You are not looking for truth. You are looking for certainty that confirms the position you have already taken. This is not a character flaw. It is how cognition functions under conditions of uncertainty. The mind wants resolution. It will accept a false resolution over continued openness because openness is uncomfortable and false resolution at least produces the sensation of knowing.
You search for information in the way that produces agreement, not the way that produces accuracy. You find the sources that confirm. You read until you find the thing that says what you already believed. You call this research. It is not research. It is the documentation of a conclusion you had already reached.
Real inquiry is uncomfortable because it does not know where it will end. It might end in a place that requires you to change your position. To revise your understanding of a situation you had decided you understood. To hold complexity where you wanted simplicity. Most people stop before this point. They stop at the edge of genuine uncertainty and return to the position that was already there.
Accuracy often produces no usable feeling. It is neutral. It is cold. It does not offer comfort. Certainty offers the feeling of ground beneath your feet even when the ground is not actually there.
You choose the feeling over the reality so reliably that you have started calling the feeling reality. The cost of this is not abstract. The decisions you make from false certainty produce outcomes in the real world.
The relationships you misread. The situations you misunderstood. The version of events you chose because it was easier to hold.
