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Essay / The concept of confirmation bias and its consequences
A) What is confirmation bias? Confirmation bias, literally the preference for confirmation. A more detailed description is that confirmation bias is a way of thinking or behaving by which people tend to confirm their own opinion or thought. Additionally, people will only seek out or accept arguments or facts that will confirm their opinion or thought. Additionally, people will not notice or rather devalue arguments that contradict their opinion or thought. Confirmation bias is therefore a tendency to be selective about what information will be used or believed, or in other words; see the world through a filter. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayB) In my direct environment, I have a lot to do with farmers. It is only recently that the news presents them as responsible for global warming and as the largest producer of harmful gases. In all the newspapers or broadcasts, we affirm that it is indeed the cows or pigs of farmers, and especially intensive breeding, which produce these harmful gases. But when you look at the farmers' interest groups, I know it's also a little biased, you'll see that they are doing everything to produce less and less harmful gases every year. Only in the news there is no time and place for farmer interest groups, so the normal civilian will blame the farmer. This is why they are asking the government for additional regulations, which harm farmers and which, in the long term, will not be enough to prevent global warming. If the government adopted such regulations, there would be no more farmers in the Netherlands, so we would have to import meat, milk and other products, which would have to be imported by trucks or even planes. But no one thinks about these harmful emissions because people still need their cars, trucks and planes. This confirmation bias in the news will lead to irrational decisions by the government, imposing rules on farmers that will cost them their farms. Additionally, this would only risk the problem, not solve it. C) Karl Popper's criterion gives a reasonable requirement to scientific theories. According to Popper, one can only call a theory a scientific theory if and only if it is possible to prove that one's theory is false by observations. A scientific theory is the fallibility that makes it a good theory and not the fact that it is a foregone conclusion. By looking for counterarguments or observations, the scientist will be protected against their own confirmation bias, as they will have to look for something that contradicts their theory. So they are not just looking for experiments that confirm their theory. And when the scientist or any other specialist doesn't find anything that contradicts his theory, that should be true, but that doesn't mean you can stop looking for counterarguments or observations. This continued search for observations that prove their theorem is false, will make it a reliable theorem and prevent them from confirmation bias..