Today's featured article
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Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions, independently of whether they are true. As a result, people gather new evidence and recall information from memory selectively, and interpret it in a biased way. The biases appear in particular for emotionally significant issues and for established beliefs. Biased search, interpretation and/or recall have been invoked to explain
attitude polarization (when a disagreement becomes more extreme even though the different parties are exposed to the same evidence), belief perseverance (when beliefs persist after the evidence for them is shown to be false), the irrational primacy effect (a stronger weighting for data encountered early in an arbitrary series) and
illusory correlation (in which people falsely perceive an association between two events or situations). Explanations for the observed biases include
wishful thinking and the limited human capacity to process information. Confirmation biases contribute to
overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence. Hence they can lead to disastrous
decisions, especially in organizational, military and political contexts. (
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Recently featured:
La Cousine Bette –
21st Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry –
Clements Markham
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Did you know...
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From Wikipedia's
newest articles:
... that using concepts described in
Sefer ha-Temunah (pictured) the 13th-century
Kabbalist
Isaac ben Samuel calculated the
age of the Universe, a number relatively close to the one estimated by
NASA?
... that Chinese
MiG pilot
Zhang Jihui was credited for shooting down American
Sabre ace
George Davis on February 10, 1952, until Russian pilot Mikhail A. Averin disputed the claim 40 years later?
... that before
"the mouth that roared" was mayor of
Jersey City, he was vice-president of
Hudson County Community College?
... that the
Alma-class ironclads were designed by
Henri Dupuy de Lôme as an improved version of the [[French ironclad Belliqueuse ({{{3}}})|French ironclad Belliqueuse ({{{3}}})]] suitable for foreign deployments?
... that the
Laurel Run Dam, an earthen
embankment dam that failed during the
1977 Johnstown flood, caused a total of
US$5.3 million in damages?
... that
Garrett Rivas, a
placekicker, is the all-time leading scorer in
Michigan Wolverines football history?
... that in the
history of Gaborone, the city was attacked by
South Africa four times, in 1983, 1985, 1986 and 1988, after being accused of harboring
African National Congress terrorists?
... that the
Hudson Utility Coupe could be used "either as a car or a truck"?
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In the news
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In the final
Test match of his career,
Sri Lankan international
cricketer
Muttiah Muralitharan (pictured) becomes the first
bowler to take 800 Test
wickets.
Greek
investigative journalist Sokratis Giolias is
fatally shot in
Athens, becoming the first
reporter assassinated in Greece since 1985.
Two trains
collide in
West Bengal,
India, killing more than 60 people and injuring over 160 others.
In
golf,
Louis Oosthuizen of
South Africa
wins
The Open Championship at
St Andrews,
Scotland.
Divers uncover a store of
champagne, believed to be the
world's oldest, off the coast of the
Åland Islands.
Typhoon Conson makes landfall near
Hai Phong,
Vietnam, after devastating the
Philippines, leaving at least 72 people dead.
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On this day...
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July 23:
Revolution Day in
Egypt (
1952)
1793 – After a siege of 18 weeks,
French troops in
Mainz surrendered to
Prussian forces, effectively ending the
Republic of Mainz, the first
democratic state on the current
German territory.
1881 – The
International Federation of Gymnastics, the world's oldest international sport federation, was founded in
Liège,
Belgium.
1983 – The
Sri Lankan Civil War began after members of the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ambushed a convoy of
Sri Lanka Army soldiers in northern
Sri Lanka, which was followed by large-scale riots carried out by
Sinhalas against
Tamils that became known as
Black July.
1983 –
Air Canada Flight 143 crash-landed in
Gimli, Manitoba,
Canada, without loss of life after the crew was forced to glide the aircraft when it completely ran out of fuel.
1995 –
Hale-Bopp (pictured), one of the most widely observed comets of the twentieth century, was discovered by two independent observers,
Alan Hale and
Thomas Bopp, at a great distance from the
Sun.
More anniversaries:
July 22 –
July 23 –
July 24
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