Friday, January 28, 2011

The Confirmation Bias

I've decided I have impeccable timing.  Apparently I don't need to read the news--because if the last few weeks have been any indication, I know whats going to happen before it actually does.

I had a song stuck in my head.  I didn't know who sang it.  Or any words.  All I knew is it had a freaking sweet saxophone solo.  Using the reasoning that sax solos in pop music were big in the 70s and 80s, that narrowed my search.  After searching a few minutes on Google  I found it.  Because someone had posted an article literally five minutes before that the artist had died that morning.  I mean tragic that he died an all (that sax solo was genius) but seriously that I would be looking for it the day he died?  Odds?  Not super high.

RIP Gerry Rafferty

I was thinking all about knick-knacks and how they are the worst.  Me and C were talking about them, which led to my ranty blog on the subject.  Now when it got to the landfill section I felt inspired by the tidbit about Michigan.  It was a complaint that I remembered people having when I was there, so I looked it up before I posted it (Because making sure everything I say is PC has always been super high on my priority list) and ever so conveniently the first result for "michigan paid canada landfill" was a news article written the day before about how Ontario voluntarily agreed (how else would they agree?  We can hardly gag and tie them--literally forcing their hands to sign important documents... and even if we could we probably wouldn't waste the international incident on garbage.  Literal garbage.) to have some of their cities stop sending trash.  How serendipitous.  Apparently senators agree with me.  Or at least their constituents did and complained enough.  You say potato.

Also, that whole Prince William+Kate Middleton thing... One day my landlady was freaking-out excited at me about the whole thing.  We got to watch some hour-long special on the news about it.  Can I just say that I thought they already were engaged?  Had been for months?  But then I always forget that my life-long friendship with Kate allows me to know things like that far before the general public.  Or at least glancing at tabloid covers as I go through the line at the grocery store.  It's one of the two.

And iPhone?  I thought everyone knew a new generation would be coming out in the fall.  No.  Seriously.  Everyone didn't know?

*When we convince ourselves that outcomes, results, and all-out conclusions occur because of an illogical instance, and we choose to hold as evidence only instances where-in our theory holds true and ignore all others.  This is what psychology, logic, and a million other disciplines refer to as the Confirmation Bias.  However, courtrooms call it a case.  Feel free to apply whenever you think someone's argument may be using said bias.

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