I could write a book about your comment. I am incredibly impressed how well you articulated our "human subject biases" - that is an excellent starting point for understanding the human condition, the root of all of our bias.

It isn't only instinct tho. Heritage and culture. Societal beliefs. Personal experience. Expectations. What we recall and forget, how and when we recall - all automatic functions of memory. Your brain is biased and actively attempts to deliver a reality that adheres to that bias - it can do so. An example is that we don't choose what we look at or when we do - to maintain a smooth image, without choppiness, our eyes dart to the next object of our attention before our eyes begin to move.

Perception is reality. We see what we want to see... except that we rarely actively choose to look, see and observe - we outsource the whole thing. If buying a new car is in the back of your mind bc it's necessary, your subconscious will see your anxiety, and high light every car dealership to you in a hundred mile radius - that can also be a little stressful - it's trying to help.

You don't actually think about the words that come out of your mouth in conversation - nobody does that at speed of talk. We just have a mental idea prompt and we talk.

All that we don't decide outright is fundamentally biased - that's the root of it, what has been before, what we/the body liked and how to get more of that and nothing it doesn't want. The choice of tacos or burgers - the presentation of your "craving" as maybe one or the other is biased framing.

Most of what the endless stream of thoughts says - the words that flow into our conscious mind, often for reasons not clearly defined, all of that is bias.

The intellect and knowledge we accumulate is what we use with logic and reason to make sense of reality as we live it - knowledge once learned becomes a newspaper unless well tended - unchanging, unadaptable and less applicable over time.

An old dog can learn new tricks but it might have to let go of the tricks it thinks it knows now - so an old dog just doesn't do that. Old tricks still be old tho - want isn't part of the adapt or die equation.

All of this is bias, fundamental bias - as humans all experience aspects of these things but no two people have identical bias it cannot simply be ignored.

This is the base of the "right view" that Buddha talked so much about. We think we are something we are not, that we do things we do not and the stuff we do we don't know we do or why we do anything at all. Where we sit amidst all this automation and optimization is critical.

We are not what thinks. We are what is aware of the thoughts being thunk. The view from there is better, like 3rd person view vs 1st person in video games. Most of the body is like this, most of our habits and routines are just habit and routine, with nothing real behind them - more like randomness repeated into normalcy.

Like, one day you decide to read a mystery series and you enjoy them. You begin to read them when you wake up. Then you finish the series. Ten years later you still read every morning but it doesn't matter what.

The last movement that your body made... did you consciously decide to move? Did you decide to scratch your arm? Have you ever drank all the coffee without realizing it til the cup was at your lips? Ever drive for hours a very familiar route and realize you can't exactly remember doing most of it. Our brain fill in the corners of rooms for us - ceilings at familiar places can surprise us, bc we've never bothered to look up. When you walk, do you decide to take a step?

Everything you are, all that you have not actively decided to be, is essentially just bias. That is what most people are but that doesn't make it correct, there is a right view that reveals what is.

This is a rant. This is huge tho and deserving of one, especially on a dead comment thread.

Scientists be dealing with all this bias too, they are no different from you.