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This chapter explores how our brains are wired for pattern recognition and how confirmation bias affects our beliefs, discussing the tendency to seek evidence that supports our beliefs instead of seeking evidence that disproves them. It also delves into how the internet has made it easier for people to find confirming evidence for any belief, no matter how false or against scientific consensus.

Confirmation bias is our tendency to seek evidence that supports our beliefs and confirms our assumptions when we could just as well seek disconfirmation of those beliefs and assumptions instead.

Confirmation is such a prevalent feature of human cognition, that until recently a second bias has been hidden in plain sight. Recent research suggests that something called desirability bias may be just as prevalent in our thinking. When future desires and past beliefs are incongruent, desire wins out.

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