about Bias

Humans – as Rational as their Stories

There’s a constant quest to define human nature. Are we benevolent creature and noble stewards of the earth we inherited? Is the destruction we bring upon the environment and the out-group a case of misunderstanding?

The debate about humanity is useful summed up in two camps, we are either a moral species or a rational one. Homo Reciprican or Homo Economicus. After years of the latter camp dominating biology and economics, affirming with zeal that the best way to understand humanity was as selfish rational agents. Cooperation could be pegged to genetic relatedness or kin selection, behavioral economists and others are quick to point out how irrational we are. Perhaps our bias tell us that we are not simply selfish, but selfish AND bad at math. At least at updating our Bayesian priors.

The truth is that we are rational, just in a rather unique way. Every living being, even every enduring structure that exists despite the tendency towards flux and disorder, does so using interpretation. Every single celled bacteria is a character in a story, with a beginning, middle and end. Most importantly they exist in an environment, one that serves as the backdrop of their dramatic moment in time.

We learned to tell our own stories. By first identifying beyond our intimates and genetic kindred, using Shibboleth. Accents were likely a useful marker of provenance during our time as meek prey in the Pleistocene, and hence we benefited from the strength of our compatriots. This abstract identification led to our abstract behavioral norms, or our codified moral code.

If this view is correct, than we behave rationally with respect to our identity. It is possible we can act rationally with respect to our selves, but also possible that we behave rationally with respect to our tribes, our cultural groups, our culture itself, even our firms, teams, etc. Our existence relies on an elaborate ethical system, but one usefully sketched as interloping identities. Some anonymous, some intimate, but many illusory. Even identifying with a future self, requires a certain abstraction. No other species, it seems, saves for retirement or worries about their legacy.

Bias

The Bias we exhibit provides us evidence of our origin story. Explaining how we became a distinctively successful species. Measuring the distance between our the rationality and irrationality of our behavior and emphasizes the contours of a species that uniquely organized matter destined for chaos. Life can be understood the structuring of matter in the face of a march towards entropy, along this theme our extended ordered civilization is the product of a species simply playing the game uniquely well.

This blog is dedicated to the idea that we broke away and accelerated the formation of structure and order by using our imagination. Our mind’s eye allowed us to create symbolic societies, bound but nothing but audio and visual markings that represented more than their material structure might indicate. Our most fundamental reality is a social reality. One we reify by a unique capacity to tell ourselves believable fictions. Our roles, reputations, and character traits give way to the norms and moral values that guide our rational behavior. Behavior that may be judged irrational if you fail to account for the imaginary boundaries to which we adhere.

Our uniquely insightful and powerful third eye is celebrated and cultivated in our first formal institution, story telling. It is in our narrative structure that we can stumble or excel. Our promise and peril is bound up in our heroes and villains. The Talisman of our conscious and unconscious mind influence our potential.