Confirmation bias for those who don’t know is, “also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning.”
It is often perceived negatively, as exactly that, an error in reasoning, a failure of logic. In faith and in evangelizing atheism, confirmation bias is frequently mocked as if to say there must be something wrong with those crazy Christian people over there. Conversely however, in the secular world the power of positive thinking is a multi million dollar self-help industry that teaches you the power of the Jedi mind tricks. What’s fascinating about Jedi mind tricks is that they work, they have a spiritual element to them. We do have an uncanny way of becoming what we believe we are.
We are who we say we are. In faith we would call this speaking things into existence. So, for 3 easy payments of 19.95 you can become incredibly successful and ridiculously attractive to the opposite sex. Not really, but with a boost of confidence and a positive attitude, you really can vastly improve your circumstances and go forth and work to confirm your own new-found confirmation biases. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this unless it costs you a lot of money and you’re being scammed. Or, if you’re so fearful of confirmation bias and so proud of your own deductive reasoning skills that it keeps you away from faith and causes you to defensively reject God entirely for fear of being disappointed, deceived, or taken for a ride.
I’m laughing here, but I don’t place much value on so-called deductive reasoning or the alleged human capacity to define “reality.” There used to be a saying, “I’m part of the reality based community,” a saying that cracked me up because generally those who insist so strongly that they possess the real truth, clearly do not. They protest a bit too loudly, something that becomes evident in their desperate attempts to mandate “reality.”
I don’t fear confirmation bias when it comes to faith. I go forth and confirm my own biases frequently, actually the biases to be found in scripture. We’ll call it, confirming God’s biases. So Jesus Christ says, “I am the way and the truth and the life” and He says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” Then He tells us to go forth and make disciples of all nations, sharing His word.
Spread the good news. Confirm Jesus Christ’s biases. Make manifest the glory of God. Be salt and light. When we go out into the world with love it returns to us ten fold, because “we search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses.”
I suppose we could sit back, reject salvation, and glorify in our own ability to avoid any systematic error in our inductive reasoning skills, but I think I much prefer to just fall crazy, madly, insanely in love, and throw all caution to the wind.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Haha. I love your voices in your writing. The cool thing is there is a way for people of all sorts of natural tendencies, every sort of brokenness, and any type of need to come to Christ. Those of us who needed our reasoning and those of us who needed to let go of our own reasoning a bit can all come to Christ. (And there’s probably various instances of both needs in the lives of most of us.) Because God is both the author of logic and all natural laws as well as the father and the epitome of love and compassion. He is evident throughout his own creation and he is evident within us.
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Bias – We used to identify those that were – now we identify those that aren’t.
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fantastic post – just perfect
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Intriguing topic IB. You know it reminds me of a class of applied mathematical problems. Say, for instance, you owned a car lot and you thought an employee was stealing from you but only a few dollars a day. So you set up across the street and you mark down every car for the whole day -time in and time out – and you calculate what the revenue should be.Now there will be rounding or recording errors whereby your numbers will not match the real cash register revenue. In theory, if there are enough cars and the errors are random enough,the + errors and the – errors should cancel each other out. In reality there is inevitably a difference we’ll just call error. If your error is greater than what you suspect your employee is taking, then it would appear that you would be out of luck in catching him. But not so – there is relief! You see, if the error is random then it should vary day by day and over a period of say a week, it should zero out. There is a statistical process called R-squared which basically compares the errors and can tell you if they are random or deliberate (i.e. theft). In other words, it checks to see of the errors repeat or if they fluctuate.If they repeat then it is deliberate.
We used to use R-squared regularly in business to see through the errors of a large data base to the solid info underneath.
The neat thing is that we humans do this automatically in our heads and we use it to check for confirmation bias and to rule out confirmation bias. If a piece of information appears, it is difficult to see if it is a function of desire or if it is really there. Confirmation bias. However if we do the same thing a number of times, or do a number of like things a number of times – and the observed fact appears and disappears – it is confirmation bias. But if it remains through all the actions,then it is real.
Here’s a real example from trucking. I was driving north on I-95 one night and I was always listening for unusual noises that might indicate a mechanical problem. So I had a confirmation bias and I knew it. A truck with a stainless steel trailer passed me in the left lane and when he did I heard a high pitched whine., just for a moment. I could easily have said it was from him,as it obviously only occurred when he passed but I thought “What if it is a reflection of a sound from under my engine?” But i knew that I had a confirmation bias and many things make many noises in an engine. I hollered at the driver to slow for a minute and I accelerated coming up on his inside as I explained to him on the CB what I had heard. As I slide up on his inside, I reached a point where the whine returned. I backed off and it disappeared, I moved up and it came back. This still did not mean it was from me so i pondered for a minute. The only thing that turned fast enough to create a sound with that high a frequency would be the turbo charger(which turns at about 100,000 rpm vs 1500 rpm for the truck engine). So I varied the turbo thrust while beside the other truck and sure enough, the whine went up and down in pitch exactly matching my turbo boost gauge. I thanked the other driver and backed off as he pulled away.
It was early evening and the truck dealer in Bangor was still open, so I dropped in and explained the issue to the foreman. We drove the truck into the bay and I insisted they remove, disassemble and inspect the turbo – about a $150 job. The mechanic tested it before removal and said it was fine. I insisted it was not fine,so they did as I asked. When they pulled the impeller out of the turbo, the heat shield that kept the extreme temperatures from boiling the oil, had a lateral crack in it that was causing the whistling as it turned very fast. It was only a matter of time before the turbo failed. The repair was minimal and they reinstalled the turbo and I carried on.
There is a perfect example of confirmation bias, the acknowledgement of bias and the actions to overcome the bias.
The exact same thing is true of the Holy Spirit in my life. Yes,there is confirmation bias, but when I ask God for input and I get it consistently, reliably and with no other explanation – then it is apparent that confirmation bias is NOT the driving force.
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You tell the best stories, Paul. When it comes to math and statistics, things really do get interesting. Errors are amazing, random error, predictable error, errors with a pattern. Even “bad luck” has a rhyme and a reason to it….except when it doesn’t, except when there is so much “bad luck” going on you know something else is at play here, there are forces that have defied the odds, we have left the realm of math and simply entered the supernatural. 🙂
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