Unconscious Bias

The latest fad in corporate, political and social media debate is Unconscious Bias.

What does it mean and why is it being used in discussion?

The phrase is used during a conversation where two people disagree on an issue.

One party will say of the other that their view is weakened because it derives from an Unconscious Bias.

This is the latest pseudo-intellectual defence of someone who is desperate to win an argument and to win the title of "Correct View" and winner of the debate.

There is some truth to the concept behind the phrase, because it is not a new concept.

Unconscious Bias sounds like it stands for a new enlightenment, discovered recently.

It is not.

Same pig, different lipstick.

The concept that our views, beliefs, tenets, rational conclusions are influenced by our personal morality is ancient.

Influenced. Not derived from. There is a difference. And this difference is the problem.

Of course our life experience and our morality and character can influence our arguments and our positions on an issue for debate or discussion. But those arguments do not derive from this. They are at best a source of influence. That influence can be recognised and rejected by a conscious mind.

In contrast, Unconscious Bias proponents claim that your view is derived ONLY from an Unconcious Bias and that you have no control over it nor even awareness of it.

You can see the power of such a claim made against an opponent during debate.

You can say to your opponent that they are not aware that their argument derives solely from a power in their mind that they have no control over.

This means that the opponents argument is not a product of rational deliberation, logic or intellectual insight, but their argument is derived from an all powerful, unconscious Big Bang that is devoid of reason.

So instead of rationally concluding an argument or position on an issue, the opponent has always had a their view arrived at through a weakness of character than an intellectual exercise.

Therefore, the opponents argument is not rational but irrational and consequently weak, subjective and fallible.

The truth is that rational people already identify any biases they might have and are ready and willing to destroy them for the sake of truth. They may begin unconsciously, but the power of reason is in its deliberate action of seeking out what is unconscious and thus making it conscious.

Everyone has conscious biases. Biases chosen by reason or morality.

It is a harder intellectual exercise to convince us that someone has a bias they are not aware of, but that they are aware of.

The onus of proof is on the claimant, "You have an unconscious bias."

Further, if the logic is sound and the facts are empirically verifiable, then Unconcisous Bias doesn't matter. The proponent cannot argue that a valid argument is defeated by such a claim. A black cat is a cat, no matter what the Unconscious Bias.

The Truth about Obesity?

Obese people are aesthetically repulsive.

Obese people are obese because they ate too much shit food.

Obese people are weak and lazy who care nothing about their health or their appearance.

When have we heard these kinds of statements in discussion or debate?

Not often and not without being vilified and condemned.


Today, there is no acceptable public place or forum to speak your mind about anything.

Anything, let alone important issues that need discussion and free expression.

Fear of vilification or punishable discrimination now outweighs the desire to express the truth.

Thus, although the world and social media is covered in Q&A meetings, debates and social issue forums, none of the panels, speakers or attendees are free to speak their mind without the tangible threat of being attacked for their expression.

Now more than ever, we are effectively banned from conducting meaningful discussion or debate, where truth is the objective.

By truth, We mean simply saying what's on your mind: your experience, your feelings, your rational conclusions, your opinion.

So much of what we think is now offensive and unacceptable, even honest expression is forbidden.

In 2015, the British Medical Journal published an editorial "You can't outrun a bad diet" stating that lack of exercise and sedentary lifestyle had almost nothing to do with weight gain, that weight gain is mostly caused by diet. Shortly after, the editorial was removed following a barage of complaints.

Why the censorship?

Because, the truth hurts. The truth hurts, and therefore simultaneously creates a victim and an offender. The discussion is now no longer a search for truth or an activity of sharing ideas. The discussion ends and has become a trial, where judgment and punishment will be forthcoming.

Worse than the consequent absence of truth seeking and knowledge sharing are the lies, fallacies and frank false appeasement and sycophancy that replaces it.

This is a double whammy. We avoid the truth and encourage lies.

This being the result, how could we ever expect to benefit, resolve, improve as indidivudals and as a society?

If you find fat people ugly, you cannot express that. So how could we ever know what people think about fat people and the aesthetic relationship?

If fat people tell us that they are fat because they have a genetic cause or something beyond their control, how can we move away from stagnant effect to cause, and then address the cause?

If we argue against this lack of control, and that will power, competing priorities and choices are the cause, you will be prosecuted.

To most people, fat is instinctively aesthetically repulsive. But no one will ever say that in public.

Most people see a fat person and judge that the person is lazy and weak. If they are in most cases lazy and weak, then we can move forward toward the truth of causation.

If there is no problem with obesity, that obesity is good or not an issue for society to be botherered discussing, then why is it such a huge and popular topic? Why such offense, if it doesn't matter, if opinions against fat are false, wrong, bad?

No one enjoys, or takes a compliment, for being told they are fat. Nor that they are ugly.

But is the purpose of a forum that claims to be held to seek understanding, shared ideas, and resolution, actually held as the primary objective? Or is the purpose of the forum to justify a vulnerable sector of society in the continuation of their habits, to preserve and protect their feelings and to feel good about yourself for standing up for and supporting sycophantically a vulnerable group?

Is the true purpose of the rational debates really just an exercise in making all attendees feel good?

Honest debate is not concerned about feelings, but about truth. Rational. logical understanding and the benefits of philosophical inquiry cannot be achieved if they are stopped from continuing as soon as someone's feelings are hurt.

The truth hurts. And today, whatever hurts is bad and must be crushed and punished and damned. Not hurting people outweighs the truth, therefore the truth is kept unspoken and unseen.

That is the real danger.

If we can't say what we think, then we can't expect to obtain the truth, subjective or objective.

The progress of curing cancer through foetal stem cell research was all but ended by the Catholic Church and protests from the masses of people who put their personal beliefs above ending the suffering of others.

So, what remains in the latest collection of human knowledge about the world?

Lies, falsehoods and unveiled knowledge.

Fat people are not normal. They are not beautiful. They are wrong. They are aberations.

Fat people drain the civic funds when they seek treatment for fat-related illnesses, which are preventable.

Fat people literally don't fit in society.

Fat people create an instant instinctive disgust.

The truth hurts.