The Essence of Bias

[Caldus]

There is infused in us all a strong presense of bias.

We communicate to other beings with a completely different bias every day.

And we never to stop and think about the practical implications of such a bias.

Firstly, what is the essense of bias?

It is where the individual is "locked-up" or perhaps "liberated" from the objective.

A locking-up or liberation that is free from a pre-determined list of events in life.

As well as a locking-up or liberation that is limited by its own faculty of experience.

It means to me that we are ironically limited by the notion of a subjective world.

Not limited in the sense that we cannot choose our fate.

But rather in the sense that we simply shape our own world!

Why is this so limiting you ask?

Because it leaves little room for ultimate creativity and perspective in life.

I feel like claiming with confidence that human beings are unable to truly understand the essense of another's perspective.

Perspective on what?

Anything.

This is why I name this component of the human being the "bias".

The bias prevents us from being constituents of a purely mechanical universe.

Yet it eats at our ability to truly transcend our perspective.

And eats away creativity in general.

The only acts of creativity produced are ones that will never be truly understood by others.

I say 'truly' a lot here.

What do I really mean by this?

The underlying issue of bias is that we cannot completely submerge ourselves in someone else's eyes to experience their experience.

Because of the very idea that bias itself has only your own experience to draw from!

We do not have a limited memory or a limited bank of experiences to draw from.

However, the nature of our experiences seem to be in a whole different dimension from person to person.

It is absurd to think that two people could draw from the same dimension of experiences if they lived in two completely different environments or interacted with completely different kinds of people in their lives.

thereforeeee, it is logically sound to claim from here that each of us draw from a different dimension of experiences.

And thus there are infinite unique experiences.

That is the essense of bias.

For it may perhaps "grasp" or "feel" the other's bank of experiences.

But never be completely submerged in it.

And if you cannot be completely submerged in the other's experiences, then how can you say that your actions or words are unbiased?

[the yang to the worlds yin]

hmm.. i agree, we're merely an essense of our own experiences and bias, and without trully living throughout each persons entire life and list of experiences, how can we truly acknowledge that they fully understand our methods of looking at things or how we perceive each individual situation.

 

great poem caldus

[Shadows Light]

Yep. Maybe thats why they say that LOVE is blind.. and based on

sheer FAITH.

[the yang to the worlds yin]

Yep. Maybe thats why they say that LOVE is blind.. and based on

sheer FAITH.

 

 

huh? i'm not quite sur ei understand the faith part

[ShySoul]

But then wouldn't everything you wrote be shaped by your bias?

[Caldus]

Yes. ShySoul knows where I am getting at.

 

Besides, one of my poems I wrote a while back also discusses how we all live in our own little "bubbles" that simply bounce off one another.

 

In other words, I am deeply confused by the notion of a world of absolute, eternal, and unchanging knowledge and truth. I think of such a pursuit as fruitless and reeking of disappointment.

[ShySoul]

Caldus, I'd try to draw you into an intellectual conversation, but I think it would be fun for awhile until we started to annoy each other and feel like we were bashing our head into a wall. ](*,)

 

Yes, we all have our own unique experiences. No two people will go through the exact same thing. And that to a degree shapes bias. But if you look at those unique experiences, you can find certain themes and patterns that seem to repeat itself regardless of the people involved or the exact details of their situation. These are the things that form together to create absolute truths. Something like people should be treated with respect is a truth that we can agree on no matter what we have been through.

 

I tend to sympathise with people a lot. At times I really feel like I'm feeling the same pain they are, even when I've never been in their situation. It's because I look past the details and experiences, and into the heart of the matter, the feelings involved. When someone talks about how they don't want to live, I draw on the times I've felt like that, even if the exact experience was different. It may not be 100% (unless I become like Spock and do a mind meld), but I think that we can come pretty close. Can't really explain how, just know it can be done.

[melrich]

When someone talks about how they don't want to live, I draw on the times I've felt like that, even if the exact experience was different.

 

That's called empathy. Empathy is the emotion of feeling someone's pain (for example) upon hearing the cause of the pain but without the pain being described.

 

Sympathy refers to feeling their pain when the pain is described to you.

 

I have often thought that empathy is one of the few emotions that is in a sense learnt and is difficult to display without life experiences.

[Caldus]

But you see ShySoul, we all have our own bank of experiences that we must draw from, for our senses do not take in any more than what is perceived. Can you agree with that? That what we base our every category of understanding and reason off of is from a finite series of sense-experiences? To say that our minds are transcendent enough to virtually (not necessarily completely) enter the essense of another's mind is still quite a big claim to make and not a claim that can be safely put out there without an elaborate, literally significant, and logical explanation. Can one draw another's concrete experiences based off your own concrete experiences even if those experiences share some apparent themes? How do you know that the theme is really there? Do you see where I am going here?

[Ålter Ego]

This thread is very powerful. I enjoyed the poem thoroughly, Caldus. It makes me think. Thank you for a powerful message.

[melrich]

For it may perhaps "grasp" or "feel" the other's bank of experiences.

But never be completely submerged in it.

 

Yes, I do not think that empathy refers to experiencing the exact emotions.

 

That what we base our every category of understanding and reason off of is from a finite series of sense-experiences?

 

No, you can refer to similar episodes. You do not have to be dunked in arctic water to understand it is cold.

[Caldus]

But surely you must know that such a location is extremely cold anyway, and yes you can deduce that the water itself is very cold without even diving in. However, to me, that deduction was made from some kind of previous sense-experience. Perhaps you saw the artic region on TV or actually went there yourself but never went into the water. But that in itself was a sense-experience because your eyes captured the image from the TV and then made such deductions or that your body felt just how cold it really was at such a place and then deduced that going into the water would be bad news. My claim is that we cannot escape our senses and thus enter the realm of another set of senses (i.e. another person's senses and categories of understanding and reason). One offshoot of this that I just thought of is that people are so afraid of pain simply because we are enveloped by our own senses and thus cannot 'watch' ourselves be in pain without discarding even a little bit of that pain. For 'watching' ourselves would imply the ability to escape our 'bias' and senses. It's late and I feel like I did not address this right so maybe I will try again tomorrow when I am more awake.

[melrich]

Yes I think you have to work a bit on your definition of "sense experiences". I mean it is stating the obvious to say we can't know what we don't know.

 

But do you have to experience an event to empathise with it....no you don't necessarily, you may refer to like events.

[the yang to the worlds yin]

Yes I think you have to work a bit on your definition of "sense experiences". I mean it is stating the obvious to say we can't know what we don't know.

 

well who's to say we can't? theres a world of mysteries that we've never discovered as of yet, plus what we "know" is merely what we know as logic right now, but that doesn't mean that sometime in the future it won't be disproven. knowledge is only knowledge for the time being until further knowledge comes along.

 

so i guess some could say we really don't know anything.

 

not sure where i was going with all of this, and i don't think i made much sense just now =P

[melrich]

well who's to say we can't?

 

Because you can't. I'll illustrate what I mean by this.

 

Someone shows you a picture of the open ocean, no defining land or anything, just water. They then ask you is that water freezing cold or temperate? All you can do is guess.

 

If they show you the same picture but in this case there is an iceberg in the background, you can deduce with fair certainty that the water is cold. You don't actually have to put your toe in it to make that statement.

 

So to the original point, you don't necessarily have to experience something to know how it feels or the emotions it will illicit if you have a frame of reference.

 

If you have no frame of reference, all you are doing is guessing. You can't know what you don't know. That statement is self fulfilling...all you can do if you don't know is guess.

[the yang to the worlds yin]

that makes perfect sense. thanks for explaining it

[ShySoul]

Can one draw another's concrete experiences based off your own concrete experiences even if those experiences share some apparent themes? How do you know that the theme is really there? Do you see where I am going here?

 

I'm not going to go to much into it, cause our minds clearly work in different ways. I see theories, potential and possibilties. You see things in facts. What I'm getting at can't really be explained in the way you are thinking of. I just know it is possible because I experience it on a daily basis. It's pretty easy to be able to predict people's past experiences, and current feelings, how they will react. And it isn't just on our own past experiences, its a matter of observing and recognizing humanity, our traits, characteristics, emotional tendencies.