Letters To Editors

I've long thought that most letters to editors are from crackpots. I've not been proved wrong, but here is one from the Times I like:

To the Editor:
Re "A Case of Mental Courage," by David Brooks (column, Aug. 24):
I agree that much of contemporary political discourse has been marked by rampant confirmation bias - the tendency to seek out evidence consistent with our beliefs, and deny dismiss and distort evidence that is not.
Compounding this tendency, as the Princeton University psychologist Emily Pronin has shown, is the fact that virtually all [of] us readily perceive confirmation bias in others, but not in ourselves. We see ourselves as eminently reasonable and those who disagree with us as foolish, deluded or dishonest.
Given that large pockets of talk radio, cable television and the blogosphere on both the extreme left and extreme right feed this confirmation bias by promoting self-assurance rather than self-criticism, it is hardly surprising that the current political environment is more partisan than ever.
Scott O Lilienfeld

Mr L is a psychology professor at Emory University