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Your point is very poignant. Perhaps people should drop the pretense of unbias and wear their bias on their sleeves? It’s not like that’s too far from the curre
by LocalH 5y ago
Your point is very poignant. Perhaps people should drop the pretense of unbias and wear their bias on their sleeves? It’s not like that’s too far from the current meta. Everyone is biased to all hell while saying on the tin “fair”, “unbiased”, “balanced”, or other weasel words
- croon 5y agoThat's not my point. Everyone is unbiased until pointed out where/how they are biased. Maybe that is every action of every person on the planet, but in my biased opinion some are clearly less biased than others, and it's not that hard to compare.
- LocalH 5y agoIt's closely related if it's not your actual point. Some people actively try to minimize their bias, some lean into it. Also, not all bias is harmful. At some level, it's also an essential component of human existence.
- _0ffh 5y agoQuite so! The reasoning (or excuse) with some folks seems to be "As I'm likely to be biased anyway, I may just as well be a bald-facedly lying propagandist", which is an even bigger problem!
- inglor_cz 5y agoThis sounds like presumption of innocence in criminal court, but being biased isn't a guilt (and certainly shouldn't carry any penalty), it is, at least in my view, similar to being a left-handed or a right-handed person.
- croon 5y agoI wasn't focusing on guilt. I pointed out the logical fallacy in you stating the burden of proof was on the fact checker.
- inglor_cz 5y agoYou consider "being unbiased" as a default in a world where most people are biased. This is not the same as "not beating your wife". Vast majority of people are indeed innocent of such crimes, so there is no problem treating them as innocent by default. I would personally be happy if the medium didn't try to prove its absence of bias, which would indeed be hard, but at least tried to prove that it gives platform to sufficiently different views. Note that we speak about "real world" proofs (preponderance of evidence etc.), not pure abstract mathematical logic which cannot be applied fully in real, messy human society.
- croon 5y ago> You consider "being unbiased" as a default in a world where most people are biased. Again, it's not about being default, it's about not being possible to prove, which you asked for in your original post. The number of people or publications being 1% or 99% is irrelevant. If someone is biased, it's trivial to point out how, and if they're not, it's impossible to prove so. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot > Note that we speak about "real world" proofs (preponderance of evidence etc.), not pure abstract mathematical logic which cannot be applied fully in real, messy human society. This I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. Logic is basically a flow chart where things either follow or don't. It's absolutely applicable to real world messy human society.