Confirmation bias. Do you have it?

Confirmation bias... You have it for sure but...



What is Confirmation bias? 


Does knowledge help us to get rid of confirmation bias like what we see here in this post in Can you hear any audible difference if they are measured as audibly transparent? | Audio Science Review (ASR) Forum?

i.e.
"Bias is about belief. Knowlege is understanding of reality."

No! Our knowledge is exactly the root cause of the confirmation bias. 

We know something first and then it would cause us to have the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall informattion in a way that confirms or suupport our understanding, i.e. "knowledge". That's exactly the defintion of confirmation bias as stated above.

o.k. You don't believe you have any confirmation bias because you know something better? Your knowledge would help you to avoid confirmation bias?

Let's do a simple experiment:

Have a look of the following picture:



What do you see in the middle column?

Answer A: 4 different boxes of gradient of greyscale? or
Answer B: 4 different boxes of static grey color?

I am not sure if all people would pick A (but I did).

How many of you would pick B honestly based on your experience / feeling without knowing the answer first? I don't know.

Yes, the answer is B.

Your answer is B? Great! Congratulations, you just demonstrated that you HAVE confirmation bias.

Let's look at the defintion of confirmation bias again. It is your bias that affect your answer.

You SEE the difference in "reality" (based on your feeling / experience)

but your logical mind tell you that it SHOULD BE the same (because you know the answer is B).....

Sorry to tell you, the more knowledge you have, the easier you would fall in the confirmation bias trap.

Only new born baby would have no confirmation bias unless you think he got his prior beliefs or values from his "before life"

If a new born baby could talk, what do you think he would pick? Answer A or B?

My try for his answer is A as I believe the baby would be a purist subject that can give us a the answer without any confirmation bias.

i.e..Without confirmation bias, we would pick A.


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