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.
In an earlier generation it might have been ABC NBC CBS, and NPR for a balanced perspective, and Walter Cronkite had a hotline to God so he could tell us the God’s Honest Truth.™
at least now my brothers know that CNN gives a realistic view and Newsmax and Fox are the outliers to be ignored.
A triple layer echo chamber.
Though TDS is a real thing. It seems to me it is tied to the larger syndrome Yuri Besemov told us about in the 80’s.
It’s true that “confirmation bias” is part of human nature, but I think that’s why Yuri’s (KGB) system of demoralizing humanity works so well.
And why the communists use it to destroy humanity.
It removes one’s ability to reason and see facts clearly enough to act on them.
And keeps people in an emotional state that’s easily manipulated.
So mere slogans and buzz words (Vox Day’s, “word magic”) can move people to action or make them afraid to act.
And if looked at in the larger picture. It has been used by tyrants for as long as human history has been available.