My Bias Statement
By: Wei Styer
Tags: Perspective, Bias, Statement, Belief, Thoughts

My Bias Statement

What is Bias?

If you Google the word “bias”, you’ll be met with the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, which is as follows

Bias is a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief. In science and engineering, a bias is a systematic error. Statistical bias results from an unfair sampling of a population, or from an estimation process that does not give accurate results on average.

Basically, a bias is any existing predisposition that skews our thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors. While we often describe it as a negative thing, it’s mostly a human thing. Our backgrounds and experiences shape the way we see the world. These subconscious associations and assumptions come out in how we talk about the things that happen to and around us.

We’re all biased in one way or another. This helps our brain process our world quickly and helps us communicate to people who are like us. The problem comes when we don’t recognize and examine our biases or assume everyone thinks the same way.

Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash

My Bias(es)

I am married to a man who shares my values but not my worldview or background. This means we sometimes have heated discussions because we approach life differently. We usually want the same things, but we disagree on how best to get there.

Fundamental Thoughts About the World

We hear a lot about different stances in politics, faith, etc. but some of our core beliefs are actually responsible. Here are some things I believe about the world that you may not agree with.

People are fundamentally flawed.

I believe that people are capable of amazing things, but naturally respond in a self-centered manner. Everyone will fail at some point. Similarly… Things created or run by people are fundamentally flawed.

Any system or organization built or run by human beings is inherently flawed. Churches, businesses, the government — nothing is going to work perfectly, and we should expect that and account for it. 90% of things in the world have no “right” answer.

There are very few things that I believe to be absolutes in the world. Even things that are absolute (murder is wrong) may have multiple “right” solutions (how do we prevent murder?). The ends don’t justify the means. But means to no ends are just as unjustifiable.

Results matter. I think a lot of energy is wasted on things that don’t produce the actual desired outcomes. But if we throw away our morals to get the results we want, is the end result even valid? It is easier to change people’s behavior than their minds.

Our brains are making unconscious decisions all day long. It is easier to guide subconscious behavior through signals than *to try to reshape deep-seated thought patterns.

*Here’s an example of bias in action: I could just say “than to reshape…” but I wrote “to try to reshape…” because I think it’s incredibly difficult (maybe even impossible) to reshape a lot of core beliefs. I almost took out this sentence in editing, but left it to prove a point. Bias can be subtle, but that doesn’t make it less powerful. It takes time and energy to see when bias is influencing our thoughts or behavior.