Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic plays with the concept of confirmation bias in a self-referential way. In the first panel, an older bearded man (resembling a professor or academic) explains to a younger man how he validates the existence of confirmation bias: "Well, I seek out facts that seem to prove it and ignore facts that seem to disprove it." The younger man'''s response in the next panel is blunt: "You'''re a dick."

The final panel, labeled "Earlier...," reveals the context of this exchange. The younger man had originally asked the professor: "How do you know confirmation bias is a real thing?" The humor lies in the professor'''s answer being a perfect demonstration of confirmation bias itself -- he believes in confirmation bias because he uses confirmation bias to confirm it. He only pays attention to evidence supporting the concept while ignoring evidence against it, which is the very definition of the cognitive error he is describing.

The votey panel adds a meta layer, showing a character thinking: "Is today'''s joke recursive or just stupid?" This self-aware quip acknowledges the circular, recursive nature of the joke -- using confirmation bias to prove confirmation bias -- while playfully suggesting the line between cleverness and absurdity may be thinner than we think.