A philosophical dead-end stemming from a misreading of Kant, which asserts that all human perception and cognition is nothing but confirmation bias. Since we can never know the "thing-in-itself" (noumenon) and only interpret phenomena through our mental categories, this view claims every observation is simply confirming the pre-existing structures of our mind. It’s a radical skepticism that makes genuine learning or surprise impossible, reducing all experience to a tautological loop.
Example: After a surprising scientific discovery that overturns a theory, someone dismisses it by saying, "The new data only 'confirms' the scientists' hidden bias toward novelty. They were biased to find a change, just as the old guard was biased to find stability. It's all just confirmation bias of everything." This nihilistic take uses epistemology to void empirical evidence entirely.
by Dumu The Void February 9, 2026
Get the Confirmation Bias of Everything mug.The paralyzing, often disingenuous, insistence that because all perspectives are inherently biased (by culture, experience, etc.), no perspective can claim superior footing for understanding reality. This "meta-bias" is used to create false equivalence, arguing that since a historian and a conspiracy theorist both have biases, their claims deserve equal weight. It mistakes the universal condition of situatedness for the negation of rigor, evidence, or truth-seeking.
Example: In a climate debate, someone dismisses the IPCC's decades of peer-reviewed research by saying, "Your scientists are biased by grant money. My oil-funded blogger is biased too. It's all just bias. Nobody can know." The bias of everything argument is a thought-terminating cliché that elevates skeptical parity over the vast differentials in evidence, methodology, and reliability.
by Dumu The Void February 9, 2026
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