{"quotes":[{"text":"Misguided good men are more dangerous than honest bad men. It is because they are seen as good that, in and by good conscience, the mob will always, stubbornly back them without question.","author":"Criss Jami","tags":["bad-conscience","bias","confirmation-bias","conscience","crowd","dangerous","deceit","discernment","dishonest","evil","false-prophet","falsehood","fight","flattery","good","good-and-evil","good-conscience","honest","intentions","judgment","lies","majority","minority","misguided","mistaken","misunderstanding","mob","prophet","questioning","reputation","smooth-talk","stubborn","support","truth","understanding","war"],"id":58201,"author_id":"Criss+Jami"},{"text":"One believed what one was told to believe, what it made sense to believe. Unless one was a foreigner, of course, or a philosopher.","author":"Iain M. Banks","tags":["belief","cognitive-dissonance","confirmation-bias","foreigners","philosophy"],"id":75242,"author_id":"Iain+M.+Banks"},{"text":"People tend to accept information that confirms their existing beliefs and feelings, and reject information that contradicts them. This is called “motivated reasoning,” and it means that providing people with corrective information often does not work and may even strengthen their original beliefs. This also means that when people receive new information, their existing beliefs and feelings may have more influence over whether they believe or reject this information than rational reasoning.","author":"Rachel Hilary Brown","tags":["belief-system","belief-systems","confirmation-bias","influence","influencing-people","motivated-reasoning","motivation"],"id":137419,"author_id":"Rachel+Hilary+Brown"},{"text":"Even if these researchers do see the need to address the problem immediately, though they have obligations and legitimate interests elsewhere, including being funded for other research. With luck, the ideas discussed in Good Calories, Bad Calories may be rigorously tested in the next twenty years. If confirmed, it will be another decade or so after that, at least, before our public health authorities actively change their official explanation for why we get fat, how that leads to illness, and what we have to do to avoid or reverse those fates. As I was told by a professor of nutrition at New York University after on of my lectures, the kind of change I'm advocating could take a lifetime to be accepted.","author":"Gary Taubes","tags":["bad-science","calories","confirmation-bias","diet","dieting","government","illness","obesity","public-health","science"],"id":174838,"author_id":"Gary+Taubes"},{"text":"What sets science and the law apart from religion is that nothing is expected to be taken on faith. We're encouraged to ask whether the evidence actually supports what we're being told - or what we grew up believing - and we're allowed to ask whether we're hearing all the evidence or just some small prejudicial part of it. If our beliefs aren't supported by the evidence, then we're encouraged to alter our beliefs.","author":"Gary Taubes","tags":["belief","beliefs","confirmation-bias","empiricism","faith","law","obesity","pitfalls-of-bad-thinking","religion","science"],"id":190807,"author_id":"Gary+Taubes"},{"text":"I think it's outrageous if a historian has a 'leading thought' because it means they will select their material according to their thesis.","author":"Antony Beevor","tags":["confirmation-bias","historiography","history","thesis"],"id":211635,"author_id":"Antony+Beevor"},{"text":"Eblis said, 'No man who thinks ill, will hear the truth despite a hundred signs.When one who fantasises is presented with reason his fantasies increase.When one talks to such a person, their words become the very cause of that person's fantasy. The crusader's sword is a tool for a thief.So the response to him is silence and peace; to talk with an idiot is insa.","author":"Jalaluddin Rumi","tags":["confirmation-bias","delusion","eblis","insanity","malice","sufism"],"id":212565,"author_id":"Jalaluddin+Rumi"},{"text":"What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those disciplines. It has since resisted all attempts to correct it. As a result, the individuals involved in this research have not only wasted decades of time, and effort, and money but have done incalculable damage along the way. Their beliefs have remained imperious to an ever-growing body of evidence that refutes them while being embraced by public-health authorities and translated into precisely the wrong advice about what to eat and, more important, what not to eat if we want to maintain a healthy weight and live a long and healthy life.","author":"Gary Taubes","tags":["bad-science","carbohydrates","confirmation-bias","diet","dieting","government","ketosis","low-carb","obesity","paleo","pitfalls-of-bad-thinking"],"id":252240,"author_id":"Gary+Taubes"},{"text":"It was a good answer that was made by one who when they showed him hanging in a temple a picture of those who had paid their vows as having escaped shipwreck, and would have him say whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods, — ‘Aye,’ asked he again, ‘but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?’ And such is the way of all superstition, whether in astrology, dreams, omens, divine judgments, or the like; wherein men, having a delight in such vanities, mark the events where they are fulfilled, but where they fail, though this happens much oftener, neglect and pass them by.","author":"Francis Bacon","tags":["confirmation-bias","deductive-reasoning","logic","rationality","superstition"],"id":268853,"author_id":"Francis+Bacon"},{"text":"Confirmation bias is the most effective way to go on living a lie.","author":"Criss Jami","tags":["bias","confirmation","confirmation-bias","deceit","encouragement","falsehood","insecurity","lies","mistakes","prejudice","psychology","security","self-deception","truth","yes-man"],"id":272135,"author_id":"Criss+Jami"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":14,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}