You know itâs incredibly difficult to be aware of everything at once, in fact Iâm pretty sure itâs impossible but I canât be certain as I can only guarentee that I personally am unable to be aware of all things simultaneously and as such I donât fucking know. Â But what I do know is bias blindness is quite easy to avoid but the internet not only spouts ignorant vitriol like vomit from a kid discovering food allergies, the internet also seems to enjoy overdosing on bias blindness.
Before I start saying that too much let me toss out a definition:
Bias Blindness - when oneâs own bias against a thing or group of things prevents them from understanding the reality of a sitution or closes their minds to other perceptions. Â
A blinding bias or the Bias blind spot works just as well. Â Now Iâm going to first give a solid and existent example of a bias blinding someoneâs perception and then Iâll give you some tips on how to NOT fall victim to bias blindness. Â If youâre biased to the point where you donât think youâre biased at all then this isnât for you, you silly damn rabbit. Â Anyway, one need not look far from any one spot to find an example but I have one in particular I want to look at. Â There are many flavors of bias but right now weâre going to look at 2 somewhat common ones they originate from the kind of opinion of which the internet has an nigh-unlimited supply of called the easily offended opinion.
This ones for the ladies... just kidding you read too men itâs important. Â This example comes from another tumblr page which if pressed I will link it or copy/paste to the next part. Â Now then the opinion was about half the size of this post and was centered around how American men like to go to Asian countries to hit on their woman because they heard itâs easier to pick up women there. Â Iâm almost tempted to thoroughly analyze the post word for word but that kind of dissection feels a tad too personal and unnecessary at this moment. Â
Iâd like to preface this by saying weâre not going to talk facts to negate this I could do that if you want but thatâs not why weâre here. Â Weâre going to take a step back and just think on whatâs wrong with this statement, specifically what is assumed.
Well I saw atleast three big no-nos the first being that itâs assumed only American men do this. What about American woman? Â What about people of other nationalities? I geniunely doubt all tourists in Asian countries that hit on indigenous people are Smerican. Â
No-no #2, you assume that this only happens in Asian countries. Â Sorry Asia youâre not special in that regard, most if not all countries have likely had a sizable handful of American tourists hit on somebody there (probably a handful from other nationalities as well, but thatâs not what the original poster focused on). Â
Final (obvious) assumption, this isnât conveyed too well with my short version of their post but they made the harsh assumption that all Americans do this and are like that. Â It couldnât be more obvious how wrong such a statement is. Â Itâs called the âAll or Nothing Assumptionâ and it is another word for when a person assumes that due to the actions of atleast one of a group that person will assume that it is normal for all of that group to do such an action. Â This particular assumption is extremely common despite how illogical it is. Â People are very different from one another and youâd be a fool to make an All or Nothing Assumption when it comes to groups of people, especially entire nationalities.
This took a lot longer to write then I thought it would. IIn the next part Iâm gonna throw you another example, a harder one. Â Letâs face it my previous one is too easy on multiple levels, too easy to tell itâs biased and too easy to not trust it. Then Iâll talk upon how you, who likely donât suffer too many biases if you made it this far, can avoid being unreasonably biased. Â Though donât be thinking it will be preaching to the choir. Iâm going to talk upon the ones we make without realizing it.
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