Confirmation Bias

Before 9/11, my online efforts were largely directed at battling pseudoscience, like the crap spewed by religious zealots claiming to have disproved evolutionary theory, or the dime-a-dozen ‘Grand Unifying Theories’ by hack theoretical “physicists” claiming to have resurrected some pre-Einsteinian model of time. So when I caught the political bug in 2001, I was already intimately familiar with people unable to escape their own cognitive biases.

The phenomenon of Confirmation Bias is the psychological mechanism whereby a person only tends to notice stuff that supports what that person already believes, and tends to overlook evidence that contradicts what he or she believes. It’s a mindset all scientists must learn to overcome; an obstacle to objective evaluation folks who believe in things like Astrology, UFOs, and Bigfoot apparently cannot overcome.

Numerous neocons are enslaved by this mental mechanism. In fact, for a long time, the more I studied the right wing mouthpieces, the more I became convinced being incapable of seeing around one’s own biases tends to make a person conservative.

(There are just as many ascientific nut jobs on the left who've proved this idea wrong.)

One of the first targets of my “satire” was Bernard Goldberg’s book “Bias.” That rag was one of the most obvious cases of Confirmation Bias I’ve ever seen (yes, I bought and read the whole thing without barfing once). Goldberg’s "Bias" may as well have been called “Stuff I Remember Noticing.” In my spoof I presented a Shepard Smith review of the book with excerpts. (I recently resurrected the “satirical” piece here.)

As I mentioned above, unfortunately there are those on the left just as enslaved to their cognitive biases. Wackos like the WTC conspiracy theorists. The nut jobs who believe in astral projection. And many of Hillary Clinton’s supporters (though if the tables were turned - i.e., if Obama were on the brink of losing the nomination - many his supporters would be just as incapable of rational thought).

Regardless who our nominee is this fall, if that person loses to McCain, supporters of the alternative Democratic choice . . . those who cannot overcome their own cognitive biases . . . will scream, “See? We told you so! We nominated the wrong candidate!”

But that's not our big obstacle at this moment. Our primary focus at this time is to keep these cognitive-bias-saddled Hillary supporters from destroying our opportunity before we win. We don't need to pull a GOP-esque self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sean Insanity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Orally and the rest of the right wing ascientific bunch continuously point to a handful of media figures as "liberal." Amazingly, many Clinton and Obama supporters point to these same, exact people as "pro-GOP" or "media whores." If you're not sure who on the left are incapable of thinking rationally --of seeing around their own cognitive biases-- a good starting point is these people. Coppage, for example, (the Bartcop guy) has let many of us down, revealing his own inability to see around his confirmation biases. Showing us his IQ really is just south of the Forrest Gump range.

If the GOP somehow wins this fall, convincing Clinton supporters their candidate would’ve been equally vulnerable to the Swift Boating job by Faux News et al will be like trying to convince Bible thumpers to take a rational view of evolutionary theory.

But that scenario will only become a reality if we let the ascientific, irrational sorts prevail. There are numerous, logical Clinton supporters out there. Let's hope they keep a lid on the idiotic fringes who cannot overcome their cognitive biases.

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