Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek, favor, interpret, or recall information that supports existing beliefs or expectations while discounting conflicting evidence.
Cyber Threat Hunting
A cognitive bias in which a person favors seeking or interpreting information that supports existing beliefs while discounting contradictory information.
- How it is used
- Guides hypothesis-driven threat hunts away from premature conclusions based on supporting evidence alone.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the bias and demonstrates an osquery-led investigation pivot from network destination to process and decoded command.
- Examples
- Uses Dropbox IP connections, Dropbox.exe process searches, and encoded PowerShell commands as contrasting investigation evidence.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose/debug with it by seeking contradictory evidence, expanding investigation scope, and validating suspicious findings before concluding.
Demand Forecasting Best Practices
Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek, notice, and favor information that supports existing beliefs while discounting or avoiding contradictory information.
- How it is used
- Supports judgmental forecasting by exposing how existing beliefs can distort demand estimates and forecast edits.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the bias, demonstrates it through sales and marketing cases, and links it to forecast-process safeguards.
- Examples
- Uses product launches, customer interviews, next-month sales expectations, and marketing campaign forecasts as concrete cases.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose/debug with it by checking contradictory evidence, incentives, stakeholder influence, and independence during forecast development.
Read how Demand Forecasting Best Practices explains confirmation bias →
Grokking Statistics
The tendency to favor, seek, or interpret evidence in ways that support an existing belief or desired conclusion.
- How it is used
- Guides critical evaluation of research, datasets, models, and claims that may be shaped by preferred outcomes.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the bias, illustrates its reasoning pattern, and gives recognition and mitigation steps without formal measurement.
- Examples
- Uses a UFO cover-up claim, selectively published organizational studies, and cherry-picked modeling results as examples.
- What you can do after
- Practice/perform: recognize selective evidence, test alternative explanations, and seek contrary findings before accepting a conclusion.
The Art of Code
Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek, notice, and remember evidence that supports existing beliefs while disregarding contrary evidence.
- How it is used
- Uses testing during development and debugging to challenge assumptions before users discover defects.
- How deep it goes
- Defines the bias and links it to debugging, but stops short of a general debiasing procedure.
- Examples
- Uses WeightConverter tests for a normal conversion, zero, and negative-input exception.
- What you can do after
- Diagnose/debug with tests that deliberately seek failures rather than merely confirming expected behavior.
Related concepts
- cognitive biaskind of · A cognitive bias is a systematic tendency in human perception, judgment, or reasoning that can distort how information is evaluated and decisions are made.
- assumptionuses · An assumption is a proposition or condition provisionally accepted as true or applicable as a basis for reasoning, planning, modeling, or action.
- signaladdresses · A signal is an observable value, event, or pattern that conveys information about a condition, state, or phenomenon.
- critical thinkingcontrasts with · Critical thinking is the deliberate, disciplined evaluation of information, claims, evidence, assumptions, reasoning, and alternatives before forming a judgment or taking action.
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