let’s get a grip

Reality exists independent of human minds, but our understanding of it depends on the beliefs we hold at any given time.

Michael Shermer at Scientific American:

1. We form our beliefs for a variety of subjective, emotional and psychological reasons in the context of environments created by family, friends, colleagues, culture and society at large.
2. After forming our beliefs, we then defend, justify and rationalize them with a host of intellectual reasons, cogent arguments and rational explanations.
3. Beliefs come first; explanations for beliefs follow.

According to Shermer, we reinforce bias.