ECTO Reaction: How Confirmation Bias Leads to Gridlock and Weak Arguments

Bias is a problem in everyday life. Everyone is subject to bias. We have an unconscious bias towards politics, people, religion, and many other controversial subjects. Bias stems from how we were raised and the experiences we have gone through. However, bias has become a problem due to the ever changing internet. 

Lucy Rimmel discusses in her ECTO presentation the problem of confirmation bias. Conformation bias is the idea that we will search for something that proves our bias, rather than the real answer. For example, someone may tell me Climate Change is not a real thing. I might disagree and return with several articles claiming that it is not a real thing. Did I do my research? Answer is no. I just found information that supported my bias without really looking at both sides of the argument. 

As time has gone on people will turn to the internet for information. Google and other search engines have found ways to engineer everyones individual searches to be unique to what they want to see. So if you look up Climate Change it might give you information that is bias to your side of the argument. This creates a problem because it fuels bias arguments. Especially ones that may not be factual. 

Confirmation bias is affecting the younger generation even more. The more the younger generation relies heavily on the internet versus newspapers and books the more confirmation bias there is. Younger people are more likely to put their information out in the online world. Therefore, shaping their search engine history and data even more. The more people are handed information that they want to see and already believe the more bias they are towards a certain way. 

Another big problem with confirmation bias is the fact that it creates gridlock. If people have all different biases towards something they can never hear or comprehend the other sides of the argument. In old ages people could read a newspaper and understand the whole arguments from different perspectives. Todays journalism has become so one-sided that when people only read and hear what they want to hear they will not listen to anyone else. 

Confirmation bias has already created a big problem in todays society and it is only getting worse as the Internet evolves. The more people who look towards the Internet for news the more people who suffer from confirmation bias.