Bias

Bias is how humans make decisions. More specifically, bias is the phenomenon where thought diverges from logic due to emotion. Humankind makes decisions (including judgments) almost solely based on bias. This is easily illustrated by looking at politics - if a politician named "Donald" makes a speech, and both Republicans and Democrats watch the same speech, they nevertheless will have completely opposite responses to watching the exact same thing: Donald was amazing, perfect, eloquent, etc. vs. Donald was terrible, laughable, embarassing, stunting, etc. (We would see the opposite for a different politician - let's call him "Joe.")

This is a serious problem (are opinions based on reality at all?) - and not limited to politics. This happens in all parts of society, e.g. in school grading, in corporate promotions, in sports judging, in media "lynchings," etc. This happens even with apparent high levels of intelligence in the perpetrators. It is ubiquitous, fully permeating human existence.

There are many sorts of this, from nepotism ("my son is the smartest person I know!") to cronyism ("my buddy is the most amazing worker here!") to tribalism ("I am 100% convinced that the party line is true"); groupthink, or following the beliefs of a group, is an extremely common form of bias. Homo sapiens means "wise man" - but it is clear that most humans are not using their capabilities for rational thought at all.

Red flags to spot this sort of bias are simple - just think from the reverse direction. "Do I think that my children or friends are better than others?" (self-bias) "Do I agree with everything that my political party says?" (group bias) And so forth.

18th century Scottish philosopher David Hume said, "Reason is...the slave of the passions." What we find is that in general, we make decisions based on our "passions" - then, we use "reason" to justify it to others. In other words, we do not use our vaunted intelligence to actually make decisions, we only use it to make excuses as to why we made those decisions... which were made solely from bias. Bias is really powerful, don't underestimate its power.

What follows is that controlling biases is a very useful tool for the powerful. Thus, much effort goes into controlling the media, which can be used to control biases.

Another result of bias is - our stations in life are more a result of people's biases, as opposed to merit or real achievements. So it is good to be satisfied with our lot and not dwell too much in comparison.

In the meantime, let us all try to observe our biases so that we can recognize them as such and negate them. If we do so, we can begin to see glimpses of evolving into the true homo sapiens.

Finally, another use for understanding biases is to predict decisions - almost everyone will invariably select the choice that will benefit them most (self-bias). This can also be used to identify and examine biases.

Bias is a critical and ever-present part of almost everything that humans do; thus, always be aware of it.