Why I’m Starting a Second Medium Account to Reduce Confirmation Bias

If there’s one thing I learned from my conversation with John Petrocelli, about The Life Changing Science of detecting bullshit, it’s this.

We pay attention to information that confirms our ideas about the world. It makes us feel good about ourselves. It makes us feel like we are right. And anything that contradicts that, we completely ignore.

I can’t blame Ev Williams or anybody who works at Medium for this. I was an early adopter of Medium. I chose topics that interested me, and Medium gives me more of that.

Unfortunately, it’s turned into a perpetual smorgasboard of productivity porn and self help (much of which I’ve contributed to medium). But, it’s been quite some time since I came across a person or idea that really made me think.

Search vs Browsing

Medium isn’t the only culprit. Algorithms determine everything from the content that Youtube recommends to the books that Amazon suggests.

I love wandering around bookstores because I discover books I would have never thought to read. Browsing leads to discovery, while search reinforces confirmation bias.

If you subscribe to Ryan Holiday’s newsletter or read his books, you’ll notice that he draws insight and wisdom from history, politics, sports…