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AreWeSure ago

The more I read about this and the more I discover about it, the more it appears that epidemic pedophilia exists among the world’s elites. This seems to be one of the crucial results of the citizen-journalist investigation.

This is a very good example of confirmation bias. Our brains aren't perfect and haven't several ways of fooling us. Confirmation bias is one of them. If you research a prior belief and find more examples of exactly the thing you are looking for, it tends to confirm the belief. But you are not looking randomly or with proportion. For example, what percentage of pedophiles are connected with politics? Let's say it's X%. Is that higher or lower than the percentage of the general population involved in Politics?

I have never heard of the type of car my brother bought as his first car. Afterwards, I saw them everywhere.

Sobell ago

The late Maxwell Maltz (1889 - 1975), a plastic surgeon who helped pioneer 20th century self-help books genre, described something similar in his 1960 classic, Psychocybernetics. He postulated one could use the phenomenon to attract positive things to one’s life, using the rather material example of a red sports car. You decide you want one, just thinking about it will cause you to see red sports cars everywhere… He also pointed out you attract negative things into your life in the same way.

I’m not really certain of confirmation bias re: pedophilia among the elites and the political class, but maybe I don‘t completely grasp the concept.. I think if I ran across a headline about rampant pedophilia in the Pinestraw Basketweavers Association, it would grab my attention. If a headline about pedophilia in the elite/political class catches my eye, I don’t quite see how my prior acquaintance with it is bias… When I visit Free Republic, Pizzagate is only one subject I’m attuned to (and I haven’t found a lot about it there).

I’ll read the Wikipedia entry on Confirmation Bias, though. Thanks for the link. If it is something that could weaken the investigation or taint discoveries, I’d like to know more about it.

AreWeSure ago

There's an emerging body of neuroscience/psychology that is discovering we are less rational that we think we are. Confirmation bias is a way we can fool ourselves. It's trick our brain plays on us.

There's a book called Thinking Fast/Thinking Slow that covers this. Read the book reviews for the general gist. We have a "gut level/instict based" level of thinking.......*What was that sound? Tiger? Run! *and a deeper thinking self, How many quarters are in $17.50 and $22.75? And sometimes if we don't check ourselves, the fast thinking is running the show.