No Stupid Questions

150 readers

1 users here now

A place to ask questions, stupid or not.

founded 1 year ago

It is impossible to be unbiased? (kbin.social)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I don't know if this is a well known theory or not, but the basis is that it's impossible for someone to be unbiased, even if they say they aren't. People are subconsciously biased to a degree, so it's impossible to be truly unbiased.

I doubt this has any substance, but I thought it was an interesting thought experiment.

top 4 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] thesohoriots 8 points 1 year ago

I’ve heard it put this way: either you have an ideology, or an ideology has you.

In other words, it’s better to be actively engaged in a particular way of how you’re looking at things, knowing what biases you’re bringing, otherwise it’s being done for you through some cultural apparatus and you will wrongfully assume yourself to be unbiased. Knowing how your particular ideology works takes much more effort, as does any form of introspection, since you have to truly examine your values and make choices, so even then part of it would still be unconsciously influenced by culture since alternatives are rarely, if ever offered.

[–] quixotic120 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would argue that as long as you hold opinions, which all human beings do, all you can do is to be aware of your biases and try to correct for them. That being truly unbiased is impossible. You can get really good at it maybe but there will always be the inherent monkey brained part of you that has to be regulated by higher level cognitive function.

It’s like any idea of achieving perfection. Maybe it’s theoretically possibly but practically it’s a fools errand. Like if you ask an engineer to make you a perfect doodad they’ll either assume you mean perfect in a figurative sense or secretly (or maybe not so secretly) laugh at you for being kind of dumb.

[–] DriftingDeep 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I agree here. First, the idea of being cognizant of your biases can allow a potentially more unbiased opinion. For example, when consuming news media, one can recognize their preferred outcome, and perhaps spend some time getting “the other side of the story.” I’ve found doing so actually helps clarify certain issues or events, as the common thread between the two stories tends to be where the truth lies.

But there’s also the inherent desire for us to advance or evolve as humans. Bias isn’t necessarily “bad,” since that seems to indicate we’ve settled on something we think provides a net positive to ourselves or the species. It turns bad when we’re not willing to acknowledge the possibility there’s a better way.

So, I guess to sum it up, out the gate, I don’t think one can be truly unbiased, but I think one can learn the ability to make decisions with equal preference for both decisions. To live in a world of only bias is, imo, akin to evolutionary stagnation.

[–] solivine 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is interesting to think about. In a scenario with options A or B, where I know nothing about either option, I suppose I would lean more towards A despite there being no reason to do so.

In the absence of other biases, I think our brain is kind of by design expected to produce some or you wouldn't be able to make decisions. E.g. a fork in the road goes left and right, maybe the right path has a slightly nicer looking tree along it so you pick that one even though it bares no relevance to the quality of the path.