When I hear the word bias, I think of either news organizations that slant their coverage to favor one political position over another or racial prejudice.

I learned about cognitive bias in my psychology courses in college —the collection of faulty ways of thinking that is apparently hardwired into the human brain. The collection is large. Wikipedia’s “List of cognitive biases” contains 185 entries, that is a significant amount!

Some of the biases are not a big deal at all, like the Ikea effect, for instance, which is defined as “the tendency for people to place a disproportionately high value on objects that they partially assembled themselves.” I know this one all too well.

But If I had to single out a particular bias as the most pervasive and damaging, it would probably be confirmation bias. That’s the effect that leads us to look for evidence confirming what we already think or suspect, to view facts...