Bias Confirmation Quotes

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.

I worry that, as a country, we’re too slow to armor ourselves against ma­nipu­la­tion — and too quick to believe anything that confirms our biases or stokes our resentments. Deepfakes are designed to sap our belief in our institutions and in one another, ultimately bleeding the morale that secures the nation.

When you write a book, and you argue a problem is complicated and multidimensional, it's very easy to read a slice of that book and say, 'Well, this is the part that either confirms or really challenges my biases, so that's what I'm going to say the entire book is about.'

Being deeply knowledgeable on one subject narrows one's focus and increases confidence, but it also blurs dissenting views until they are no longer visible, thereby transforming data collection into bias confirmation and morphing self-deception into self-assurance.

The biggest problem is that Facebook and Google are these giant feedback loops that give people what they want to hear. And when you use them in a world where your biases are being constantly confirmed, you become susceptible to fake news, propaganda, demagoguery.

The mind's job is to validate what it thinks.

The First Law of Journalism: to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.

If something happens that reinforces your stereotype, it’s a big deal.