Bias, Belief, and Knowledge Writings
- Brent Wiseman
- Jan 12, 2017
- 6 min read
Written sometime in late 2016: I am never more cautious with my thoughts and beliefs than when I become confident in something. It’s like I have a background process running in my mind at all times. The moment my confidence in an idea reaches a certain height, the level of scrutiny it must endure to maintain itself grows. Fools don’t typically know they’re fools and they don’t ever question the ideas they hold after they’ve made the decision to believe them. This fact is one that haunts me. I can forgive myself the occasional foolish act, but I do not want to be a fool.
Nov. 3rd, 2016
As I’ve said, my main drive in life is truth, but not the truth of conspiracies or secrets or ancient lore. Though enticing in a different way, they are meaningless in the end. When my mind boots up, the programs that my brain holds on the meaning of life and the like, it views all of humanity's actions as arbitrary. I find humans simply a part of nature. We’re intelligent, but not otherwise much different from the other animals that roam this earth - worried about survival, territory, power, mating, and to plume our peacock feathers out, hoping to seem impressive to others. Humanity and what they have created is, by far, the most impressive ant farm that we know of, yet it’s still just an ant farm. People generally seem to think that, seeing as we’re judging ourselves and not a different animal, it constitutes a different viewpoint and kinder, more poetic conclusion. We're "special". I don’t agree. The truth I seek is that which only philosophy can answer, and I still don’t even know the question I am seeking the answer to.
12/8/16 I’ve noticed that the ‘default’ for human emotion when one runs into another who doesn’t share the same views is the assumption that the person must be ‘bad’. Most of the time it is met with anger, but occasionally, from the most ironically empathetic of these judgemental people, there is pity. If you’re Christian and see an atheist or Muslim or Buddhist, the go-to assumption is that they’re either heathens, sent by the devil to tempt the God-fearing folk of the world, or there is sadness for a human led astray. Even though I find both opinions contemptible (and hypocritical for me to criticize, I know), I wish there were more of the latter, rather than the former. The first seems the much more common. I’d wager that this comes from the defense mechanism to meet disagreement with passionate anger. To do this with a clear conscious requires thinking the opposition inherently “bad”, hence, such an assumption is made.
This is a subject I’ve been passionate about, myself, yet it’s a tricky one. How can I hypocritically chide people for ignorantly assuming they must be correct in their notions? I haven’t found the answer to that, but I’ve tried to mitigate the potential damage by having very few foundational tenets that are nigh impossible to argue guiding my beliefs: Everything needs evidence, humans are inherently fallible and biased (including me) so I must tread carefully with my beliefs, and empathy. As long as I adhere to these few things and keep them in mind in all I do, I couldn’t really fault myself for any wrong conclusion I could come to. If I follow these properly, I’d never be ashamed of any beliefs I hold if eventually proven wrong. I’m attempting to never again attach my bias to anything (of consequence, anyway. TSM = Best LoL NA). I now look at democrats with the same scrutiny as republicans, atheists the same as religious, philosophers the same as a random stranger on a train. Being truly free of bias is likely a pipedream, but a pursuit of which I find to be one of the most noble endeavors one could ever undertake.
2/9/16 I think people need to ask themselves why arguments about climate change feel so similar to political donnybrook bullshit. It’s solely political, and in no circumstance are people less likely to adhere to fact than when politics gets involved. Perhaps religion, actually, but the point is that it is guided by passion for your ‘team’, not by evidence and fact. “Know thyself”. Learn psychology. Learn to identify and restrain your biases and make informed decisions and arguments in spite of them - not based on them.
Mid 2015? I didn't used to date my google.doc. I can only go by position on the page for older writings.
Of all the incorrect thoughts in the world, I believe most are given directly or indirectly to children from their parents and guardians. This process is the main source of prejudice, religion, morals and ethics, etc. You, of course, need to teach your children, and you can only do your best. You don’t realize what beliefs you incorrectly hold because you either can’t understand why it’s wrong or because you don’t question what YOUR parents taught you. If a person wasn’t even told of the possibility of religion until their minds had developed around age 20 and you then told them about God, they would think you crazy because almost all facets of religion would contradict what they had observed their entire lives. Almost all Muslims believe what they do because they were taught by a parent or guardian - not because they were asked IF they believed it, but because they were told TO believe it at a young age and not question it. That is the definition of indoctrination and it is exactly the same with Christians and every other serious religion. This is why it is important to me to not believe anything my parents or anybody else has taught me until I weigh it against what I have observed in my own life.
I think that’s almost a rite of passage in a person’s life that almost all adults have experienced - I’d guess at the latest somewhere from 18-25 years old: The realization that your parents aren’t always right. On the same token, you must realize that no matter how much you think and how intelligent you are, when/if you have children, you’ll pass along some wrongheaded things as well. The only people who only speak the truth are those who don’t speak at all. If you believe everything you believe to be true is true, you are a fool. Most people would accept that at least a few things they believe are probably wrong, though they can’t say what exactly those things are, obviously. This is why I’m extremely interested in Descartes “I think, therefore, I am” debacle and epistemology.
What is knowledge? If you are reasonable and know for almost certainty that a few of your beliefs you hold are wrong, however small and inconsequential they might be, how can you be 100% certain in anything without proof deserving of Descartes? Better than that. Infallible proof. Unquestionable proof. Proof in the most literal definition, of which “I think, therefore, I am” is unworthy of the claim. If you then say you believe in your beliefs to a 99% degree of certainty, can it then be considered knowledge? If you’re less than 100% sure, it is, at least in part, a guess. A gamble. Knowledge is ‘to know’. Does a gambler ‘know’ that a ‘7’ will be rolled when it’s only his best guess? Does it change anything if he’s actually right? I’d say he didn’t ‘know’ what was going to be rolled, and if he wins his bet, he still didn’t know at the time. His guess may have been correct, but it was never knowledge. I have literally no knowledge and many many guesses. How many are wrong?
“Ridiculous. Being a good person doesn't require you to be free of bad thoughts. It is having them, but choosing not to act on them.”
““What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort ?” - Paarthurnax, Elder Scrolls
"Much of the emotional suffering in the world comes from the substitution of power for value. The curse of our times is that so many people have developed the habit of seeking to feel temporarily more powerful when they feel devalued. This leads almost inevitably to power struggles and some degree of abuse of others, if acted out, or, if held in, to some level of depression. Those afflicted with this terrible, though common habit lose sight of behavioral possibilities that would make them feel more valuable when they most need it—when the feel devalued. They grow alienated from their more humane values, which makes them feel progressively less valuable. To compensate, they inflate their egos to fragile proportions, which seem to need more and more power as defense. This dynamic, fueled by the systematic substitution of power for value, leads to what is commonly and erroneously considered the narcissistic constellation of personality disorders."
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