Agreed, but nyan_sandwich touches on an interesting point.
Certainly, there are lots of situations where I have one set of cognitive structures that encourage me to behave one way (say, eating ice cream, or experimenting to discover what’s actually true about my environment, or whatever) and a different set encouraging me to behave a different way (say, avoiding empty calories, or having high confidence in what I was taught as a child, or whatever).
It seems to me that when I call one of those structures a “bias” I’m suggesting two things: first, that I don’t endorse it, and second, that it’s relatively broad in applicability.
But that in turn suggests that I can eliminate a bias simply by endorsing its conclusions, which is.. not uncontroversial.
Agreed, but nyan_sandwich touches on an interesting point.
Certainly, there are lots of situations where I have one set of cognitive structures that encourage me to behave one way (say, eating ice cream, or experimenting to discover what’s actually true about my environment, or whatever) and a different set encouraging me to behave a different way (say, avoiding empty calories, or having high confidence in what I was taught as a child, or whatever).
It seems to me that when I call one of those structures a “bias” I’m suggesting two things: first, that I don’t endorse it, and second, that it’s relatively broad in applicability.
But that in turn suggests that I can eliminate a bias simply by endorsing its conclusions, which is.. not uncontroversial.