Week 15

Confirmation bias refers to the phenomenon where we tend to search, recall, believe and favor information that coincide with our personal beliefs or biases regardless of actual truth. This is typically what news station biases take advantage of, as they play off certain expectations within governmental parties and blow information out of proportion. There will always be a certain degree of bias within media, their is never a non-slanted source, so this is why splitting it down the middle and watching news from both parties can help smooth out a more accurate unbiased opinion of current matters. The problem is, that is very time consuming for the average American: as we tend to just cut out watching both programs and choose a leading faction. This is a problem because not only will we receive biased news, it fuels anger towards the other party due to a catered experience.

I watched a very interesting video on Risk by Vsauce https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-CK8VxMz9g which brought a few similar biases to mind. Michael told a story about how World War 2 pilots would come back with damage around the wings and the tail of their planes upon return from missions into enemy territory. Now technicians could add only so much armor to the plane before it is too heavy to fly. So they put more armor around those areas. The problem was, there was no difference in the amount of planes returning, the same number of planes were lost. The military hired a man known as Abraham Wald, a Hungarian Mathematician, who said to put as little armor as  possible around those areas. The reasoning being that they were fault to survivorship bias. Those planes that were returning were the ones that survived, meaning that the plane could take damage in those areas without plummeting.

As stated previously, this is the problem with "fake news," it typically leads us to believe our doubts on the other party. I see this everyday with my grandma, she comes downstairs everyday angry after reading some ludicrous article online. Its troubling, because the internet isn't as truthful as we all wish it to be. Sometimes it takes an insightful eye to ween out that in which isn't entirely truthful, as confirmation bias is an instinct natural to us humans.




https://medium.com/@snoitan/why-do-republicans-and-democrats-let-other-people-do-their-thinking-dc6d208945e4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias