Dusk Eagle wrote:hyperpape wrote:Dusk Eagle wrote:"The theories are of course occasionally true, but their truth is completely uncorrelated with the believer's certainty. For some reason, sometimes when people think they've uncovered a lie, they raise confirmation bias to an art form."
Yeah, I'm not sure if that really helps. What's the upshot for how we conduct our lives? Obviously, we still need good evidence to believe a theory, and many conspiracy theories simply and utterly fail that test. But say you think you see some evidence for a particular theory. What does that comic tell you?
To be conscious of confirmation bias and to consider all of the evidence presented, not just the evidence that you believe suits your case. This goes for both sides of a debate.
In particular, one thing I've noticed in both in heated internet threads and in real-life debates is that when specific points or arguments are refuted, it's not uncommon that that the person who presented them simply switches to a slightly different argument, remaining exactly as confident in their initial belief and fighting exactly as vigorously as before. Sometimes this happens multiple times, with absolutely no effect on the certainty of anyone involved that "their side" is still right. I've definitely caught myself doing this, and I've found that even once I'm aware of it, it can be sometimes be hard to force myself to stop right away.
If a major piece of evidence you've presented or a major claim you've made has been refuted, and you continue to feel just as confident that you are still correct, it's worth taking some time to consider why. If that piece of evidence or that line of reasoning didn't play an important role in why you believed what you did, then why did you bring it up? If it did play an important role, then why does its refutation have no effect on your certainty? Perhaps it was only one of several independent reasons you had, so your belief still logically stands. But really, if you've just had something you strongly believed shown to be inaccurate, shouldn't that make you at least a little less confident in the other things you've claimed?
And even if nothing you've said has been refuted, it's still worth every so often taking time to reweigh the reasons for your current beliefs, or to decide what evidence would actually suffice to convince you of the opposite. Especially if you also find yourself feeling a strong emotional attachment to your position in a debate, since if your goal is to form accurate beliefs (as opposed to trying to win the debate), it's irrational to remain specially attached what you believe right now merely because it's what you happened to think initially.