Confirmation Turtles

Confirmation Turtles is a useful and clever portmanteau that combines confirmation bias with turtles all the way down.

Credit for the coinage should go to one of my SBMs, Daniel. You can read Daniel’s substack here, as soon as he puts something there. He may have already.

Confirmation Turtles is a useful idea.

Confirmation Turtles reminds you what you are up against.

Confirmtion bias is hard to overcome, but as Daniel put it:

You may think you’re fighting bias, but it’s a giant pyramid of turtles. Probably angry ones. They go the way down. So there are lots of them. They don’t want to change. And they’re turtles, so even when they move, they move slowly.

Knowing what you’re up against prepares you for the work ahead.

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Confirmation Turtles is new idea.

Before I published this post, I did a Google search for “Confirmation Turtles.” It yielded 129 results, I checked them out1. All coincidental.

My Confirmation Turtles tell me that proves it’s a new idea.

Once this post is indexed, there will be 130 results. When my tweet gets indexed, 131. And then will go viral, and get many more, because it’s fun and useful.

Daniel gets the cred for coining it. I get some cred for injecting it into the memosphere. Memsphere is a novel (3500 search results), but not a new term.

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Details about Confirmation Turtles

Wikipedia says:

For example, a person might believe that raising the minimum wage will negatively affect the economy and tend to interpret, favor, and recall information about changes in the economy that support that belief.

But why do we believe the things that we believe?

Any belief rests on more fundamental beliefs, and on experiences that we have had and observations that we’ve made.

A person who believes that raising the minimum wage will have a net negative effect on the economy will have beliefs about what an economy is, how the economy in question works, what money is for, people's psychological nature, and more.

If a person is exposed to information that describes an economy, an explanation of how the economy in question works, what money is for, or the psychological nature of people, they will tend to interpret, favor, and recall information in each of those categories that support the belief they already have.

Confirmation Turtles on Confirmation Turtles.

And even more fundamentally, people have beliefs about the nature of knowledge, how knowledge is to be acquired and tested, even the nature of reality and consciousness. If a person is exposed to a different epistemological framework, etc., etc., they will tend to interpret, favor, and recall information that supports their existing belief.

Confirmation Turtles.

It’s hard to fight one’s confirmation bias.

But you are not facing a simple bias. It’s a giant pyramid of turtles.

All the fucking way down.

Knowing what you’re up against prepares you for the work ahead.

Details about newness

Google reports 129 instances of the phrase, all of which seem to be coincidental, like

and

Some say there’s nothing new under the sun, but my Confirmtion Turtles disagree, and Daniel’s coinage proves what my Confirmation Turtles have told me.

Perhaps you enjoyed this, and your Confirmation Turtles will tell you to subscribe.