The ConserveLiberty Blog
Dec 2, 2014
Narrative Bias
Offered by David Apollo
I have written before on the observation that most people are People of Faith, and that few people are People of Fact.
And, to remind the new reader (and irritate the regular reader) I should also point out that ConserveLiberty does not believe in extremes, but uses them to illustrate a point, as we all do. Thus, for this behavior contrast (or any of the others) we do not find a lot of people who are 100% Persons of Faith or 100% Persons of Fact. Rather, most of us exist along a spectrum in this regard.
All of us must make judgements based on limited information, and therefore use belief- or faith-based judgements and perspectives in order to make decisions and go about our normal lives. We all have the requirement for and the ability to do that in common.
The distinction between predominantly faith and fact-based personalities is uncovered with numerous litmus tests, one of them occurring when additional information becomes available. Does the individual with a fact-limited judgement take the new information into consideration, or do they ignore it? Do they take new information into consideration, but only selected new information? If it is selected new information, what are the criteria for judging the new information credible and thus worthy of buttressing a held judgement?
While there are all sorts of very good reasons for selecting carefully which information sources are to be considered valid for helping us firm up our judgements, there are also several debilitating criteria as well. Debilitating from the point of view of both accuracy and spirituality.
What distinguishes the Person of Faith from the Person of Fact is that the faith-based gatherer of new information generally focuses on new information that supports their previously held beliefs. They generally ignore new (or old) information that may contradict their beliefs. The Person of Fact, on the other hand, while also being selective about new information to consider, will allow information which both supports and contradicts their currently held "best guesses."
In fact, it is probably fair to say that while both peoples of Faith and Fact have beliefs and best guesses, People of Fact have more "best guesses" than People of Faith. People of Faith have more beliefs.
What explains this? Dear Reader, you are reading an article posted on the ConserveLiberty web resource. Our best guess is that the explanation lies in our Personality Behavior and Perception Spectrum Filters - filters for short!
Does ConserveLiberty believe the explanation is in our filters? Since the author, David Apollo, is more fact oriented, it would not be accurate to say we believe so. But it is ConserveLiberty's best guess!
Today, we focus on one of the filters that leads us to the "narrative bias" that makes our judgements sticky. By sticky we mean "difficult to change, but easy to make more firm." Multiple filters influence our narrative bias, but the one we will focus on today we will refer to as "Approval Seeking."
The Approval Seeking Personality Behavior and Perception Spectrum Filter (Approval Filter for short) has not yet been written up in greater detail within ConserveLiberty's Personality Section. However, suffice it to say that it is important for most of us (some more than others) to have the approval of those we deem important to us, those we love, those who have standards we respect. It is important to us that we approve of ourselves. It is important to us, from a Religious Filter perspective, to have the approval of God. Or, for atheists and agnostics, to believe we would have the approval of (the) god if there was one, even though we don't believe there is one and are not quite sure what that would be if there was one. That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
I had a dream a while back, related to this issue, and made the two audio recordings (above and below) for description and insights upon waking.
The gist of these - summarized briefly:
- Dream used as prop a "drug" that had the effect of causing someone to perceive and remember all things just as they are without any gloss or narrative bias.
- Without bias, raw information can cause increased personal stress.
- We often apply bias to support our desired self image (credible, moral, etc.) and world view.
- In dream, drug's effect was temporary. (Just as are our normal attempts to regard without bias.)
- Related to Judeo-Christian notion of Original Sin, which was called out specifically as eating from "The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil". "You can do whatever you want, but don't do that!"
- Human nature draws us to do this, however, because of wanting to be "approvable" or "justified."
- Because we are wanting to be on the "approved side of things", the biases we apply generally distort the perception of the actual truth.
- Sin is defined (in this resource) as "Alienation from the Truth". It is not thought of here as an event transgression, and something that might be forgivable. Rather, it is a state of being. It cannot be "washed away" as some portray it, but, it is more like a fog that may be lifted or cleared, if only temporarily.
- Thus, applying biases is the root cause of our alienation from Truth, and thus is the Original, or Root, or Foundational Sin."
- The irony between the motivation for applying biases and their outcome is ... often tragic. (And, admittedly, often amusing.)
Now, we can apply the discussion (actually, monologue!) above to a variety of events that happen around us every day.A particularly poignant example has occurred recently around the same time as this writing, with the rioting in Ferguson, MO. The events in Ferguson are not easy to simplify, because the situation is truthfully complex.
- Differences of opinion that cannot seem to get resolved regardless of points made in good faith.
- Offenses taken when none other than a description of relevant facts are intended.
- Religious or political points of view that are demonized unfairly (as opposed to fairly!)
- And so on.
I include the essay below, written by Thomas Sowell as an example of the second. The original article can be found at Opinions Versus Facts, 02 Dec 2014, Townhall.com.
- On the one hand, there simply are people with an excessive Violence Personality Spectrum Filter that in reality are simply taking advantage of opportunities to break things and hurt people, because that is what they would rather be doing among all other options before them.
- On the other hand, there are also folks who quite simply formed an opinion, encouraged by their own narrative bias, and held onto that opinion and strengthened it regardless of the facts as they became known.
- Other issues not important to elucidate here for this purpose.
Consider thoughtfully:
Opinions Versus Facts
By Thomas Sowell
December 02, 2014
Everyone seems to have an opinion about the tragic events in Ferguson, Missouri. But, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, "You're entitled to your own opinion but you're not entitled to your own facts."
Soon after the shooting death of Michael Brown, this 285-pound young man was depicted as a "gentle giant." But, after a video was leaked, showing him bullying the owner of a store from which he had stolen some merchandise, Attorney General Eric Holder expressed displeasure that the video was leaked. In other words, to Holder the truth was offensive, but the lie it exposed was not.
Many people who claimed to have been eyewitnesses to the fatal shooting gave opposite accounts of what happened. Some even gave accounts that contradicted what they themselves had said earlier.
Fortunately, the grand jury did not have to rely on such statements, though some in the media seemed to. What the grand jury had, that the rest of us did not have until the grand jury's decision was announced, was a set of physical facts that told a story that was independent of what anybody said.
Three different medical forensic experts -- one representing Michael Brown's parents -- examined the physical facts. These facts included the autopsy results, Michael Brown's DNA on the door of the police car and on the policeman's gun, photographs of the bruised and swollen face of policeman Darren Wilson and the pattern of blood stains on the street where Brown was shot.
This physical evidence was hard to square with the loudly proclaimed assertions that Brown was shot in the back, or was shot with his hands up, while trying to surrender. But it was consistent with the policeman's testimony.
Moreover, the physical facts were consistent with what a number of black witnesses said under oath, despite expressing fears for their own safety for contradicting what those in the rampaging mobs were saying.
The riots, looting and setting things on fire that some in the media are treating as reactions to the grand jury's decision not to indict the policeman, actually began long before the grand jury had begun its investigation, much less announced any decision.
Why some people insist on believing whatever they want to believe is a question that is hard to answer. But a more important question is: What are the consequences to be expected from an orgy of anarchy that started in Ferguson, Missouri and has spread around the country?
The first victims of the mob rampages in Ferguson have been people who had nothing to do with Michael Brown or the police. These include people -- many of them black or members of other minorities -- who have seen the businesses they worked to build destroyed, perhaps never to be revived.
But these are only the first victims. If the history of other communities ravaged by riots in years past is any indication, there are blacks yet unborn who will be paying the price of these riots for years to come.
Sometimes it is a particular neighborhood that never recovers, and sometimes it is a whole city. Detroit is a classic example. It had the worst riot of the 1960s, with 43 deaths -- 33 of them black people. Businesses left Detroit, taking with them jobs and taxes that were very much needed to keep the city viable. Middle class people -- both black and white -- also fled.
Harlem was one of many ghettos across the country that have still not recovered from the riots of the 1960s. In later years, a niece of mine, who had grown up in the same Harlem tenement where I grew up years earlier, bitterly complained about how few stores and other businesses there were in the neighborhood.
There were plenty of stores in that same neighborhood when I was growing up, as well as a dentist, a pharmacist and an optician, all less than a block away. But that was before the neighborhood was swept by riots.
Who benefits from the Ferguson riots? The biggest beneficiaries are politicians and racial demagogues. In Detroit, Mayor Coleman Young was one of many political demagogues who were able to ensure their own reelection, using rhetoric and policies that drove away people who provided jobs and taxes, but who were likely to vote against him if they stayed. Such demagogues thrived as Detroit became a wasteland.
The point of posting Sowell's essay was not to educate the reader about race baiting, or about political or ethical judgements that have led to dramatically different historical outcomes. Sowell's article was simply an example of a much larger, more profound issue.
Consider gravely the impact of clinging to narrative biases that serve mainly to support our approval of ourselves in the eyes of ourselves and others - imagined or real. We "eat" from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil for reasons that we believe are justified. That we do so often leads us to self-alienation from the Truth - the Original Sin.
Verify what you are told. Conserve your Liberty to Think Credibly
Check out other Blog posts
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