Discussion 3 | What Is Bias?

Summary and interpretation of two sources.

If you have a brain you have biases.

Bias (not unreasonably) gets a bad rep. The first thing that comes to mind for most people is some form of hate--misogyny, for example--but this is just one (nasty) manifestation of a basic process of human cognition. Heuristics, as someone whose fond of fancy words would call them, allow for efficient decision-making, especially in the absence of information. Imagine you're on Telegraph at 1:00am. Chances are you would be more likely to be worried about a guy who looked homeless than a guy of the same build wearing nice clothes, I would be. Is that fair, no. It also not rational, no deliberation went into assessing that hypothetical guy. That part of heuristic thinking can often lead us astray. Neuro-psychiatrist Dilip V. Jeste in their book, Wiser, details a few ways that heuristic thinking can "lead to memory errors, inaccurate judgments, and faulty logic," like our tendency to seek out or push away new information that confirms or rejects our per-existing beliefs. (p147) A relevant observation given the context of the current dogmatic division in American Politics. Luckily we're not doomed by our psychology to tear apart the fabric of American democracy, at least not according to columnist Gary Abernathy in his Wall Street Journal opinion piece: "The simple fix to our polarization: Befriend someone you disagree with." Abernathy's message is simple: "Those who haven’t tried it should...make friends with people who disagree with you politically." (Abernathy, 2021)