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Labels, Biases, and Misperceptions
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
“HAVING FORMED AN OPINION,” an English philosopher once said, “our minds draw on all possible evidence to support it. When confronted with evidence that contradicts our viewpoint, we overlook it or denigrate it, or find some other way of writing it off. That way we can cling to our original opinion as though it were a universal truth.”1
These sentences could have been uttered yesterday. They have bite and self-awareness, and they echo recent findings of modern social psychology. And yet they are the words of Francis Bacon, written close to four hundred years ago! So the idea that we first make judgments and then set out to ...
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