The word “Bias” is often associated with the word “prejudice” which has become loaded with rather negative associations. (People don’t like others to think of them as “prejudiced”) Especially as I am not a native english speaker until a week ago (I read LW since a month) I didn’t make a distinction between bias and prejudice as in my language the 2 words translate more or less the same.
Maybe the process of “debiasing” should include to associate the word “bias” with “cognitive bias : a pattern of poor judgment” which every human brain has and there is nothing to be ashamed of.
Introducing “bias” in terms of estimation might be easier:
Bias is a systematic error in estimation. In the case of cognitive biases (as opposed to, for instance, statistically biased samples) we’re talking about cases where people reliably make certain errors in estimation or prediction, for instance in estimating how long a project will take or whether an investment of effort or money is worthwhile.
The word “Bias” is often associated with the word “prejudice” which has become loaded with rather negative associations. (People don’t like others to think of them as “prejudiced”) Especially as I am not a native english speaker until a week ago (I read LW since a month) I didn’t make a distinction between bias and prejudice as in my language the 2 words translate more or less the same. Maybe the process of “debiasing” should include to associate the word “bias” with “cognitive bias : a pattern of poor judgment” which every human brain has and there is nothing to be ashamed of.
Introducing “bias” in terms of estimation might be easier:
Bias is a systematic error in estimation. In the case of cognitive biases (as opposed to, for instance, statistically biased samples) we’re talking about cases where people reliably make certain errors in estimation or prediction, for instance in estimating how long a project will take or whether an investment of effort or money is worthwhile.