Thought Question #2: Belief and Bias

Belief and Bias: Beliefs that influence our sense of self appear to be more difficult to relinquish once formed. In order to avoid conflict within ourselves and feel some sense of security, we refrain from considering the fact that we may believe things with limited evidence. Or, in some cases, with no evidence at all. We are inherently biased towards our own beliefs and understanding.

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With rejection of information being more effortful than acceptance, it’s more likely that we will avoid the process of rejecting our beliefs. I found this to be extremely applicable to our current technological era and effortless browsing. In the era of accelerated technological progress, the spread of misinformation has infested our internal databases with deluded ways of processing information. We follow the news outlets, websites, and people, in search for information that confirms our beliefs and biases, hence the “effortless” in effortless browsing. It is much easier to acquire information that is readily available at our fingertips than exercising our cognitive curiosities by further researching hazy claims.

Our information processing and rationalization strategies have become lackadaisical and merely affirmative. We process information within a framework that has a tendency to marshal the points in its favor.

I would imagine a great amount of information we think we comprehend is actually just our ability to justify our claims in a way that fits our underlying motives, beliefs, and ideological frameworks.

We live in a society where confirming our beliefs and biases has become especially easy and effortless due to an abundant amount of information readily available at our fingertips.

We now have to put effort and curiosity into building a reliable internal database. Gaining the skills and awareness needed to form a proper evaluation of topics at hand takes a certain type of will. This includes a hunger to learn and a will to open up our framework to new interpretations, allowing us to possess a well-rounded view on the world around us.

The influence of reputation is also a factor that contributes to how we represent propositions. Once our representations are threatened or questioned on a public platform, we fear how this might affect our reputation. This will either motivate us to make alternatives by welcoming in alternative interpretations or become defensive. The latter seems more apparent in our culture.

I believe the reward that comes with putting effort into becoming a perceptive individual heavily outweighs effortless browsing, despite the threat that may come to our sense of self or reputation while accepting information that may not align with our pre-existing ideological framework.

Accepting that our internal knowledge and belief systems may consist of many anomalies and errors allows room for further development of those systems. If we close ourselves off to development, expansion, and additional evidence, for the sake of protecting ourselves, or maintaining our ego, we are much less likely to grow and evolve on a personal ​and​ societal scale.

Thought Questions

Is the accuracy of a ‘belief’ even measurable or does it merely depend on the strength of one’s justifications?

How come it’s not more common for people to say, “I don’t know enough about this topic to form a comprehensive proposition on this matter”?

Why do we put more value on the security of our reputations than holding comprehensive beliefs?

How much does one’s personal expression of their understanding and knowledge account for the actual fluency that is potentially available?

Could becoming more aware of our desire to reject or accept information make us more likely to analyze information more thoroughly?

. . . My hope is yes. The goal of these thought questions is to make us question what we think we know. Our subjective understanding of our knowledge may very well have many inaccuracies in itself…