Quotes About Bias

Where the world is inclined to favour, replied I, it is apt to over-rate, as much as it will under-rate where it disfavours.

It was, in the words of the original indictment, the citizens' "right to have the Commonwealth's business and its affairs conducted honestly, impartially, free from corruption, bias, dishonesty, deceit, official misconduct, and fraud.

Yes, they're a little biased there," I agree. Mike smiles at this understatement, knowing as I do that saying they're a little biased in Mudd's favor at the Mudd-family-run Mudd home in Maryland is like saying cheese steaks are kind of associated with Philadelphia.

it does get on my nerves how easy it is for tall people to make a good first impression.

am accustomed to being downgraded by businesspeople, lawyers, engineers, Washington hotshots, various scientists. Even their secretaries, who get their notions of what matters from television, hide their smiles behind their hands and give one another the high sign when I turn up—some incomprehensible goofball.

It is so easy for outsiders to say that there are two sides to the question. What a terrible expression! I am beginning to detest

Clinical psychologists have proven that ordinary people will alter their memories of the past to make them fit their perceptions. It is the way all normal brains function under ordinary circumstances.

Inaccurate worldviews are the only kind there is.

Confirmation bias isn't an occasional bug in our human operating system. It is the operating system. We are designed by evolution to see new information as supporting our existing opinions, so long as it doesn't stop us from procreating. Evolution doesn't care if you understand your reality. It only cares that you reproduce.

Confirmation bias looks exactly like knowledge gained from doing your own research.

If you don't understand confirmation bias, you might think new information can change people's opinions. As a trained persuader, I know that isn't the case, at least when emotions are involved. People don't change opinions about emotional topics just because some information proved their opinion to be nonsense. Humans aren't wired that way.

inaccurate worldviews are the only kind there is. Does

In this sort of situation, all it takes is one idiot to suggest witchcraft as the problem, and from that point on, confirmation bias does the rest. Once your brain filter is set to look for witches, all evidence fits into the "witch" frame.

Realistically, most people have poor filters for sorting truth from fiction, and there's no objective way to know if you're particularly good at it or not. Consider the people who routinely disagree with you. See how confident they look while being dead wrong? That's exactly how you look to them.

Consider the people who routinely disagree with you. See how confident they look while being dead wrong? That's exactly how you look to them. When

the accuracy of our opinions is deeply influenced by our ability to imagine alternate explanations for events.

Here's an example of why the idea that humans are rational is pure nonsense. One of my Twitter followers copied President Trump's inauguration speech and showed it to a "leftist friend," telling him it was President Obama's speech. His friend loved it.

The main theme of this book is that humans are not rational. We bounce from one illusion to another, all the while thinking we are seeing something we call reality. The truth is that facts and reason don't have much influence on our decisions, except for trivial things, such as putting gas in your car when you are running low. On all the important stuff, we are emotional creatures who make decisions first and rationalize them after the fact.

As a trained persuader, I prefer not to join any kind of tribe. Doing so triggers an automatic bias toward tribe opinion and blinds one to better thinking. It also marks you as an enemy to competing tribes.

When you identify as part of a group, your opinions tend to be biased toward the group consensus.

Confirmation bias isn't an occasional bug in our human operating system. It is the operating system.

Stop to consider why your judgement might be wrong.

The two most trusted medical journals in the United States had published incorrect, manufacturer-biased reports about major drugs. The FDA knew that both articles had misrepresented the data but did not correct the misleading information.

One tell-tale sign of a Wingnut: they always confuse partisanship with patriotism.