Prestidigitation - Mental Sleight Of Hand

I love magic, I love the way it distracts the mind, but for me, it also speaks loud as a metaphor.

The sleight of hand that is prestidigitation, the set up of the prestige, highlights just how convinced the human brain can be of what it sees being real when in fact that reality is anything but true.

We trust our instincts, or to be more accurate, our senses.  We rely on them to guide us through the world and to help shine a light on that which would harm us, trick us or use us.

Magic circumvents this.

Your brain is wired in a way in which you almost instinctively think that you are correct in your analysis.  This cognitive bias is a throwback to when we needed that mental stead.

Now in the information age, we need to filter our biases so that we might make the correct assumptions.

It's in everyone else's best interest to convince you that their self-serving opinions are correct.  Politics, religion, it really doesn't matter, people want you to have their mindset, they want you to be part of the group they are.

This obviously creates a problem.

How can we trust the integrity of people who won't check their biases?  How do we know that what they think is best, when they in all likelihood have not run it through a critical thinking filter?

We can't.

All areas of life are open to a lack of academic rigor and that's a serious problem.  It can creep into the sciences where intelligent people can follow their bias until they find a conclusion that fits their narrative.

It happens.

No one is immune to self-delusion or the mental prestidigitation that is convincing oneself.