On election night, as the results looked to be in Trump’s favor, the baseless conspiracy theories about fraud began tapering off.

  • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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    15 days ago

    That’s how this works. You take reality and then make it mean what you want it to mean.

    What’s “fun” is when you realize an awful lot of people do this with an awful lot of topics all the fucking time. Probably including yourself.

    • BluesF@lemmy.world
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      14 days ago

      I would say everyone does it. Confirmation bias isn’t something you can completely avoid. You can try to recognise it in yourself, but most of the time it’s a lot more subtle. As simple as reading something you agree with and not going to check the source. We ALL do that.

    • Gloomy@mander.xyz
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      14 days ago

      Absolutely. I try to counter it by beeing aware and checking M opinions against facts where possible. But I am sure there are many topics where I don’t fully succeed or I haven’t caught myself doing it yet.

    • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      It’s an extremely common aspect of human psychology to make up a story to explain the results of an event or reasoning for your actions after the fact.

      It’s even been demonstrated in specific cases in studies of people who’ve received brain hemisphere bifurcation to prevent grand mal seizures.

      The side of the brain responsible for speech is not shown information or things the individual must complete, then when asked why they performed such an action, the speech responsible side of the brain will spontaneously make up a resonable sounding story to explain it.

      I highly recommend checking it out. It’s an absolutely fascinating look into human psychology

      I’m sure I do this same thing all the time subconsiously, and I’ve certainly noticed it in others.

        • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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          14 days ago

          To be fair, this research comes from a limited number of patients and is from the 1950s and 60s, a time not exactly known for its accurate assumptions in the field of neuroscience, lol.

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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            12 days ago

            Yeah, much like frontal lobotomy, severing the corpus collosum (sp?) was a popular treatment for a variety of mental issues for a time. But much like doing really elaborate twin studies on nature vs nurture it’s really hard to do a lot in that area without violating ethical rules today.