the lazy bias argument

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But how do people NOT see the huge

Bias against one over another?

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Hypocritical!

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If you would like to answer the question above, more often than not you find yourself doing a deep dive down the “lazy bias” rabbit hole of stupidity.

Here’s what I mean. Pick your culture/political/society version of this question (the big one in the present is obviously, again, Trump) and the obvious answer to this question is that most objective thinking people would not see this one thing as a huge bias against one over another. I don’t care about the question, just as a generalization as soon as you see this question, and attached to ‘hypocrisy’, I can almost guarantee it will be the beginning of a superficial dance in which objectivity will offer the same answer over and over again (“it’s not the same”) and the lazy instigator will offer the same answer over and over again (“bias” and “hypocrisy”). That is objective reality. Unfortunately, that answer would quickly gets you to the rabbit hole opening. The rabbit hole opening is “ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you say that that’s because you’re biased.” And down we go the hole.

• It’s because you hate X. Because you love X person.

• You are a Democrat. You are a Republican.

• You went to this school. You didn’t go to school.

• You worked for X Company, foundation, nonprofit.

• You believe X.

• You grew up in an X neighborhood.

• Bla, bla, bla, bla, ……

The list is endless. The rabbit hole has no bottom. Provide an objective point of view that doesn’t agree with what the other person is thinking and, well, you are biased. Their reasoning isn’t really reason, just some random causation/correlation linkage.

By attempting to answer objectively and entering into a full deliberative discourse and constructive conversation, we instead shift into some less-than-intellectual combat where a bunch of stupid Goliaths lumber after Davids wielding only sanity as a weapon. It is a slugfest of lazy false equivalence versus nuance and depth of reason, battling their way down the rabbit hole of stupidity. In the darkness all nuance gets lost and the lazy thinking cuts like honed steel.

It’s insane, it’s absurd and it’s lazy. It’s intellectual nihilism.

Look. Everyone has some bias. But bias towards truth or facts is not really a bad bias. In fact, one would hope more people had this type of bias.

Which Leads me to depth and breadth.

So the suggestion is that because of ‘this one thing’ a person loses all ability to objectively approach something. Absurd. It reminds me of something that General Mark Milley said “yes, I have read the Communist Manifesto, but, no, this does not make me a communist.” Absolutely. Some things are indicative of a bias that can warp a perspective. But simplistically suggesting that everybody loses their entire ability to objectively view something because of something they have done, something they have read or somewhere that they work is ludicrous. No. Lazy. It’s lazy because depth and breadth of experience is actually the hard work necessary to push thru some bias. In other words, I can instinctually hate something, but, depth and breadth of experience suggests the probability of a conclusion is of higher value than my hatred, e.g., I hate communism but I read Communist Manifesto so that I can be less biased in how I consider options with regard to the system I live in (democracy and capitalism). It is actually the fact someone has done these things, got that education, read these things and made these types of decisions in the past that actually make them more objective. Ah. But in the fantasy lazy bias argument world, all that objective increasing activity is simply a means to parse out some bias. It’s stupid.

Which leads me to false equivalence and conflation which distorts context.

Context gets distorted through whataboutism. In this lazy thinking context world, the differences between the ‘whataboutisms’ don’t really matter to the lazy faithful. In a victim-driven mindset the institutions are always the enemy and my faith is always under attack. Even more absurdly, the ‘reason’ is an alternative universe projection of an existing belief (an extreme biased view of something). It is a common-sense world view unhampered by any real reason and objective rationality. There appear to be no limitations to an objective reality therefore the most superficial aspects become ‘equivalent’ and some fairly disparate differences becomes easily conflated. Its, well, stupidity at its best. But where this becomes annoying beyond the stupidity is when the false equivalence is used to suggest hypocrisy. Now. Let’s be clear. The world, particularly in politics, is rampant with hypocrisy. In fact, so much so, well, you don’t need to create any false equivalence to point it out. But hypocrisy is a lazy technique for lazy arguments.

To end this rant.

I will not argue that defending against misinformation and misleading headlines is easy. It isn’t.

I will not even argue that some of our existing biases can skew our views. They will.

But I will argue that substantive reasoning can offer a pathway to objectivity, if you put in the work. Its not something for the lazy. But let me really clear on something. Trump has always been amoral, always narcissistic, i.e., operated as if he is above the system, always a pathological liar and always danced on the dangerous edge of legality. Yeah. Someone is now shouting at their computer “he is biased” and “what a hypocrite!!”

Oh well.

Those are objective truths and offer context for anything he is faced. Judge the system’s actions based on that and not some lazy bias argument. Ponder.