Alex Edmonds

You might think so, and many of your listeners might think, why do these biases apply to me?

I'm a sensible, rational person.

Unfortunately, scientific evidence finds it's the opposite, that more knowledgeable and more sophisticated people are more susceptible to these biases.

Certainly.

So there's two biases that cause us to make mistakes when we're interpreting information, data and evidence.

So one of them is confirmation bias.

So this is the idea that we have a pre-existing view.

And if there's evidence that supports that view, we will latch onto it.

We will accept it uncritically, even if the evidence is flimsy.

And then in contrast, if there is some evidence that contradicts our view, we will close our ears to it.

We might not even read it or we might read it, but with the view to try to tear it apart.

So this means we will only latch onto things that we like and dismiss things that we don't like.

Now confirmation bias, that does apply to questions where we have a pre-existing view.

So that might be climate change or immigration or gun control.

But what about the set of issues for which there is no pre-existing view?

That's where the second bias comes in, which is called black and white thinking.

So this is the idea that we view something as being always good or always bad.

There is no nuance.

So let's give an example.

So in the sphere of diet,