CAMP: Accept The Fact That You May Be Wrong

It can be difficult, especially in a time of crisis, to dispassionately assess for errors our own positions and potential biases. After accumulating a certain amount of information, and developing an opinion, we are often susceptible to intake bias, meaning that we only digest information that satisfies what we already believe to be true, which only serves to continuously bolster the mental barricade inside which our opinion is safe from scrutiny.

Because of this, when we then encounter information that could invalidate, or even simply modify, our personal understanding of an issue, we do one of two things. Rather than utilize the data to reassess and possibly modulate our opinion, we find a way to justify a rejection of this new information, or we take a more straightforward tack, and simply lock it out.

We are all guilty of intake bias to some degree in every aspect of life, which is partly why our political landscape looks the way it does, with tribal loyalties often trumping data or reason. We have now seen intake bias infect our thinking as it relates to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Every American has an opinion on how to best move forward, and that opinion is informed by a multiplicity of factors. A problem arises when our brain-barricades are struck from the outside with incongruent information.

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from Salisbury News https://ift.tt/2S5fcxO