This is a huge event and it is an event which Russians and others within the territory of the former Soviet Union take great pride in, and which by the way we in the West should be grateful to them for, though in truth and in fact we never are. — Alexander Mercouris
Mercouris is an idiot. Virtually all westerners are. Here’s a quote from another source:
Confirmation bias is not a quirk. It is not a bad habit you can fix with a motivational quote. It is a deeply embedded cognitive architecture that runs under every thought you believe is rational, every conclusion you believe is objective, and every opinion you believe you arrived at through careful consideration. The mechanism is simple and devastating: the brain actively seeks information that confirms what it already believes, and actively discounts, ignores, or attacks information that challenges it. Not occasionally. Constantly.
When a person holds a belief about their own competence—when they have decided, consciously or not, that they are smart, capable, and correct, the confirmation bias engine turns fully toward protecting that identity. Every piece of evidence that supports their self-image gets amplified. Every compliment lands with weight. Every small success becomes proof of their larger narrative. And every challenge, every contradiction, every piece of evidence that might suggest they are wrong gets filtered, reframed, or rejected entirely. Not through deliberate dishonesty, through an automatic process they never even see it happening.
This is how intelligent-sounding people hold profoundly wrong beliefs for decades without ever feeling the friction of being wrong. They are not stupid. They are not lying. They are running a program that the human brain runs in every single person—but they have never been handed the tools to interrupt it. And so the program runs unchecked. The beliefs compound. The blind spots deepen, and the confidence grows—not because the evidence supports it, but because the brain has been quietly curating a reality that does. Now layer on top of this the modern echo chamber, and you have one of the most powerful reinforcement systems ever constructed.
Content that confirms your existing beliefs triggers dopamine. Content that challenges your beliefs triggers cortisol… The social dimension of this goes even deeper. Human beings are tribal by design.
Challenging the beliefs of your group meant rejection—and rejection once meant death. That threat is no longer physical, but the brain hasn’t received the update.
When someone challenges a belief that is tied to your group identity—your political tribe, your professional community, your cultural circle—the brain processes it as a threat to survival. The rational mind goes offline. The defensive mind takes over. And suddenly a conversation about facts becomes a battle about identity, about loyalty, about who you are and which side you’re on.
This is why expertise doesn’t automatically win arguments. This is why data doesn’t automatically change minds. This is why you can show someone evidence that directly contradicts their position, and watch them walk away more convinced than before—a phenomenon researchers call the backfire effect.
I really hate normies…