that run counter to our own ideas or values.  What we look for - and always find - are sites that promote or enhance our current point of view, much as we think that we're open to diverse ideas, much as we like to believe that our website presents a balanced viewpoint.

So imagine my delight at finding this article called Confirmation Bias by David McRaney on the You Are Not So Smart website.  Yes!  I knew it, I knew it, and now it's been confirmed!

“Thanks to Google, we can instantly seek out support for the most bizarre idea imaginable. If our initial search fails to turn up the results we want, we don’t give it a second thought, rather we just try out a different query and search again.”- Justin Owings

This post, and the others on the YANSS site, are at once fascinating and insulting.  They really poke at how we're not nearly as smart, sophisticated or savvy as we think. But it's okay, they still prove what we already know - we're all human - so we're good to go ego-wise.  Each post starts with the common "misconception" and then present the "truth", like this:

The Misconception:  Your opinions are the result of years of rational, objective analysis.

The Truth:  Your opinions are the result of years of paying attention to information which confirmed what you believed while ignoring information which challenged your preconceived notions.

Drawing from observations and studies on such diverse topics as old movies, politics, Amazon.com wish lists and conspiracy theories, the author reveals again and again how we "...tend to come up with a hypothesis and then work to prove it right instead of working to prove it wrong", and that "once satisfied, you stop searching."  He closes with this advice:

Remember, there’s always someone out there willing to sell eyeballs to advertisers by offering a guaranteed audience of people looking for validation. Ask yourself if you are in that audience.

In science, you move closer to the truth by seeking evidence to the contrary. Perhaps the same method should inform your opinions as well.

The article and the website are fun and interesting - enjoy it all HERE.

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“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.” - Sir Francis Bacon
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