Kaj_Sotala comments on Fun and Games with Cognitive Biases - Less Wrong

62 Post author: Cosmos 18 February 2011 08:38PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (28)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: patrissimo 03 March 2011 08:03:47AM 7 points [-]

Feed confirmatory evidence to others, give them tests to run which you know beforehand are confirmatory

This is not a way to take advantage of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias means that others look for confirming evidence for their true theories, and ignore disconfirming evidence. This process is not much affected by you adding extra confirmatory evidence - they can find plenty on their own. Instead, it is a way to fool rational people - for example, Bayesians who update based on evidence will update wrong if fed biased evidence. Which doesn't really fit here.

The way to actually use confirmation bias to convince people of things is to present beliefs you want to transmit to them as evidence for things they already believe. Then confirmation bias will lead them to believe this new evidence without question, because they wish to believe it to confirm their existing beliefs.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 21 March 2012 03:32:13PM 1 point [-]

Another way to take advantage of confirmation bias is exemplified by horoscopes: offering people predictions that are sufficiently vague that no matter what happens, people can find a way to interpret the prediction as having come true.

Also, someone who wanted to be respected by many people could write semi-nuanced opinion texts that could be plausibly interpreted to favor either side in a debate. In the "best" case, supporters of both sides will read the text and like you for being on their side.