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Motivated Reasoning

You think you're searching for the truth. You're actually building a case for what you already want to believe.

Your brain is not an impartial judge weighing evidence. It's a defence lawyer — and its client is whatever conclusion makes you feel safe, right, or comfortable. When you encounter information that supports your position, you accept it quickly and move on. When you encounter information that threatens it, you scrutinise it, poke holes in it, and find reasons to dismiss it. Same brain. Totally different standards of evidence.

This isn't something that happens to stupid people. Research shows that smarter people are actually better at motivated reasoning — they have more tools to construct elaborate justifications. Intelligence doesn't protect you from this. It just makes your defence lawyer more effective.

Motivated reasoning is why two people can look at the same data and reach opposite conclusions, each genuinely believing they were objective. It's why debates rarely change minds. You're not processing arguments — you're defending a position that was decided before the conversation started.

The tell is emotional. If you feel a rush of satisfaction when finding evidence that supports your view, that's not clarity. That's your defence lawyer celebrating a win.

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