Confirmation Spoons
You could say that I am a fairly competitive person. I love playing games. If anything competitive is going on, I am totally down. A campus christian organization that I am a part of (Chi Alpha) had a game night the other day and after playing several other fun and challenging games, we decided to finish up our evening with a game of spoons. To be quite honest, I've never been good at spoons. I don't typically react quick enough to grab a spoon. (To my surprise I actually won both rounds we played. It was a miracle.)
While playing spoons, the goal is to get four cards with the same number on each of them. So, you pass the cards around until someone gets four of the same numbers and grabs the first spoon. From there, it's a free for all. There's scratching, hitting, stealing, punching,... anything goes when you're trying to get that spoon. Okay, I may have over exaggerated slightly as to how violent the game got, but you get the point. The person without a spoon in the end is out. Then the game continues with one less person and one less spoon.
There were several instances in the game where I had 2 or 3 of the same card. As I shuffled through the cards being passed onto me from the person ahead of me, I realized I really wasn't even processing what I was picking up and putting down. My focus solely rested on finding those cards that matched the 2 or 3 I already had. I probably couldn't have even told you the numbers of the other cards that passed through my hands simply because they were not the card I was looking for. In the end, I got what I wanted. I got 4 matches. However, what if I had focused a little more on the other cards? I know there were times when 4 of the same number probably passed through my hands before I got 4 of the numbers I had already been dealt. BUT I didn't take the time to see these. They didn't seem to fit in my hand so I put them to the side.
My question is, is this what we do with the news? We have a variety of options, but choose to only look at and engage with the ones that fit what we think and believe. Do we simply choose the stories that fit with the cards already in our hand? The other question is, does this lead to the reinforcement of our filter bubble that works to filter out all of the stuff that we wouldn't be interested in? Are we so caught up in "matching our cards" that we don't take time to see the value in other things? Are we unwilling to open our minds to other possibilities?
I would say yes. We are a society that is caught up in our own worlds and our own ideas. We reinforce our already heavily-existing confirmation bias that tells us. Confirmation bias is when we interpret new evidence as confirmation of our already existing beliefs or ideas.
Perhaps we need to slow down. Perhaps we need to look at every card and give each one a chance so that we can broaden our vision; so that we aren't so caught up in our own filter bubble and confirmation bias that we can no longer see any other perspective but our own.
While playing spoons, the goal is to get four cards with the same number on each of them. So, you pass the cards around until someone gets four of the same numbers and grabs the first spoon. From there, it's a free for all. There's scratching, hitting, stealing, punching,... anything goes when you're trying to get that spoon. Okay, I may have over exaggerated slightly as to how violent the game got, but you get the point. The person without a spoon in the end is out. Then the game continues with one less person and one less spoon.
There were several instances in the game where I had 2 or 3 of the same card. As I shuffled through the cards being passed onto me from the person ahead of me, I realized I really wasn't even processing what I was picking up and putting down. My focus solely rested on finding those cards that matched the 2 or 3 I already had. I probably couldn't have even told you the numbers of the other cards that passed through my hands simply because they were not the card I was looking for. In the end, I got what I wanted. I got 4 matches. However, what if I had focused a little more on the other cards? I know there were times when 4 of the same number probably passed through my hands before I got 4 of the numbers I had already been dealt. BUT I didn't take the time to see these. They didn't seem to fit in my hand so I put them to the side.
My question is, is this what we do with the news? We have a variety of options, but choose to only look at and engage with the ones that fit what we think and believe. Do we simply choose the stories that fit with the cards already in our hand? The other question is, does this lead to the reinforcement of our filter bubble that works to filter out all of the stuff that we wouldn't be interested in? Are we so caught up in "matching our cards" that we don't take time to see the value in other things? Are we unwilling to open our minds to other possibilities?
I would say yes. We are a society that is caught up in our own worlds and our own ideas. We reinforce our already heavily-existing confirmation bias that tells us. Confirmation bias is when we interpret new evidence as confirmation of our already existing beliefs or ideas.
Perhaps we need to slow down. Perhaps we need to look at every card and give each one a chance so that we can broaden our vision; so that we aren't so caught up in our own filter bubble and confirmation bias that we can no longer see any other perspective but our own.
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