{"id":7344,"date":"2010-01-29T23:51:56","date_gmt":"2010-01-29T23:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wilktone.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2023-03-26T09:55:33","modified_gmt":"2023-03-26T13:55:33","slug":"confirmation-bias-and-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=7344","title":{"rendered":"Confirmation Bias and the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogger.com\/profile\/05020069129381463375\">Julia Glef<\/a> on the blog <a href=\"http:\/\/rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com\/\">Rationally Speaking<\/a> has written an interesting essay on confirmation bias and how a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/\">Google<\/a> search can play right into our predispositions and preconceptions.&nbsp; She asks a very interesting question: <a href=\"http:\/\/rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com\/2010\/01\/is-google-making-us-less-rational.html\">is google making us less rational<\/a>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Google may be making us all more knowledgable, but could it also be making us less rational? I&#8217;ve got a suspicion that online search engines are making us especially susceptible to at least one particular blunder: <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Confirmation_bias\">confirmation bias<\/a>, the phenomenon by which you&#8217;re more likely to seek out, notice, and remember evidence that supports what you already believe.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She goes on to describe P.C. Wason&#8217;s paper describing <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Confirmation_bias\">confirmation bias<\/a> and how a typical Google search can almost perfectly recreate conditions similar to Wason&#8217;s experiment.&nbsp; We forget that Google&#8217;s goal is to help us find what we want, not exactly what we need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When conducting research, scientists are aware of the normal tendencies for humans to make judgements based on personal biases without even realizing such bias exists.&nbsp; In order to combat this, rather then attempting to prove a hypothesis, scientists instead subject their hypothesis to tests in an attempt to falsify them.&nbsp; When looking for information online, it&#8217;s necessary to do a bit of this too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am personally very excited about the possibilities the internet provides for the exchange of information and development of ideas.&nbsp; Search engines are extremely powerful tools for finding information, but we sometimes forget their limitations.&nbsp; There&#8217;s an old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer every problem begins to look like a nail.&nbsp; Remember to look through your &#8220;tool box&#8221; and try some other ways to find the information you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Julia Glef on the blog Rationally Speaking has written an interesting essay on confirmation bias and how a Google search can play right into our predispositions and preconceptions.&nbsp; She asks a very interesting question: is google making us less rational? &#8220;Google may be making us all more knowledgable, but could it also be making us &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/?p=7344\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Confirmation Bias and the Internet<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15350306,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1383,1386],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pedagogy","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peFHCc-1Us","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15350306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7494,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7344\/revisions\/7494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilktone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}