Challenging Cognitive Biases

To say that we only see what we want to see is not a mistake, but a human condition. We walk through the world not as impartial observers, but as sculptors of reality, carving existence with the chisel of our own beliefs.

It is not a whim or a factory defect, but an intrinsic bias: we seek that which confirms what we already believe and avoid what challenges our convictions. It is a form of mental economy, a shortcut of thought. Accepting the familiar and the coherent demands little from us. But facing the contradictory—ah, that is exhausting, it requires energy, it forces us to confront the possibility that we might be wrong.

Between what has just happened around you and what you remember happening, there is more space for everything that disturbed you than for reality itself.

Such bias, however, need not be a cage. If we see it not as a wall but as a starting point, we can use it to grow. It is like the stabilisers on a child’s bicycle: they provide security in the learning process, but must eventually be removed for the true experience of cycling to take place.

The key lies in our willingness to be wrong, to make space for the unexpected, to allow new ideas to pass through us without fear of dismantling what we already know. This openness begins with awareness of our bias and expands with an attitude of curiosity: rather than proving we are right, we should seek to experience the new, to ask questions without the rush for definitive answers.

And perhaps, in the vast mosaic of reality, we may come to see not only what we want to see, but what we never knew existed.

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