At an age of digitally augmented media, digital bias is transforming into something inherent in human nature — a species conditioning almost any natural system by means of technology, an putting it under control. Humanity’s destiny is quite certain, technology is becoming less of a tool, and more of a prosthesis that is actively shaping the human. But what does using technology mean when we us its as a construction material of our natures? Does it make us more truthful and rational, or does it do the exact opposite?

Along the biases that are already inherent in biologic human nature, technology seems to extend the list of these biases and prejudices even further. Human biases have become the inherent products of digital capitalism and consumer societies — products that are becoming increasingly inconspicuous to human awareness, as they hardwire the human consciousness. Human bias is a catalyst for the instrumentality of mass sensation, desire, marketing, and political sentiment. It is the equivalent of a nervous system that is being actively stimulated with electrodes, distracting the mind from thinking rationally.

Too little information is viewed as a deprivation from freedom of speech, but too much information, to an extent that it becomes imperceptible — is not viewed as deprivation from freedom of speech. But distraction is the key instrumentality of bias — it breeds control, subversion, and manipulation. Excessive abundance of information transforms rationality into an oblique signal, fainted by news about Taylor Swift’s sex life, the new iPhone, and a politician’s hair style. But the information that surfaces, is based on intent of either the global Silicone Valley, or insurgent algorithms. Freedom is not just a set of actions that an ideology permits an individual to make, but it must be first and foremost, be a state of an unbiased mind. Without rationale, ‘freedom’ becomes an instrumental term for oppression.

As humanity invents new emergent forms of media consumption, we also embrace the biases that are adherent to these mediums. Mass media feeds, corporate endorsement, rhetoric, and undigested radical ideologies — are served to the human consciousness through the arteries of digital technology. While humans condition themselves to trust and embrace these technologies, we are also conditioning an increasingly biased human nature.

Human nature is imperfect. Throughout history, human imperfection was frequently embraced and manifested through art. Technologic development is a counter measure to human imperfection. Technology brings a promise of establishing a more rational human nature, but in practice, it has also shown how it can make humans less rational – to a point where young generations are having difficulties in discerning the fake from what is presented to them as true.

Extensions of Bias hang from the air. They don’t have a foundation. But these represent the extensions that humans use become more aware of the occurrences that happen in the outside world. As much as humans believe that true knowledge can be attained trough books and/or rational inquiry (research, thought), it is in proportion to the belief that knowledge can be attained through entertainment, news feeds, and work. Bias is what forms ideologies and establish a social order, it can immediately become a political topic.

But if one where to become an observer.

But sometimes, technology can escape before humans even learn how to tame it, or are able to realize its long-term consequences. Such an invention had almost turned out to be the atom bomb, which was miraculously tamed, before it had the potential to cause a further proliferation and a final chapter of life as we narrowly know it. Such a chapter is chaotic from our perspective, but poetic to an extraterrestrial visitor, who would embark on our planet and remark: “a species that let technology escape”, take a few deep breaths, and continue onto his next journey around other planets — similar to how today we continue on with our their daily lives after a visit to an archeological museum filled with fossilized dinosaurs.

Anti-rational Bias Manifesto

If we are so biased, can we manifest and embrace it?

I welcome …

We are living in a world of biases, how can we build when the foundations are crawling apart? For one fact, humans are far from perfect rational beings — bias is inherited in us. Perhaps there are other ways of fighting bias, at and age where half of the world population is concerned with celebrities, rationality seems to has been fossilized, just like the dinosaurs remains hundreds of millions years ago—whose existence has been forgotten. Bringing rationality, and therefore unbias to the mass, seems helpless at and age filled with anti-rational human activities. Instead of fighting it, I welcome a manifestation of bias and irrationality.

Could that mean the standardization and acceptance of ignorance? Or perhaps even forming a new aesthetic that will act as a manifested justification of bias? Why is being empirically correct necessarily better than being biased. Better towards what? The preservation of the existence of a species? These are all founded on the inherent rules of molecular biology, where ego is what drives an organism to preserve its physical body. Can a biased culture be a manifestation? Can we manifest our adherence to bais in the same way a tectonic plate might manifest its ability to shape the geologic landscape?

Ultimately, if bias and anti-rationality becomes a manifestation as apposed to just an unconscious and unaware state, then maybe rationality will become unfossilized. Just like Shell, B&P, and Exxon Mobile are currently un-fossilizing the remains of dinosaurs from 100 million of years ago and using it to sustain the energy og human life. Their rationale, is bringing energy to humanity. Hopefully the time will come when people will start thinking about un-fossilizing the rationale that was fossilized.

To Put things in perspective, perhaps we can borrow some ideas from the Avant-Gard Dada movement. The movement rejected aesthetics that embraced chaos and irrationality. Dadaist art was intended as a protest “against this world of mutual destruction”. Where art was concerned with traditional aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics and manifested this protest.1

Bias and History

How can bias be related to other significant factors that effect and shape the Earth? What relation to just like geology, meteorology, numerous outcomes such as geology and

Metamorphic rock

Bias is a catalyst for metamorphosis, just like fossil fuels, meteorologic storms, and volcano eruptions. Just like increasing CO2 in Extension Event followed by the proliferation of trees 500 million years ago.

Anti-Rationalism as a catalyst for metamorphisis: The New Anti-Rationalism by Finnginn

Word Analysis

A couple of sufficient methods that allow the generation of biases:

  • Have a limited exposure to objective evidence (assuming a liberal society where individuals have little interest to adhere to empirical evidence).
  • Make illicit generalizations based on qualifiable empirical evidence.

REUTERS BUILT A BOT THAT CAN IDENTIFY REAL NEWS ON TWITTER

General subjects of bias

  • Politics
    • Extremism
    • Mass Media
  • Science
    • Geology
    • Climate
    • Physics
  • Cognition
    • Logic
    • Philosophy

Media Bias

  • Advertising bias, when stories are selected or slanted to please advertisers.
  • Corporate bias, when stories are selected or slanted to please corporate owners of media.
  • Mainstream bias, a tendency to report what everyone else is reporting, and to avoid stories that will offend anyone.
  • Sensationalism, bias in favor of the exceptional over the ordinary, giving the impression that rare events, such as airplane crashes, are more common than common events, such as automobile crashes.
  • Concision bias, a tendency to report views that can be summarized succinctly, crowding out more unconventional views that take time to explain.

Concordance

To exploring the foundations of bias, it is important to find an outcome of a particular occurrence that showed how certain biased groups, failed to predict the outcome because of their inherent biases. These groups have a particular set of words or ideas that adhere to a general biased mindset.

Concordance can be easily represented with words, where certain words show signs of bias when they are used along with certain other set of words.

  • Word 1
    1. First most biased word to Word 1
    2. Second most biased word to Word 1
    3. Third most biased word to Word 1
  • Word 2
    1. First most biased word to Word 2
    2. Second most biased word to Word 2
    3. Third most biased word to Word 2
  • Word 3
    1. First most biased word to Word 1
    2. Second most biased word to Word 1
    3. Third most biased word to Word 3
  • Word x

Data Dredging

The main concept behind Data Dredging, is finding patterns through the use of data mining without predetermined categorization rules. Another potential to form new biases.

Sources

“We encounter here the old problem: what happens to democracy when the majority is inclined to vote for racist and sexist laws? I am not afraid to draw the conclusion that emancipatory politics should not be bound a priori by formal democratic procedures; people quite often do not know what they want, or do not want what they know, or they simply want the wrong thing.” -Zizek 2

  • cognitive bias
  • confirmation bias

Also biases are becoming increasingly subjected to the instabilities of political environments. Terrorism, social tensions, and the hierarchies within a class society, all contribute to the instability of the cognitive bias of particular groups of people.3 The more people feel threatened, the more likely that will choose to adhere to a social group with extreme biased opinions. This is explained by the inherent human tendency to confirm biased opinions – also referred to as confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is also referred to as the internal “yes man”, echoing back a person’s beliefs.

The coming 17

  1. Schneede, Uwe M. (1979), George Grosz, His life and work, New York: Universe Books ↩

  2. Slavoj Žižek: ‘Trump is really a centrist liberal’  ↩

  3. How the fear of death makes people more Right-wing  ↩