A Simple Strategy for Shaking Confirmation Bias

ritholtz.com

29 points·MaysonL··6 comments

Confirmation bias can be a huge problem but I'm not sure the methods outlined in the article do much to prevent it. For example, the (guest) author indicates he relies on the given blog for a source of unbiased information and then goes on to say that the blog often links back to his own website, to articles that he has found to be his most useful and informative.

He then comes to the conclusion that this demonstrates the quality of the aforementioned blog. Besides being circular reasoning, is this not a source of confirmation bias in and of itself?

I don't know. This seems to be the thrust of his arguments:

"By delegating information curation to multiple independent parties with demonstrated domain knowledge and critical ability, I ensure that what I read is not a mere reflection of what I believe."

Seems pretty reasonable to me.

Do you have any specific critique of "Abnormal Returns" and "The Big Picture," the curators he cites?

Agreed. How does one know that the person curating their source of unbiased information is not themselves biased?

I'm pretty sure that he accepts that they're biased. However, he's using multiple sources so hopefully they won't all have the same biases an their biases won't be the same as his biases.

Of course they are biased. That is his point. But our own blind spots can be revealed by studying those different perspectives.

The only way to deal with confirmation bias is to know it happens, and consider that when drawing conclusions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com