Discover more from Overcoming Bias
How can we better believe what is true? While it is of course useful to seek and study relevant information, our minds are full of natural tendencies to bias our beliefs via overconfidence, wishful thinking, and so on. Worse, our minds seem to have a natural tendency to convince us that we are aware of and have adequately corrected for such biases, when we have done no such thing.
In this forum we discuss whether and how we might avoid this fate, by spending a bit less effort on each specific topic, and a bit more effort on the general topic of how to be less biased. Here we discuss common patterns of bias and self-deception, statistical and other formal analysis tools, computational and data-gathering aids, and social institutions which may discourage bias and encourage its correction. Other topics may be discussed to the extent they exemplify important biases and correction issues.
This forum is brought to you by the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, and consists of posts and comments on posts. We allow open comments on most posts, but are selective about who can post, and moderate the posts. To be considered as a poster, please send a link to your thoughtful essay on this topic (published elsewhere is fine) to rhanson@gmu.edu. Comments should be polite, on topic, and not very long.
Added: See also Contributors: Be Half Accessible.
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The neurons in your brain are biased toward certain other neurons. That's how it works. Bias is fundamental. Embrace it. It will embrace us back. It's time the human super organism wakes up.
The study of bias is moving out of philosophy and psychology and into neuroscience. Thanks to what has already been learned from brain research (esp. split-brain studies and fMRI research) it is now possible to theorize that our brain processes ideas unconsciously by comparing them with existing beliefs and generating an emotional cue (satisfaction, annoyance, anger, outrage) that allows the left-brain interpreter function to generate conscious pro or con arguments to justify the emotion. ... Thus, we are all biased, and yes, we are intrinsically blind to it.
If you are unfamiliar with the left-brain interpreter function, read any of Dr. Michael S, Gazzaniga's books for the general public, from "The Social Brain" (1985) through "The Ethical Brain" (2006).
If you are interested in a summary of what neuroscience has learned about our brain's functioning and how it makes possible a "Tribal Programming Theory of Human Behavior," I recommend my own book, "Man by Nature: The Hidden Programming Controlling Human Behavior."
Adam Leonard