Myside Bias

Give people arguments on a heated topic and watch them evaluate: the argument supporting their side is judged rigorous; the opposing one is dismantled for flaws. The unsettling finding is that intelligence does not protect against this. It arms it — the clever are simply better at defending their side.

The mechanism is orientation. Reason, it turns out, was not built as a searchlight for truth. It was built as a lawyer for our side: to argue, persuade, and win. Used alone, it finds what it was pointed at.

This is why smart people with the same facts stay divided, and why your own reasoning, however careful it feels, is not evidence of fairness. The feeling of objectivity is available on both sides of every question.

The counterweight is not more thinking but different positioning: state the other side's case well enough that its supporters would sign it. If you cannot, you do not yet understand the dispute — you are only fighting in it. The lawyer's mind wins arguments. Only the judge's mind settles them.