Quotes About Confirmation

You take past instances that corroborate your theories and you treat them as evidence.

It is also naïve empiricism to provide, in support of some argument, series of eloquent confirmatory quotes by dead authorities. By searching, you can always find someone who made a well-sounding statement that confirms your point of view—and, on every topic, it is possible to find another dead thinker who said the exact opposite. Almost all of my non–Yogi Berra quotes are from people I disagree with.

Popper introduced the mechanism of conjectures and refutations, which works as follows: you formulate a (bold) conjecture and you start looking for the observation that would prove you wrong. This is the alternative to our search for confirmatory instances. If you think the task is easy, you will be disappointed—few humans have a natural ability to do this. I confess that I am not one of them; it does not come naturally to me.fn2

Cherry-picking has optionality: the one telling the story (and publishing it) has the advantage of being able to show the confirmatory examples and completely ignore the rest

Pero hay otros problemas que surgen de nuestra ceguera ante el Cisne Negro: a) Nos centramos en segmentos preseleccionados de lo visto, y a partir de ahí generalizamos en lo no visto: el error de la confirmación.

people look for books that support their mental program.

Faced with information that contradicts what they believe, people tend to respond in one of two ways. Some ignore the new knowledge and hold to their former beliefs. Others accept the validity of the new information, factor it into their perception of reality, and put it to use.

That is how one of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the twentieth century unfolded. A key theory explaining how the universe works was confirmed thanks to amateurs in New Zealand and Australia, a former amateur trying to turn professional in Chile, and professional physicists in the United States and Japan. When a scientific paper finally announced the discovery to the world, all of them shared authorship.

A missile attack is federal. A missile attack is not a local responsibility. Confirmation and notification of something like a missile attack should reside with the agency that knows first and knows for sure: in other words, the people who know should be the people who tell us.

Some of the most impressive judicial nominees are grossly mistreated.

You can always find an expert to confirm your belief, no matter how ridiculous.

She knew it was there, would always be there, but she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was life and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside herself.

Ruth looked for the water mark several times during the day. She knew it was there, would always be there, but she needed to confirm its presence. Like the keeper of the lighthouse and the prisoner, she regarded it as a mooring, a checkpoint, some stable visual object that assured her that the world was still there; that this was life and not a dream. That she was alive somewhere, inside, which she acknowledged to be true only because a thing she knew intimately was out there, outside herself.

and, holy Mary Mother of Christ, he became as gentle as a lamb. The Pope is coming next week to give him first communion and confirmation.' The guru spoke next. He was in a wheelchair with an IV drip and both legs in casts.

So: as of 2011, after many decades of being the official and much-funded hypothesis, the Aryan Invasion Theory has still not been confirmed by even a single piece of archaeological evidence.

Abstract thought can anticipate by centuries hypotheses that find a use—or confirmation—in scientific inquiry.

external perception is an internal dream which proves to be in harmony with external things; and instead of calling 'hallucination' a false perception, we must call external perception 'a confirmed hallucination.

even reading information that goes against your point of view can make you all the more convinced you are right.

People who receive disconfirming or otherwise unwelcome information often do not simply resist it; they may come to support their original (wrong) opinion even more strongly—a backfire effect. Once we are invested in a belief and have justified its wisdom, changing our minds is literally hard work. It's much easier to slot that new evidence into an existing framework and do the mental justification to keep it there than it is to change the framework.

The confirmation bias is especially glaring in matters of political observation; we see only the positive attributes of our side and the negative attributes of theirs.

You like me?" I repeat, because, well, I want to be really, really sure that I heard him right. This is not the sort of thing you want to get wrong. He nods and says, "Very much." "You like me very much?" He lets go of my hands and touches my check. "Too much." "Too much?" Trying to keep my voice calm, I say, "No such thing.

You can look it up.

There you go; seems to me you're right!

To acknowledge the receipt of letters is always proper, to remove doubts of their miscarriage.