Science Says: Scientific Curiosity is Corrosive to Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias: the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.
Now read the title of this post again very carefully and ask yourself if it – itself – is not a form of confirmation bias.

If that question hurt your brain, then you can see that this skepticism thing can go too far.

But there is a sweet spot. The speaker glosses over this sweet spot in his lecture. But it’s there.

Can you figure out the sweet spot in skepticism?

Have you decided on a sweet spot for your own skepticism after Scientology?

9 thoughts on “Science Says: Scientific Curiosity is Corrosive to Confirmation Bias”

  1. at around 8:06 this was great –

    “Skepticism…has a deserved reputation as being a sort of stocking horse. A front for people who’ve already made up their mind and are just interested in harassing their opposition with additional demands for evidence.It’s not uncommon for someone to (air quotes) “just ask questions” without really caring what the answers are.”

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  2. “Have you decided on a sweet spot for your own skepticism after Scientology?”

    I can’t really answer the question, as put. The tense is wrong as relates to me personally, because I wasn’t not skeptical until “after” scientology, I was skeptical both before, during, and after. But, I can see how someone else might need to begin that “after” scientology, and I also see how probably a number of people went way overboard in some of the ways he’s describing here.

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    • Yes, this is what I call pseudo-skepticism. They are only skeptical of your idea, and never their own.

      True skeptics are skeptical of your ideas, and their own ideas, as well.

      Reply
      • Ah. Like Chris Shelton. I would tentatively call him a pseudo-skeptic. He apparently wants to be a “real” one but that doesn’t work out too well with the continuity of narrative that he is clearly influenced to stick to. Probably one of the most blatant examples of that, to me, is his video about conspiracy theories/recruiting methods in scientology. He uses a crappy premise to jump to another crappy premise ABOUT… what? Watch the video and see.

        Reply

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