Hey there modern vegans and vegan
curious it's Margaret, and welcome back
to ModVegan. Today on ModVegan I want
to talk with you about confirmation bias:
why I believe that confirmation bias is
one of the most destructive things about
the way our brain works, but also why I
understand that that's how our brain
works. Your brain loves hearing things
that make you feel good. And when you
hear something that makes you feel good
about your own personal beliefs, it gives
you an instant jolt of dopamine - you feel
fantastic! When a study comes out that
says the eating animals is bad for you, 
vegans everywhere are going to
rejoice. Because it makes us feel good!
and the same is true for almost any
belief that we hold. We're going to talk
about this - why it can be a very
destructive thing, and how we can help
guard ourselves against confirmation
bias in today's video. I hope you'll join
me.
When I was a kid I remember I had a
really hard time believing in God. It
wasn't easy for me, and everyone around
me - because I belonged to a church and I
had a Christian family - they'd all tell
me that it was ok to look for the truth
that I shouldn't be afraid to look for
the truth - that they admired my skepticism -
as long as I came to the right
conclusions. We find this a lot with any
group that has this particular belief.
This could be people who don't believe
in vaccinations, people
who don't believe in global warming,
things like that. When you have this kind
of belief, it's ok to explore ideas - as
long as you come up with the right
conclusion. And I've never liked that
idea. I think it's really important to
try to find the truth and I think that
most people who support
anti vaccination, who don't believe in
global warning - they kind of believe the
same thing: that it's really important to
find the truth, but they are misguided by
their own confirmation bias. Why is that?
Well, when we confirm our bias it makes
us feel good. It makes you feel fantastic!
If you open the newspaper and you're
vegan and you read an article that says
"meat causes cancer" you feel great.
If you open the newspaper and you read
one that says that vegetables cause
cancer, you're gonna be extremely
skeptical. You will try to research all
of those little notes in that article,
you're gonna want to prove it wrong.
Which - it probably is wrong. But you're
still gonna want to look at all those
things. You're much more skeptical. You're
much more likely to try and find out why
that's wrong. Why? Because it doesn't
confirm your biases it doesn't make you
feel good about yourself. And this can be
helpful sometimes. I think that having a
bit of a confirmation bias - it helps
support our egos, which are also very
important. And it's good for us. But it
can be very destructive if you are
unwilling to examine your beliefs and
take them critically, take them with a
grain of salt. You're never going to be
able to find the truth out about most
things, because you will constantly want
to confirm those biases. How do we deal
with this? Well, one of the first ways
that we can deal with it is by telling
ourselves we will always be open to new
information and taking that seriously.
Personally, I don't have any belief that
I'm not willing to question, and that
does cause a bit of a hit to your ego. It
does cause you to be a little bit more
of a fragile person than if you were to
believe everything that you want. I do
believe that it does make you stronger
overall, and I think it's one of those
times when it's worth taking that ego
hit to be able to say "I will always
question everything." To say that you will
be open to new information. It's not easy,
but it will make you a stronger person,
and I think ultimately it does make you
a happier person. Because if you're
always looking for ways to confirm your
own biases you're never gonna be open to
new ideas and to me that would make life
a much less rich experience. This morning
there was an article in the CBC about
Dr. Chris Shaw. He is a scientist who
works at the University of British
Columbia. He has written several articles
and he's obviously conducted lots of
interviews and television interviews
radio interviews with all sorts of
skeptics on vaccines. Chris Shaw is
really well known as being a vaccine
skeptic he has published 
articles about the link between vaccines
and autism things like that and
he's kind of pursued more the idea that
it's the additives in vaccines that
cause autism. But he's had to retract
some of his papers. There was one he had
to retract a few years ago about the
link between vaccines and autism and
today he's had to do the exact same
thing - he's had to retract one of his
articles and he says it's because the
research wasn't quite there. There were
flaws in in the research and methodology.
He doesn't believe that that that
counteracts his beliefs about autism. He
certainly hasn't retracted any of his
beliefs about how vaccines and autism
are connected even though his research
doesn't support the conclusions that he
made but it's just a classic example to
me of someone who has a belief that
vaccines cause autism and he wants to
find a link and he's searched you know
he's obviously gone beyond kind of
Andrew Wakefield's idea that it's just
autism and vaccines themselves he's
looking more at the additives to try and
show that it might be the additives that
are causing autism but he really wants
to find that link I think it's very
clear that he's trying to find that link
and he still - even when his own
research has been proven wrong - he
doesn't want to challenge that
previously held belief. He wants to keep
going you know and and now he's saying
he may not want to do any more research
at all because his research
isn't supporting his conclusions and
this is someone who as I said he likes
to go on TV shows you've been in
documentaries where he's talked about
the link between vaccines and autism and
he clearly has a very strongly held
belief about this whether he wants to
you know cover it in the guise of
medical science and research he still
isn't really open to what everyone
else's research which is saying that
it's fine -  he's not that open to it. Now
I'm not above this as I've said if I
read an article that goes against ideas
that I hold to be true I will likely
question that article more than if it's
supported my biases and I think that's
pretty true of everyone but it becomes a
problem when you start having a large
scientific consensus saying something
and you still refuse to believe them we
see this with people who are climate
skeptics that don't care if 97% of
scientists agree that climate change is
happening and climate change is real
they still want to believe that it's not
true
it will search for any kind of data to
support their conclusions they will find
the one scientist who doesn't agree with
that and make them the person that they
believe in and again that's just a very
strong confirmation bias and sometimes
no matter how much and how high their
mountain of evidence is we still try to
seek out information that confirms our
biases and like I said I'm as guilty of
that as anyone but being aware that you
have biases that you want to confirm is
the first step towards fighting this we
all have to start somewhere we all have
to start with an idea that we think is
true and then it will either be
confirmed or denied based on evidence
it's not easy it's not easy to question
your ideas it's not easy to be willing
to be open to having your beliefs
threatened but it is very important we
can't change the way that we eat we
can't change the way that we live we
can't really change anything for the
better unless we're willing to be wrong
and willing to admit that we're wrong it
doesn't mean that we should just accept
every single piece of information that
comes our way as true because if we did
this article by Chris Shaw we'd all
believe it but we need to be able to
read it taken the information look at
the sources try to understand what's
going on and then make our decisions and
we need to look at the consensus - I
think that's very important obviously we
need to be open to new information but
we also need to look at what everyone
else is saying if we're the only ones we
need to be very sure that we're right I
find it interesting that there's so much
evidence now you know you have the World
Health Organization Harvard School of
Public Health all saying that we should
be focusing on drinking water rather
than drinking dairy that we should be
eating less meat that we should be not
eating processed meat at all those kind
of things are new pieces of information
and obviously we all have to start
somewhere when we get new information
we have to evaluate it and decide if
it's true and that process does take a
long time and it may take too long for a
lot of people it took a lot of time for
us to realize that cigarettes were bad
for us and to confirm the science on
that and to recheck scientific consensus
and I'm not saying that we should wait
until there is consensus but I do think
we need to be critical of our biases
there's so much information on these
kinds of topics I'm not going to cover
it too much in detail here except to say
but we really need to be open both to
new information but to the consensus
itself and really evaluate them when
you're looking at a study try to decide
you know if are there only 12 people in
this study what are the results and I I
do think that I mean I will say
personally in my case I went to hear dr.
Caldwell Esselstyn speak here in in
Calgary and dr. Esselstyn has done some
research that really seems to suggest
that oil is bad for you and that it may
not be that me cutting it out of your
diet might actually help prevent and
reverse heart disease and there is some
evidence to suggest that that is true
but it's by no means a consensus there
are not enough scientists that are
saying that right now for us to really
have formed a consensus and there are
some questions regarding his methodology
certainly in terms of the number of
people involved in these studies and
things like that it's a bit too early
for a consensus to be formed around
these kinds of issues and that's why
even though a lot of people within the
vegan community have decided to remove
oil from their lives and I completely
understand that I'm not ready to and I
don't find that there's enough evidence
yet to do that it's just my my personal
take on the information I think that
there's not consensus I'm not willing to
do it and I think that that is a
rational decision I think that it's
pretty rational to not remove something
that causes a great deal of joy in your
life from your life when there is not
evidence to suggest that it's necessary
it just is um in the case of lots of
things we don't have enough evidence for
them there are lots of cases where
there's not enough evidence now do I
think that dr. esselstyn's
research is of the same caliber as
someone like
dr. andrew wakefield absolutely not um
Caldwell Esselstyn obviously has tried
to do a much better job with his
research I don't think that he is
fudging things or making anything up I
just think that it's a smaller sample
than we really need and we still are
trying to figure out other mitigating
factors and things like that it's still
important to look at the information to
have more people conduct studies like
this I think there's certainly reason to
have more studies about say the impact
of oil on our health but we need to see
that research and I I think that it's
important to see that research I don't
want to just confirm my bias because I'm
a vegan that everything that a vegan
doctor says or a plant-based doctor that
everything that that plant-based doctor
says is true and I think that's the case
of with a lot of plant-based physicians
there's lots of information out there
that we have to wade through every
single day and that's why this isn't so
easy as you know just someone saying
that we should do a certain thing and
then we can all do it in perfect
knowledge that it's gonna be good for
our health that's not that's not really
possible at this point we don't know a
lot of these things we are still
learning them but I think we will learn
more and more over time we're gonna
understand the holes in this research
more and more over time but for now I
think it's important to be skeptical of
everything of our own beliefs of other
people's beliefs and the idea that it's
skeptical to believe that vaccines cause
autism is just ridiculous when you look
at the amount of information that we
have it's clear that there's far more
evidence that it saves lives than that
it causes autism in closing I just want
to reiterate that we should have no
beliefs that we hold so tightly to that
we can't question them all of our
beliefs need to be constantly questioned
and constantly held to the light of
scientific inquiry of the latest data
that we have for myself it's been really
important to be open to new ideas to be
open to looking for evidence for things
and to be willing to change my mind
about things I'm actually very proud of
the fact that I changed my mind
all the time and that's one of the
biggest problems I have when we look at
politicians and things like that what's
the biggest criticism that we offer
these people it's that they're
flip-floppers being a flip-flopper is
the
first thing that you can do but I
actually think being a flip-flopper is
one of the best things that you can do
if you're doing it for the right reasons
if you're willing to change your mind
because of new evidence that doesn't
make you a flip-flopper it makes you
intelligent and I think that's one of
the biggest ideas we need to get our
heads around as a society changing our
minds is not weakness its strength as
long as we're doing it for the right
reasons if you're doing it just to make
people happy then that's the wrong
reason but if you're doing it because
you've seen new evidence that has
changed your mind that's a good thing
it's a strength and it's something that
should feed your ego instead of
confirming your biases confirm your
ability to think that's what I think we
should all be doing I hope this video
was helpful I look forward to hearing
your comments I'm sure I'm gonna get
lots of them in the comments section
below and I just want to let you guys
know like I said I'm willing to explore
evidence and look at new ideas I will
look at all of your comments and I'm
curious what you guys think about this I
don't know if any of you know about this
article about Shaw and his his article
about autism and everything like that
I'll be putting a link in the
description box below to my blog post on
this article so that you guys can read a
little bit more about it I hope you
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Take care, bye.
