This is a really tough problem. Like many in the HN community, I try to fight against confirmation bias, but sometimes it feels like a lost cause. Compare it to a reasonably complex math problem--I'm talking an Algebra II / Calc I type problem. You are relying on so much previous knowledge to complete the problem. That knowledge may have been "earned", meaning you really took the time to build up an intuition, or "unearned", meaning you just took the word of the instructor or book (essentially applying a procedure to get a result). This is a MATH problem that has defined parameters and a definitive right or wrong answer.
Moving to something in the social realm, it's like a laser hitting a geode. When I see a talking head like Ann Coulter on a "news" program, they are often quite adept at providing facts and statistics to support their argument. But ironically, this usually does nothing for me to strengthen their argument or change my mind. To start with, are these facts and statistics true and accurate? Is there really some subjectivity in these "facts"? Are they just outright rumors? Even if these facts are true and accurate, does it tell the whole story, or does it simply support their position? That's a pretty loaded question; no one really goes to the effort of presenting all relevant information and interpretation--nor would you want to listen. Denying facts and falling back on beliefs, ideally wisdom, is a defensive mechanism against information overload. To aggressively change your mind again and again when presented with new information is similar to the problem of overfitting a neural network.
I think you hit it on the nose, I mean look at our Supreme Court.. like the TOP court, a set of people that are supposed to do their absolutely best at leaving out bias. I mean that's the resume - NOT BIASED PERSON JUDGING THINGS. Yet almost like clockwork, each Justice is delivering carefully crafted prose fully backed up by legal jargon to explain their final judgement. 90% of the time when the judgement falls into some political trap, the court is split down to the R or D President that got them there (with exceptions of course). Shouldn't those opinions basically be identical? Why are we not FIXING that, instead we let them die, and feverishly get a new president that matches our worldview more so the new Justice can fix our world.
I remember watching some news program like 60 minutes or 20/20 back in the day. They put on two fake trials, but I think the jury thought it was all real. In one they presented the defendant as a old man that had probably looked ugly. In the other they presented the defendant as a young man with good posture in a suit. All of the orchestrated words in both trials was the same. In the end they fried the old-ugly man and let the suit go. Why don't we change anything? Why is this acceptable? I can think of countless other crazy things in this planet that we shockingly let slip by.
Given that THIS is the world we live in, I'm absolutely not surprised the talking heads can easily just push completely biased information and everything goes unchecked. In the end it's simple really, it's just a big war of who's right and wrong, but we all lose. The EGO has taken over this planet.
Moving to something in the social realm, it's like a laser hitting a geode. When I see a talking head like Ann Coulter on a "news" program, they are often quite adept at providing facts and statistics to support their argument. But ironically, this usually does nothing for me to strengthen their argument or change my mind. To start with, are these facts and statistics true and accurate? Is there really some subjectivity in these "facts"? Are they just outright rumors? Even if these facts are true and accurate, does it tell the whole story, or does it simply support their position? That's a pretty loaded question; no one really goes to the effort of presenting all relevant information and interpretation--nor would you want to listen. Denying facts and falling back on beliefs, ideally wisdom, is a defensive mechanism against information overload. To aggressively change your mind again and again when presented with new information is similar to the problem of overfitting a neural network.