When we fight confirmation bias, we’re trying to correct for a basic function—a feature, not a bug—of the human mind. Whether the question is mortal peril or one of life’s daily dilemmas, confirmation bias comes into play because people must rely on what they already know. They cannot approach every problem as though their minds are clean slates. This is not the way memory works, and more to the point, it would hardly be an effective strategy to begin every morning trying to figure everything out from scratch.
