Blog post #6

A. Confirmation bias when people tend to only notice what they expect to see. An example of this was when I went to do this blog post. I didn't do it at first because I had skimmed the directions and thought it was a lot of work. Then when I looked at the directions again I realized that was just my confirmation bias, because I am so used to having a lot of work in school I assumed that when it mentioned the nine biases I was supposed to write about all of them. When in reality I only needed to pick one. Companies use this bias a lot, When a company may have an average product, sometimes they price it higher or put it in a fancy container so that people's confirmation bias will kick in and make them believe the product is better than it really is.


B. Intuition can act as a "lens" for seeing the truth  sometimes. This often happens in instances when the situation in question is one that many people often make morally wrong decisions in regards to the subject. An example of this was one time when I was with a group of people and I had a water bottle to throw away, and I was told to throw it out the window. I didn't though, because at that time intuition was telling me not to because littering is bad. I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about this, it was just something that was drilled into my head from a young age, so when I came across the chance to litter my intuition told me it was a bad idea. This was a "lens" to truth in this case because instead of thinking about it and reasoning that because so many people did litter, that my one water bottle wouldn't matter, I just reacted off my first and true instinct to not throw the water bottle. Intuition can also be a "filter" that prevents you from seeing the truth. This often happens in times when people are very emotional.One day my brother was bothering me and my first intuition was to punch him. My just- world bias told me that because he was being mean he deserved to be punched. This intuition was "filtered" though because just because my brother was annoying me, does not give me the right to punch him. If I had taken the time to stop and analyze the situation I would have realized this, I also would have realized that my older brother's retaliation was bound to be much greater than my initial attack.

C.                   The possession of knowledge carries an ethical responsibility

For the most part this is a true statement. Knowledge enables people to see the world in a unique way, and better understand it. But also knowledge can be dangerous. For instance possessing the knowledge of how to make an atom bomb is dangerous knowledge because it gives the owner of the knowledge the ability to kill thousands. Therefore people who posses greater knowledge also posses greater responsibility, because they have the ability to hurt people.