However, as it generally happens that those, who have had many experiences, vacillate, so long as they regard a thing as future or past, and are usually in doubt about its issue (II. xliv. note); it follows that the emotions which arise from similar images of things are not so constant, but are generally disturbed by the images of other things, until men become assured of the issue.
Baruch Spinoza – Ethics (1677)
As Spinoza said, shifting from one viewpoint to another counts as a disturbance and we don’t generally seek this kind of disturbance. It’s a barrier to change, a hill we would have to climb to see what’s on the other side.
This brings out an aspect of the term ‘confirmation bias’, because we don’t necessarily seek the confirmation. Sometimes we do, mostly we don’t, because seeking confirmation might be disturbing. In the main it’s just bias, protection against disturbance and the online world suggests it can be pretty crude protection.
This is what mainstream media cater for, not only bias but the underlying protection against disturbance. They even make conspicuous and repeated use of the word ‘disturbing’, as do politicians. Bias is the outcome, the behaviour we see, while the remarkably powerful spectre of disturbance is what keeps the bias in place. News stories which might be disturbing are presented as windows on a disturbing world, confirmation that a particular media comfort zone is the right comfort zone.
Apart from confounding factors such as vested interests, this issue of disturbance seems to account for the slow pace in which absurd public narratives are corrected. It can take generations or even centuries to correct even the most abject stupidity. Belief in witchcraft is a historical example, catastrophic climate change a modern one.
