mardi 27 mai 2014

Issues in Bias

For the practitioner of skepticism, one core activity is weeding your mental garden. I find all sorts of unsavory crap growing there whenever I skimp on my maintenance duties.



So, I am starting this thread to rail against my own deficiencies, and invite others to do the same. Let's be mutually civil, while we fess up to things we know still hold us back, or help each other identify sources of bias we may not have thought about controlling for previously.



To those (few) still believing in their own infallibility, I suggest you keep your perfection to yourself. Everyone else is invited.



...



I'll keep it light for starters.



Anecdotally, I perceive a rough relation between what one might call ethical blindness and self-interest (well, tell me something I don't know).



For example, from the point of view of society, I observe the following apparent effects:



(1) Slavery was not seen as unethical until society had a mechanized alternative to agricultural labor.

(2) Women's rights were not fully given legitimacy until enough home automation was in place to replace physical labor.

(3) Animal welfare and rights did not play a significant role until we stopped using animals for work and war.



(Today, I see a regression wrt (1). That is, now that labor is in great excess, increasingly the lower classes are subjected to more statements implying they are inferior, useless, lesser, and so on. I find conversations with the super-rich, somewhat present in my life for reasons I must keep private, are stellar opportunities to observe analogues of (1) in action.)



So, one question I ask myself is, where in my own thinking might this sort of perverse logic still be in place?



In my case, I realize I still mentally reserve a few tasks for the missus, and am a bit sneaky in my laziness. There is a bit of work in that area I still need to do (doesn't help that my wife is a chef, and my cooking is near toxic.)



I have more on bias than just the above, but first I would like to see if anyone else would like to do some gardening.





via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/SL7SWS

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