Cognitive sophistication does not attenuate the bias blind spot (2012)
I observe something like this in the way people react to what&#x27;s going on in the news.<p>Example: compared to most people, I am &quot;better&quot; positioned to understand what&#x27;s going on in Ukraine - my dad and both inlaws are from there and speak the language. I grew up in former USSR and speak fluent Russian so I can also watch and read things closer to the source.<p>And yet, I don&#x27;t claim to understand anything that&#x27;s going on in Ukraine because ~none~ of the information I see can be considered unbiased. So I can chose to believe one set but not the other set of data or I can say &quot;I am not equipped to understand this.&quot;<p>Meanwhile, tons of people who are objectively less equipped to suss out the situation, don&#x27;t feel this hesitation to have an opinion. Intellectually, if you ask them &#x27;does propaganda exist, and is it amped up in a war situation&#x27; they will say &#x27;of course, every time&#x27; and then they&#x27;ll go and believe what they read (be in in a Western or Russian source, doesn&#x27;t matter.)<p>This is not a complaint, it&#x27;s actually something quite empowering to understand.