What is WIDCYB?

[deacon blues]

When In Doubt Confirm Your Bias. We all do it, we all look for information in this information saturated world to help ourselves feel better by helping ourselves feel Right/Smart/Superior etc.

I think that WIDCYB blocks, or at least reduces meaningful communication. How can we reduce it, or remove it from our conversations, and begin to understand one another better?

[RubinHighlander]

Leaving the church helped out a lot. I find that I'm much more open to new ideas and opinions because I don't have to view them through the JS<->TSM spectacles anymore. Outside of religion, the confirmation bias is strong in societies. I think critical thinking skills taught earlier in life would help. So, the problem comes back to parents and the public education systems. Religion is on decline in the US, so that should help, now we just need better education in grade schools at all levels.

[Corsair]

WIDCYB is a really difficult habit to transcend. I would like to think that I have made progress in this arena, but the moment I think I might be good at examining my own bias, I have to admit that I might just be fooling myself. For this reason I still keep FairMormon.org in my podcast queue. They are often an infuriating podcast, but I need to be committed to following the truth even if it were to honestly and verifiably lead back to the church. Luckily(?), the FairMormon podcast continually reminds me that I have made a good decision to drop my LDS testimony.

[Linked]

WIDCYB is a really difficult habit to transcend. I would like to think that I have made progress in this arena, but the moment I think I might be good at examining my own bias, I have to admit that I might just be fooling myself. For this reason I still keep FairMormon.org in my podcast queue. They are often an infuriating podcast, but I need to be committed to following the truth even if it were to honestly and verifiably lead back to the church. Luckily(?), the FairMormon podcast continually reminds me that I have made a good decision to drop my LDS testimony.

This is an interesting tactic. Through my long term worldview change I have been searching for information sources that I feel I can trust to tell me the truth. I started with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck. When I realized they were blatantly biased I stopped listening to them. Same with Fox News, their catch phrase "Fair and Balanced" should be changed to "Fairly Biased". Other news stations are also biased, though usually less blatant, they show their bias by the titles and slant of the stories and what stories they cover. I've ended up relying on fivethirtyeight and arstechnica and google news to find my information, because I trust the editors to present a less biased view, and they note when they are biased. But maybe I've just found groups who line up with my bias better.

I don't think I could consistently watch Fox News anymore, it would drive me nuts calling out all the biased news, it takes too much energy. Though they do bring up very valid counterpoints to the more liberal ideas they disagree with occasionally.

[alas]

On Facebook, one of my friends posted a chart that (according to their biases) placed news sources according to where they fell On two different measures. One was how accurate, with tabloids to the bottom and the most reputable news papers toward the top. Then it placed them by their bias either left or right. I was kind of proud of where I fell, with some of the most accurate news sources and one slightly to the left, one smack in the middle, and one slightly to the right. I also try to avoid the US centric slant by listening to BBC, a news outlet out of Berlin, Germany, and an Australian news source. I actually find "center" American centric news outlets slanted further right than the outside of the US news sources. Our "left,"is their "central" while our right is their crazy off the deep end. Germany, as one would expect is further left than the BBC.

[deacon blues]

I agree that the BBC is a good 'outsider' source for U.S. news. To avoid WIDCYB we could regularly reference a variety of news sources.