The Devil's Advocate in Your Head: Why We Don't See Facts We Don't Like

We continue our exploration of mental traps that complicate our lives. We have already looked at the sunk cost fallacy, learned about game theory and survivorship bias, and today we will talk about one of the most insidious traps of our mind: confirmation bias.

Imagine this situation. You are convinced that your new colleague, Igor, can't stand you. In the morning, he gave you a dry greeting; during a meeting, he interrupted your thought; and when you poured yourself some coffee, he didn't even look your way. Meanwhile, you completely forgot that yesterday Igor held the elevator door for you, and last week he praised your report. Why? Because your brain neatly erased those memories. They didn't fit your theory. This is exactly how confirmation bias works.

What is this trap?

Confirmation bias is a person's tendency to seek out, notice, and remember only the information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs. Anything that contradicts them, we either ignore, declare an "exception to the rule," or consider to be the machinations of our enemies.

Warren Buffett described this trait perfectly: "What human beings are best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact."

Our brain does not work like an impartial scientist gathering facts to draw a conclusion. It works like a cunning lawyer: the verdict is already decided in advance, and all that's left is to find the evidence to convince the jury that you are right.

Why does our brain do this?

Nature didn't design us to seek absolute truth. It designed us to survive. And confirmation bias has two powerful biological reasons behind it:

• Energy conservation. Thinking is a highly energy-consuming process (the brain consumes up to 20% of the body's total calories). Changing your point of view, destroying old neural connections, and building new ones is agonizingly hard work. It is much easier (and "cheaper") to brush off an inconvenient fact.
• Ego protection. Our beliefs often merge with our identity. To admit that you believed in nonsense for 10 years, voted for the wrong politician, or invested money in a pyramid scheme is to admit that you are a fool. MRI brain scans show that when a person is presented with facts that destroy their worldview, the same areas of the brain that are responsible for physical pain light up. The brain protects your self-esteem as fiercely as the body protects itself from a burn.

How the bias controls your life

This trap lies in wait for us everywhere, and the smarter we are, the more ingeniously the brain twists facts to fit the theory. Let's look at a few typical real-life examples.

Medical Hypochondria Your stomach hurts. You open Google. If you are already secretly terrified that it's cancer, you will skip 50 links about gastritis, stress, and indigestion. Your eyes will lock onto that single article that says: "Stomach pain is the first sign of a rare tumor." Your brain will joyfully shout: "I knew it!", and you will panic.

Echo Chambers in Social Media The algorithms of YouTube, TikTok, and other social networks are confirmation bias elevated to an absolute. If you watch a couple of videos about the Earth being flat or vaccines microchipping people, the algorithm will start feeding you only those kinds of videos. A month later, you will be sincerely convinced: "The whole world knows the truth; look at how much proof is in my feed!" You simply won't see the debunking videos—the algorithm will carefully hide them so as not to upset you. I talked more about filter bubbles in the article "How Neural Networks Are Changing Our World and How to Adapt to New Challenges."

Toxic Jealousy If a husband has convinced himself that his wife is cheating on him, he will see evidence of his beliefs in everything. She stayed late at work? Obviously! She was meeting her lover! She came home on time and cooked dinner—she feels guilty and is trying to make up for it. Put a password on her phone—aha, hiding messages! Left the phone on the table without a password? She specifically deleted everything, the cunning bitch. Proving otherwise is impossible: the initial mindset distorts any facts.

How to get out of this trap?

It's impossible to defeat this psychological quirk 100%—it is built into our operating system. But you can learn to track it and minimize the damage. Here are 3 main antidotes:

• Antidote #1: Look for refutations, not confirmations. When you Google information, don't type: "Why is Diet X good for you?" (you'll find a million confirmations). Type: "Why is Diet X dangerous and ineffective?". Study the best arguments of your opponents.
• Antidote #2: The "Steel Man" rule. In an argument, we love to use the "Straw Man" fallacy—we take our opponent's weakest, silliest argument and easily demolish it. Try doing the opposite: articulate your opponent's position so well and so strongly that they themselves would say, "Yes, that is exactly what I meant!" Only after understanding the strongest aspect of someone else's opinion do you have the right to disagree with it.
• Antidote #3: Separate yourself from your ideas. Make this thought a rule: "My ideas are not me. They are just hypotheses." You don't get offended if you stop liking an old jacket, do you? You must part with your beliefs just as easily if the facts have changed.

The ultimate sanity test

Ask yourself right now: "What evidence would have to appear for me to change my mind on this issue?" If your answer is, "None, I am 100% right," congratulations. The trap of confirmation bias has snapped shut tightly. You are no longer thinking; you are simply believing. If you want to avoid this, learn to think not in absolutes, but in probabilities.