bias Archives - Patricia Roberts-Miller

Batboy and democratic deliberation

image of batboy

[Image from here]

One of my several useless superpowers is picking the wrong line, especially at the grocery store. And it isn’t because the people ahead of me are jerks trying pay with pennies or something; it’s just that the moment I get in that line is the moment that bar codes are wrong, or the computer can’t handle some kind of payment reasonably, or toads start falling from the ceiling. Okay, not that last one, but close enough.

And, because of this really sucky superpower, I have spent a lot of time looking at, and sometimes reading, magazines in the checkout line. And The National Enquirer had a kind of bad car crash fascination for me. It seemed to me the Etch-a-Sketch of news sources. The Etch-a-Sketch, if you don’t know, was a really fun device on which you could create various drawings (within limits) and then shake it and the previous drawing would disappear.

That, it seemed to me, perfectly described The National Enquirer. Every issue wiped clean the slate of a previous one. And, yet, every issue presented its information as obviously true. I remember—even read—the issue when a major star died of cancer. The previous week had the headline that he had been completely cured of cancer through a miracle treatment! The issue announcing his death didn’t mention that previous error.

That failure to admit error is important because admitting error is at the heart of effective decision-making—whether you’re thinking about what car to buy, what media you consume, how you behave at work, what kind of relationship you want, what movie reviewers you should believe, how you treat others, and how you should vote. You can’t get better unless you admit you were wrong. If you never admit you have made a mistake, then you’ll keep making that mistake.

If you’re willing to admit you’ve made a mistake, that’s great. But if you treat that mistake as a one-off, and not really relevant, then you’re still not learning from your mistake.

The point is not just that The National Enquirer was wrong about that actor, but that it was wrong to present its information as certain. Learning from mistakes doesn’t just mean that we learn that this claim was wrong (that actor had not been miraculously cured) but that our source is imperfect and its information is not certainly true.

When I mention this to students, about various sources (all over the political spectrum), some of them will say something along the lines of, “Well, yeah, but they got this right.” When I argue with people (again, all over the political spectrum) who are citing completely false information (claims on which their source has been shown to be completely wrong), I can sometimes get them to admit that error, but they still intend to rely on that source. They still refuse to admit their source is unreliable because, they say, “they got this other thing right.”

And that’s assuming I can even get them to admit that their source was wrong. Too often, they’ll refuse to look at any source that says their favored source is wrong simply on the grounds that it disagrees with them. That’s kind of shocking if you think about it.

Here is a person claiming something is true, and they refuse to consider any evidence that they might be wrong, on the grounds that the source is biased because it says they might be wrong. It’s a perfect circle of ignorance.

Good decision-making isn’t about getting some things right; it’s about being willing to admit to being wrong. No matter what your profession, if you go through that profession refusing to consider any criticism of you, your actions, and/or your policies on the grounds that only “biased” people would criticize you, you’re running your business into the ground.

Imagine, for instance, being a doctor. You were trained to believe that infections are the consequence of miasma. Would it be reasonable for you to refuse to read any studies that said that you were wrong about infections? Would you be a good doctor if you refused to pay attention to anything that complicated or contradicted your understanding of infection?

You’d be a lousy doctor.

You’d be a lousy doctor not because you’re a bad person, or because you mean to hurt people, or even because you’re stupid, but because being right means being willing to be wrong. Far too many people reason on the basis of in-group loyalty (I’m right because this seems right to me, and everyone like me agrees about this), and won’t admit that they’ve ever been wrong, let alone that they rely on sources that have been wrong. There are major media sources that regularly engage in the equivalent of “this actor is cured and whoops, now he’s dead but we’re still a reliable source!” And the consumers of those sources never conclude that the persistent inaccuracy of a source is a reason to doubt its reliability.

And that is what is wrong with our current state of public discourse. Too many people aren’t willing to admit to being wrong, and if they do grant a fact or two here and there, they aren’t willing to give up on sources.

It doesn’t matter where on the political spectrum your sources are; what matters is
1) Are you getting your information from a source that links to opposition sources (that is, is the source so confident in its representation of the opposition that it gives you direct access to their arguments, instead of their mediated version);
2) Do your sources admit when they’re wrong, and admit corrections clearly and unequivocally, without scapegoating? A source that never admits error is not a more reliable source—it’s bigoted propaganda;
3) Does your source make falsifiable claims? That is, does your source spend all its time ranting about evil the other side is rather than making falsifiable claims about what your side will do?

Again, imagine that you’re a doctor, or that you’re a patient seeing a doctor, and you’re trying to decide whether to get surgery, try medications, or perhaps make major lifestyle changes. Would you think that the way that the pundits on Fox or Rachel Maddow or various tremendously popular people on youtube argue would be a good way to make a decision about your health?

They all argue different things, but they all argue the same way: the correct course of action is obvious, and everyone who disagrees is spit from the bowels of Satan, and if you’re a good [in-group] member, you’ll make this choice and refuse to listen to anyone who says it’s the wrong choice.

Refusing to listen to out-group sources, dismissing as biased anyone who tells you that you’re wrong, believing that the only problem is that we have to commit more purely to the in-group—those are terrible ways to make decisions, in every aspect of a life.

Imagine that you’re in a hospital bed, and you’re presented with a variety of options, or you’re a surgeon, and you’re trying to decide what to do, and a doctor comes to you and says, “I support Trump [or Warren, or Biden, or whoever], so this the right kind of surgery for you.” Or, perhaps, “I’m a Republican, so I’m going to choose this surgery.” As a patient or surgeon, you’d recognize that’s a terrible way to make decisions. A good surgeon would assess the choices regardless of politics; no even remotely competent surgeon would make a decision about a surgical practice on the basis of the political affiliation of the people advocating this practice versus that.

Since we recognize that loyalty to party would be a terrible way to make decisions about policies regarding our bodies, why not admit it’s equally terrible when it comes to policies about our body politic?

Chances are good that how you assess bias is irrational

Many people believe that a biased argument is irrational, and vice versa, and, so, one way to assess the rationality of an argument is to see whether it’s biased. That’s an irrational way to assess an argument, and one that nurtures irrationality.

What I have long found difficult about getting people to think in a more accurate way about how we think is that many people assume that you either believe there is a truth, and we all see it (naïve realism), or you believe that all points of view are equally valid.

It’s grounded in an old and busted model of how perception can work—that “rational” people just look at the world and see it in an unmediated (unbiased) way. And that direct perception of the world enables them to make judgments that are accurate and ring true.

One of the ways that our media (all over the political spectrum) engage in inoculation is to promote the false binary of one position being that kind of “unbiased” and obviously true position, and “biased” positions (all others). They point out to their choir that this position seems obviously true to them, so it must be the unbiased position. That’s the confusion that Socrates pointed out—that you believe something to be true doesn’t mean you know it to be true. You just believe you do.

Imagine that two dogs, Chester and Hubert, disagree as to whether little dogs are involved in the squirrel conspiracy to get to the red ball. Chester, and his loyal media, says to their base, “Hubert media is biased because it says little dogs aren’t conspiring with squirrels.” Chesterian media is inoculating its base against listening to any contradictory information. To the extent that it successfully equates “disagrees with us” and “biased,” any media—regardless of its place on the political spectrum—ensures that its audience can’t assess policies rationally.

That’s what far too much of our political media says—any source of information that gives information that contradicts or complicates our position is “biased” and therefore should be dismissed without consideration. And, as I said, that’s irrational.

It’s irrational because it’s saying that having a strong political commitment is irrational, but only if it’s an out-group political commitment. So, this isn’t really about the rationality of an argument, in terms of its internal consistency, quality of evidence, logical relationship of claims, but whether it’s in- or out-group.

It’s saying that people who believe what I believe are rational because they believe what I believe and I believe that my beliefs are rational and so I believe that anyone who disagrees with me is irrational because they don’t believe what I believe and what I believe is rational because it’s what I believe.

A rational position on an issue is one that is argued:
• via terms and claims that can be falsified,
• internally consistently in terms of its claims and assumptions,
• by fairly representing opposition arguments,
• by holding all interlocutors to the same standards.

Rationality has nothing to do with the tone of an argument, whether it appeals to emotions, whether the people making arguments are good people, or even whether you can find evidence to support your claims.

So, the argument that out-group media sources should be dismissed on the grounds that those sources are biased is irrational because it violates everyone one of those criteria. It’s a circular argument; it doesn’t consistently condemn bias (only out-group bias); it frames all out-group arguments as biased by bad motives; and it privileges in-group arguments.

To say that all media are biased is not to say that they are all equally reliable (or unreliable). It is to say that we are all biased, and we can assess sources to see if their biases cause them to engage in irrational argumentation. If we find that a source is consistently irrational, then it’s fine to dismiss the source as unreliable–not because it’s out-group, but because we’ve found it to fail so often.We should assess arguments on whether they’re rational; not whether they seem true to us.

That you believe, sincerely, deeply, and profoundly, that what you are saying is true doesn’t mean it is, let alone that it’s a belief you can defend rationally. Just because you sincerely believe you’re right doesn’t mean you’re Rosa Parks, refusing to give up your seat; you might be George Wallace, committing to segregation forever.

[Btw, if any of you would like to put pressure on cafepress to make the circular reasoning visual a t-shirt, count me in.]

On bias and projection

For complicated reasons, my book was given to a very conservative FOAF, who dismissed it on the grounds that I picked a conservative as my exemplar of a demagogue. The funny thing is: I didn’t. I picked a progressive. The sad thing is: he has been well-inoculated by his media.

This is someone I admire, because I know that he is a loving, supportive, compassionate, and smart father and husband. This is a good person, a kind person, and also very, very smart. And dead wrong. That person was engaged in projection. I didn’t pick a conservative; I picked a hero.

Earl Warren was Republican, yes. And I have rarely, but not never, voted Republican (and I haven’t always voted Dem or GOP). But Warren was a progressive Republican, who did a tremendous amount to clean up politics in California at a time when the California Democrat Party was often pretty awful. Had I been a California voter at the time, I would have voted for progressive Republicans.

Warren’s behavior on the Supreme Court was a bright spot in our nasty history about SCOTUS rulings; he overturned Plessy v. Ferguson; he got a unanimous decision. He changed American history for the better.

My point was that even really good people can find themselves in demagoguery. And so I picked an in-group rhetor—one of my heroes–as an example of demagoguery.

But this smart and good person (let’s call him John) dismissed my entire argument because he thought he had caught me out on secretly picking an out-group example. And I hadn’t. Compressed in that unhappy conclusion is what is wrong with our current political situation. John thinks that engaging in political discourse is not listening to the evidence of people who might disagree with you, but refusing to listen to anyone who might disagree, which he thinks is their being “biased.”

He rejected my argument about demagoguery on the grounds that it must be wrong because he believes I am a liberal, and therefore biased, and therefore my argument about demagoguery is biased. And I mean the term “rejected”—my sense is that he wasn’t even willing to consider it. I don’t care that he disagreed with me; I care that he believes he should not listen to anyone who disagrees with him. But I don’t really disagree with him. He just assumed I did because I’m not in-group. In other words, and this is important, he was biased not to listen to me. And so he didn’t.

My argument is that we all engage in demagoguery, and we are all drawn to engaging in demagoguery instead of engaging in the harder work of arguing about policy. That isn’t an argument he needed to dismiss. He never tried to understand my argument—he assumed that my argument was somehow an argument for my in-group. That was projection on his part.

My argument is that politics should be arguments about policy instead of some bizarre world in which there are only two options, and those two options are identities. Why would he dismiss that argument?

There are two possibilities: either he believes that his group has policies so weak that they can’t be defended through the reasonable standards of policy argumentation; or, he believes that “bias” makes a person’s entire argument dismissible.

He believes that, once you have determined someone to be “biased,” you don’t need to consider their argument. And, while that is what his media tells him, and what he might have learned in college classes on argumentation, that is a really flawed model of bias.

Again, this is a smart and good man, and, had he not been primed to reject any “out-group” information as “biased” and to assume that everyone only praises in-group and only condemns out-group, he might have read my argument differently. That assumption, that you would never criticize an in-group member, was projection.

But he was primed (or inoculated, to use the technical term) to reject any “out-group” arguments, as soon as he could find a way to see me as out-group. And that inoculation happened in two ways: first, he was repeatedly told that his policy agenda was the true body politic (his perception of the situation was objective); second, he was persuaded that the health of the body politic relied on one group being in control, and that anyone who disagreed with his political agenda was a kind of virus, so he shouldn’t even let their (my) ideas into his head.

He was persuaded that we are not in a democracy (in which, as the Federalist Papers, and various other documents argue, we benefit from disagreement) but a situation in which there is only one right policy agenda, and anyone who disagrees with that agenda should be crushed in any way necessary.

That’s really awful. It’s untrue, but I have to say that, crawling around the world of public argumentation, it’s the one thing on which far too many people agree (all over the rich world of non-binary political ideologies): we are in a moment of existential crisis, in which our group—the only good and true group—is threatened with extermination, and therefore anything we do to crush Them is justified; if we cannot win, we should at least make them lose.

We do not have a political world in which our options as a country are in zero-sum between two groups. We have never been there. We never will be there. For instance, many Libertarians, progressive Christians, conservative Christians, fiscal conservatives, and Progressives can agree that rehabilitation is a better choice than prison for first- and second-time drug offenders. If we stop thinking about politics as a binary, then we might also see that there are places of agreement as far as needing better health care.

Had Romney won, would Romneycare (aka Obamacare) have been the law of the land? Would John have supported Romneycare for the country had President Romney advocated it?

I think he would have.

Would many Dems have supported Romneycare had President Romney supported it? Probably not.

And that is what is wrong with our current political discourse.

Would I have voted for Romney? No. I didn’t. Would I have voted for Romneycare for the US. Hell, yes.

Can John say the same?

Does he put policy above party?

Here is the problem with that question: we are in a culture of demagoguery, in which every decision is crunched into a binary and then we can have a zero-sum WWE fight about the two options. We are in a world in which decisions are made badly.

My argument is that, when it comes to politics, John and all the very many other Johns all over the maps of political positions think politics is a zero-sum WWE fight between Dems and [whatever the GOP is currently putting forward as Republican policy]. In other words, I’m saying that John [and all the other Johns, who think that policy follows from identity, and our world is a binary between good and bad people] believe that politics is a question of identity. People in his in-group have good policies, and so should be supported, and people who aren’t in that group should be rejected without considering their arguments.

As it happens, reasoning that way—reduce the choices to two, make the decision on the basis of affective identification—is the basis of a lot of scams. It’s never the basis of good decision-making. But it’s always the basis of profitable media coverage.

So, what if John decided to reason, not by party, but by policy? What if John decided to argue about policies, and not identity? What if John decided that he would ignore party, and instead hold all people and parties to the same standard? What if John decided that he really valued this guy who said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”?

He would stop getting his information from rabidly partisan sources.

He would work to get information from various points of view. He would try to understand why people disagree with his policies. He would treat political issues the same way he would treat other questions.

Imagine, for instance, that there is an argument about how to manage sewage for a large-ish house in an area with clay soil. Would John only listen to experts of his in-group? If so, I have some shares in the Brooklyn Bridge I’d like to sell.

No, he wouldn’t. And he hasn’t.

We are in a world in which media tell us that all issues are questions of good v. bad people. I disagree with John about many things, and I know he is a good person.

I could have done this same post with people on other places on the political spectrum (not binary, or continuum), but I really admire John. He is good people. And I think his policy concerns are legitimate (which isn’t to say I agree with them—I don’t, but I might be wrong, and he might be right). It isn’t that I think his arguments are wrong; I think his way of thinking about politics is wrong—as a zero-sum battle between two identities.

That way is unhappily common all over the digital world, as I unfortunately know.

I won’t say that “both sides” do that, because that’s still accepting the media-convenient but always-demagogic premise of there being two sides.

People have beliefs; people have values. Countries have policies. Let’s argue about them. That someone disagrees with you—which, in our demagogized culture, is reason not to listen to them—is a reason to listen, not reject.

John only criticizes out-group and only praises in-group, and he projected that on to me.

I think we all need to criticize in-group. Warren was a good man. So is John. I think Warren was wrong to support race-based mass imprisonment, and I think John is wrong to support Trump. But I think they are both good people.