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I agree with the overall premise, but I disagree with conflating our physiological perceptual limitations with the psychological biases that color our attempts
by zuminator 7y ago
I agree with the overall premise, but I disagree with conflating our physiological perceptual limitations with the psychological biases that color our attempts to exercise pure logic and reason.
If you experience an optical illusion and it's explained to you, your reasoning power will enable you to fully accept that your perceptions are incorrect. But if you have a bias that causes you to have a strong opinion on a controversial subject, even if someone tries to point out to you that your bias is rendering your perceptions invalid, and even if you accept in theory that that is the case, it likely won't change your strongly held belief.
For example if you have a strong opinion regarding the existence of the Christian God, and someone tells you that your bias is affecting your opinion, you might concede that you have some kind of bias, but most likely you'll continue to believe that your opinion is right.
- narag 7y agoI believe that the strongest root of bias is society. Paraphrasing Sartre, bias is the others. So I disagree with the other thing the author is conflating: that society often holding ridiculous opinions is because individuals can't think rationally. It's the other way around: individuals can't think very rationally because they're pressed by society.