definition⌗

A bias is, by definition, an inclination to one side; to influence; to prejudice; to prepossess.

When you are biased about something, you are not evaluating every option equally, you end up creating very bad decisions.

Bias has a negative connotation, and it should. Our biases are what hinder us to true transcendence. They’re often considered something eventual, meaning that you’ll never truly conquer biases, but you can mitigate them.

self-bias⌗

I maintain today that each person has a bias to themselves, and that they cannot evalute themselves clear of any bias.

Evaluation has to come from another source, another person. But even then, that person could either deceit ourself, or simply have as biased evaluation as us.

Even though humans are intelligent, they are still animals at end of the day. They aren’t composed of pure logic, but emotion and other forces that strongly effect their logical deductions.

deceit⌗

Deceit can be useful, and since bias uses deceit at it’s core, it can be mitigited or guided.

Some times people deceive us, but their deception could lead to great results. Such as when my mother would convince me the spoon filled with vegetables as a train.

This form of deception can prevent accurate evaluation of one’s self, mainly because any form of social interaction could be a form of deception. Deception, or atleast the idea of, is a constant in human interaction. Your choice of words, your tonality, your body posture all form a perspective, not the actual truth. Deceit is inevitable. Whether intentionally or unintentionally.

apathy⌗

Since you are biased to yourself, you have to constantly study others. Others are similar to your condition, and there isn’t much incentive to be biased around them.

We can clearly see a miserable person, an angry person, or a weak person. It’s very apparent. Contrast this to how see ourselves, and it’s a very sugar-coated version of very-salted version. It’s either too negative or too positive.

When you are analyzing yourself, you might feel strong emotions about an idea, whether true or false. These emotions can distract you from the original assessment, or just provide unnecessary gaps in your logic.

With others, apathy comes in real handy. Especially in assessing weak points about one’s self, or when assessing tricky truths.

To summarize, apathy is very much useful with the following inquiries:

  • motivations
  • routine
  • behaivour
  • social perception

empathy⌗

Apathy’s yin, Empathy, is also useful. It can be used to understand our own emotions. Generally, people feel very confused and defensive with their emotions. And they shut them out, which leads to the emotions coming back harder and strong, which causes more repression and so on.

It’s a natural process of pain and misery. I find that people soothe the many confusing, ugly, extreme, and beautiful emotions that we go through.

It closely resembles a cliche, that by looking outward you’ll understand yourself, but it’s much more than that.

There is a strong idea in teaching that when you teach, you learn more about the subject. This is because students often offer a different point of view, something so outside of your point of view, that when you try to explain it, and actually succeed, that understanding is compounded.

It is similar to when you frequently a place of several occasions, you attain different snapshots of the place, and your memory(of that place) gets strengthened by those snapshots. This is what, I think, studying other people does to a person, it further strengthes their core identity or atleast makes it more apparent.

That same idea, I think, applies to our emotions. When you truly observe people, and try to see from their point of view. You see another answer to your emotion, something that you didn’t think of before.

The odd thing about this is that it’s not required that the emotions of the other person to be the same as yours. It could be something as mundane as feeling bored, or something as extreme as pure hatred.

mitigation not cure⌗

Bias, inheritenly is, and will always be something constant. All choice is an illusion at the end of day, whether it is living, or reducing biases, or something more worldly.

But mitigating or neutralizing it, is not hopeless at all. You atleast want to take responsibility and ownership of your own biases, after all they are a part of your psyche. And a better psyche means a better life, at least in theory.

It’s a good ol’ case of “eh, this sucks, but it’s better than nothing”

Having biases and not treating them will render your logic weak, and recovery more distant. It is better to eat and swallow the bitter fruit, than to pretend it doesn’t exist and die out of starvation.

Especially when it comes to one’s weaknesses, strengthes and emotions. Our emotions rule us, we might fight against them, sure, but energy is mostly conserved when it comes to such sumptuous activites.

In either case, conquer your self-biases. Your repressed emotions. Your false self-evaluations. Your weaknesses. Treat each day as if you know nothing of yourself, and use people as the instrument to which you could explore yourself. Both the ugly and the beautiful.