Unconscious

I'm out of work early, because I went in early. We had a product launch today that I needed to show up for. After, there was a session we had to sit in on about unconscious bias. Unsurprisingly, I discovered I wasn't very biased. Admittedly though, there is something to be said about raising awareness and urging people to ask themselves difficult questions. I'm sure I do carry some sort of bias, but not any of the ones they'd mentioned during the talk. It was refreshing to realize that I instinctively utilize the practices they suggest for combating bias. Once the class was over though, I got to thinking. All of my life I've been biased against having sex with a man. Always, when confronted with the choice between a nice, slippery vagina and a hard cock, I choose the vagina. Why? What's wrong with me? From where did this prejudice arise? The same with anal sex. But, I'm aware now. This weekend I think I'll kill two birds with one bone at a gay bar in the Castro.

What I found most fascinating though, was the bit about confirmation bias. Special care was taken to indicate that we have a strong inclination to believe the things we want to believe. Can't this same logic be applied to the concept of unconscious bias? What if researchers performing studies and gathering data have their own biases toward proving unconscious bias? The speaker also noted that bias is nondiscriminatory, that it affects all people equally via inculturation; women are biased against other women and blacks are biased against other blacks. The same is true for the sciences and academia; no one is exempt. To me, in a philosophical sense, this seemed to suggest the studies may be paradoxically invalidated by the very thing they attempt to validate. How bizarre.

I'm mostly joking about the above critique, but it did make me think about the post-internet state of the world. Much of the data generated by the information-age seems to dizzy instead of dispel, to confuse instead of clarify. There's such a proliferation of information that any hypothesis or idea might eventually be proven if one looks long enough in search of supporting evidence. It perpetuates a looming, and pervasive sense of doubt. Everything is shrouded in it. Hyper-deliberation and chronic hesitancy take the place of decisiveness. Everyone wants to collect as much information as possible to help make the most informed, well-educated decision. Fear of embarrassment seems to have risen dramatically and everyone with a reclining sofa-chair and a six-pack of Bud Lite has become an authority on everything - especially the reasons why you're wrong - and they've got the articles to prove it. It's strange that we focus our efforts and energies on things as petty and pathetic as pedantry and smugness. These comments, remarks and rebuttals don't come from a place of earnest desire to educate and enlighten, they come from a place of insecure competitiveness. It's a form of intellectual bullying. Those who participate in this practice take pride in condescension when inflicting their beliefs and ideas on you as though they were dogma. They want you to assert their own superiority over you so they can feel better about their own confusion, the dark uncertainty in their hearts. The cycle sustains itself.

How do you break that cycle though? I'm not entirely sure you can. Everyone has an opinion, and they share them more readily - and louder - than ever. Every day is a social media extravaganza in customized-confirmation bias. Our feeds are tailored to our needs. We consume a hand-crafted stream of preselected, powerfully media-centric propaganda supplied by a small but influential group of content creators. It concretizes our worldview and insulates us from anything which might be contrary to our own. Scary stuff. Scarier still is that all of it is being watched and monitored. Not only by advertising companies studying your spending habits, but by government and law enforcement agencies. It’s only a matter of time before journalistic and whistleblower protections are eroded. The reach of the NSA/FBI into your personal data is already being expanded. The right to privacy and protections against unlawful searches and seizures will slowly come into jeopardy.

Knowledge is power. And those in power know it.