Let's take another look at confirmation bias – which is looking for clues after the fact that seem to fit the pattern we want to see. If you start with a piece of writing you've decided in advance is true, despite forthcoming evidence to the contrary, you find a reality that is very constricting. The most classic example of “prophetic” writings (which are in actuality vague lines of poetry indecipherable to the “untrained” eye) that I can possibly think of is Nostradamus. People who foolishly place their faith in his “quatrains” always retrofit the evidence by mining large amounts of social data throughout human history and seeing what fits. Surely through such a pointlessly grueling process you can find matches to some of his ridiculously written phrases if you look hard enough. History has proved that whenever he made specific predictions about times, names, dates, and places, he failed miserably. Wow. What a surprise. Being able to explain things after time has passed is not a good predictor of the future. It's a desperate cling to that which you must at least recognize on some level as shaky ground. But why insist on standing in quicksand, gasping for air, barely hanging on? If you have a need to believe, welcome to the human race. We all do. Now, you need to focus your belief on that which has the highest probability of correctness. Give yourself a fair shot. Be open minded to truthfulness. Unless there is of course no such thing as “truth.” What if there is no such thing as truth, just facts and beliefs? Is that enough? We'll take a look at that soon. Come along for the ride, I'm about to take you to the ocean.