Thoughts on "Confirmation Bias"

[AncientwisdomParticipant 6089]

Many men here are philosophical and abstract thinkers, so I wanted to hear thoughts on the following concept:

‘Confirmation Bias’, to put it in my own words, would be to:

Seek out, identify, and compartmentalize pre-conceived notions, to confirm and validate one’s own perception, agenda/and/or individual experiences.

To what extent do you think confirmation-bias plays a role in your thought process and subsequent behavior?

Have you considered it?

I’m asking this first and foremost as it applies to being red pilled and MGTOW, but also as in a general concept:

The more I seek out information which I’m interested in, it establishes a confirmation bias (irrespective of the information I’m seeking).

I have a strong tendency to question the status-quo, as I’m sure anyone who is a member of this forum does as well. This thread is a reflection of that –

Introspection, another form of questioning.

If in another life I was:

Blue pilled, married, a cuck, or some other malformed-man, I’m sure I would question the basis of THAT experience; but I’m not. I’m here and questioning where I’m at in this present moment, even though the position I’ve come to makes logical sense.

So, have any of you considered “confirmation bias” in your own lives/researching your beliefs?

If so, what are your thoughts on it?

I hate the idea that (possibly) my own ideas are being substantiated/validated by the very same filter which is researching them.

Has anyone else considered this? This isn’t exclusive to MGTOW, TRP, or anything like that; just preconceived notions in general.

Resident cynic.

[Anonymous 12]

I question everything. I even question things I believe in like MGTOW for example. I do this to understand better. I rarely find something that I believe in 100% there is always something that makes me think “I will reject this element, replace it with that” a little like when you are cooking. You might replace one ingredient with one you like better. I mix and match at times.

I use a lot of introspection something which I think is missing in modern society and business. To question oneself, to look at what has gone right, what has gone wrong and work out why. People like to focus on the “Positive” and ignore the negative far too often. Sometimes Negatives can be Positives as well. Especially if you examine them and try and understand or even realize that the negative is what got you to a more positive place in life.

When I was younger I was somewhat interested in the whole Leftie thing, it didn’t take me long to work out that it went against not just my core beliefs but me as an individual.

I have spoken to people online and in person who follow a doctrine blindly (usually Left) and they scare me as I can see that they aren’t questioning anything at all. They are following a preset destination and what they say they believe in they are actually against.

I’m not all that “educated” in formal terms so I hope I have answered your question a little anyway from my own personal perspective.

[Anonymous 3]

I have been blinded by my beliefs many times.

I have been blinded by my desires many times.

I have been blinded by my wishful thinking many times.

When you are blind like this you refuse to see what is in front of you.

I wish I could say I have learned my lesson.

But I have to be alert to the possibility that I might be doing it again.

[Anonymous 0]

Everyone has “confirmation bias”, “cognitive dissonance”, and “cognitive distortions”. We all have it more or less than others. It is an inherent aspect of human nature, and it can be amplified in “echo chamber” forums like this.

We can all be ideologues of some sort. For example, I bought into religious bulls~~~ for decades because of confirmation bias.

The way out of corruptible human thinking is to: 1. question everything (especially including latent subconscious presumptions); and 2. listen and genuinely understand point’s of view differing from your own. We tend to fail miserably at self-questioning, listening to and understanding others. MGTOW exists precisely because society has failed to listen and understand the valid grievances and unjust circumstances and grievous suffering of males.

Frankly, if society doesn’t care about my unjust suffering of divorce rape and parental alienation, I don’t care about its so-called “rape culture”, “gender wage gap”, or any other issue, particularly which I personally did not cause. If they are not my ally, I’m not theirs. They can fight their own battles and wars and issues. I will just walk away. I’ll go my own way. The feminists and tradcucks can continue to delude themselves in their echo chambers until reality catches up and smacks them out of their ideological delusions.

[Anonymous 42]

The confirmation bias has moved me to indifference, we’re not going to resolve anything!

F~~~ IT ALL!

[Branched offParticipant 10980]

Confirmation Bias is a really important concept in today’s politics. Thanks for raising this. Now that so many of us have gone into echo chambers (like this website for one) we are more vulnerable to it that ever. It would be good to talk openly about the danger of this and what we can do to avid it.

On one hand it does trouble me that talking on this site is not going to help me to be challenging my world view. I believe that I am more right than wrong in my world view but the world is constantly changing and we need to be constantly challenging and fine tuning our models of the world. It is our responsibility as men not to be sheep. I would recommend all men on here to read up on confirmation bias and be aware of it. The other sister risk is judging by representativeness -this is a particular danger to us when we say AWALT -yeah maybe all women can be like that but is this one going to be today if say I try to soothe her crying child? Its a risk but how big is the risk for the interaction I am planning? One needs to judge well in order to have good day to day interactions with the world. Well over half of the world is either a litard or a woman, nearly half is both. One wants to function successfully in the world.

On the other hand none of us (except maybe the incels) got here by being slaves to confirmation bias. We had a world view that we were raised with. It was a painful business but we were forced to challenge it and through challenging it we arrived here. I am quite confident that the Blue Pill world suffers from more confirmation bias than we do -because they have never challenged their model of the world. I do however see that we are an echo chamber and we do need to be aware of it.

At least one strength we have is that we are a fairly diverse group who have some different view points and different life stories. I think it is always important to try to understand what someone else’s narrative is (even when they are clearly wrong). I think this is the key to risk management in interactions with women and libtards -what is motivating this individual? how do they see the world? what are their confirmation biases? to what extent do they offer more opportunity than threat to me or vice versa? One has to listen to their narrative to see this.

A woman is like fire -fun to play with, can warm you through and cook your food, needs constant feeding, can burn you and consume all you own

[Puffin StuffParticipant 24979]

Most of the world thinks we are a very specific group and that we mainly function by confirmation bias.

They say we are bitter divorced men preaching to other divorced and otherwise men injured by females. Then there are younger men perhaps seeking fatherly advice and already rejected by females.

Hence out need to attack females and say that we’re going to take out toys and go home.

I spoke about this with my psychologist who is my age, around 55. I let him read the site.

In his opinion, this is like a group therapy place where men can come to share their dreams, desires, frustrations, problems, social movements both good and bad, politics, relationship issues.

So, since we receive “fake news” all day long I find MGTOW.com a place of sanity and a harbor from the misandric society we increasingly live in.

#icethemout; Remember Thomas Ball. He died for your children.

[DocParticipant]

Confirmation bias affects our perceptions of everything.
It operates at both the conscious and unconscious levels.

It can be manipulated by our choices. So it can increase or decrease based on decisions we make. It can also be influenced by hindsight bias and probability bias/blindness.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape, finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. Marcus Aurelius

[Branched offParticipant 10980]

Doc wrote:

Confirmation bias affects our perceptions of everything.
It operates at both the conscious and unconscious levels.

It can be manipulated by our choices. So it can increase or decrease based on decisions we make. It can also be influenced by hindsight bias and probability bias/blindness.

Thanks Doc,

When you say it can be influenced by our choices, I am thinking that the biggest thing we can do is to try to stop automatically seeking confirming evidence for all reactionary thoughts (which is a very easy thing to do) and start to make a habit from time to time of trying to actively find the evidence to contradict a thought. When we can’t find sound evidence, we are presumably a little more secure in our bias being a fair representation of our world?

I guess that means it is important on these fora not to automatically jump on a guy when he says he is not sure about something and wants to discuss it, at least if he is a proven bonafide guy, as opposed to a new comer with no track record of being a MGTOW or making MGTOW statements. It can do us all good to challenge our world view form time to time. That is how we got here.

A woman is like fire -fun to play with, can warm you through and cook your food, needs constant feeding, can burn you and consume all you own

[DocParticipant]

A simple example of how it can be influenced is this

You are thinking of buying a new car and you like the look of a Chevy over a Ford. So you seek info that confirms your increasing belief that Chevy is better than Ford.

So you go buy the Chevy. The estimate of the quality of Chevy will increase. So your confirmation bias has increased based on your choices. This is so powerful that studies show even if the Chevy breaks down you are still likely to see it as better than the choice you didn’t take – that being Ford.

Naturally there is a direct comparison in turning MGTOW too.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape, finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. Marcus Aurelius

[DarkRyuParticipant 2354]

Confirmation Bias – In other words, a religious person. Every fact they hear, and everything they see gets examined next to their beliefs and rationalized away. I swear, aliens could take over the world tomorrow, and publicly admit that they made up all of our religions and religious nuts would claim that they’re not aliens but “fallen angels” or some other s~~~. Hence, why no aliens bother to make contact with us. They probably have many times over the centuries, only to find that we’re actually getting WORSE as a species rather than better.

[Anonymous 12]

DarkRyu wrote:

Confirmation Bias – In other words, a religious person. Every fact they hear, and everything they see gets examined next to their beliefs and rationalized away. I swear, aliens could take over the world tomorrow, and publicly admit that they made up all of our religions and religious nuts would claim that they’re not aliens but “fallen angels” or some other s~~~. Hence, why no aliens bother to make contact with us. They probably have many times over the centuries, only to find that we’re actually getting WORSE as a species rather than better.

I feel that way about Lefties. Terror attacks occur and Lefties will outright deny it or deny that Multiculturalism is a failure. They do mental gymnastics to make sense of everything in a way that suits them.

[Eric LauderParticipant 12043]

Anonymous wrote:

MGTOW exists precisely because society has failed to listen and understand the valid grievances and unjust circumstances and grievous suffering of males.

Frankly, if society doesn’t care about my unjust suffering of divorce rape and parental alienation, I don’t care about its so-called “rape culture”, “gender wage gap”, or any other issue, particularly which I personally did not cause. If they are not my ally, I’m not theirs. They can fight their own battles and wars and issues. I will just walk away. I’ll go my own way. The feminists and tradcucks can continue to delude themselves in their echo chambers until reality catches up and smacks them out of their ideological delusions.

This.

SUPREME LEADER KIM JONG-UN'S FASHION STYLIST - if you want a new look or if you're a very beautiful trans you can call me, phone number +85079255312 / mobile 01921421211. The worth of a man isn't the usefulness that women get from him. Avoiding living with a woman, a man isn't rejecting a lot of sex: he's rejecting sexual starvation. MGTOW IS TACKLING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN COMPLIANCE WITH CONVENTION OF ISTANBUL: http://www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/rms/090000168008482e --- Article 4, Section 4 "Special measures that are necessary to prevent and protect women from gender-based violence shall not be considered discrimination under the terms of this Convention". WHAT I LEARNT FROM A GENDER STUDIES CLASS IN LUND, SWEDEN: every time feminists accuses men of doing something, odds are likely either them or persons associated with them are doing the exact same thing but a lot worse. WHO I'M RIGHT NOW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1okpAj7Fhw Basically my former life have been a conflict between this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz_RQVkvke4 and this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFIMeyTK-sU That's, more or less, all about me.

[SkeptiskParticipant 3679]

Doc wrote:

A simple example of how it can be influenced is this

You are thinking of buying a new car and you like the look of a Chevy over a Ford. So you seek info that confirms your increasing belief that Chevy is better than Ford.

So you go buy the Chevy. The estimate of the quality of Chevy will increase. So your confirmation bias has increased based on your choices. This is so powerful that studies show even if the Chevy breaks down you are still likely to see it as better than the choice you didn’t take – that being Ford.

Naturally there is a direct comparison in turning MGTOW too.

Actually, I think we who have been on both sides of the fence (when it comes to seeing the world through the blue-pill/red-pill lens), we have a lot less confirmation bias than the majority out there. Ask yourself this, have you ever observed a SJW question things? Or the much more likely, to blindly follow a preset condition?

As for myself, to question myself was the very first thing I did, “Am I crazy? Or are the world being slightly unhinged?”. It’s good to question oneself, to see that you’re not “infected” by something detrimental. You have absolutely nothing to loose to be objective towards yourself. It’s only when the rubber meet the asphalt the lies comes out to “save face”.

"Expecting to find a decent woman on a dating site is like dumpster diving and expecting to come out with a gourmet meal." Won'tGetFooledAgain

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