Quote of the Day
when your subconscious believes something, it will manipulate your perception of reality to reinforce your belief that you’re right
vik @vikhyatk
Posted on X, December 26, 2025
This is known as Confirmation Bias.
This is why potential jurors are rejected if they were exposed to information about the case prior to being selected for the jury. If they have already formed an opinion, it is very difficult for them to be unbiased when hearing the case.
This is why religious beliefs are rarely significantly changed.
You can see it all around you. It probably is the most obvious in the words and actions of your political advisories, religious beliefs of people with a different faith, and in people defending their family members.
A great deal of TDS can be explained this way. It is very difficult to avoid getting caught up in it. You can catch the more egregious cases in yourself if you take a little bit of time to ask yourself, “Is this too good to be true?” If it is, then you should dig deep to make sure whatever it is you want to believe is actually true. A case in point in the comments of this blog.
At work, while I was on the Cyber Threat Intelligence team, we were specifically trained to watch out for this and other biases. In this type of environment, you assemble a team with different backgrounds. Then you review each other’s work. This helps a bunch, but it is not perfect. I doubt anything practical is perfect. But it can help.
One should avoid confirmation bias by reading stuff from a bunch of different perspectives. It is time consuming and doesn’t always work but it does keep your head clearer. Amusingly, I propounded this theory to an acquaintance and he agreed saying he had subscriptions to NYT, WaPo and LAT. Also, read, not watch.
A triple layer echo chamber.