What I've Learned Trying to Learn about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

[conuly]

1. Everyone out there is biased. It doesn't matter how detailed their statistics, how well-designed their webpages, they're omitting some information from how they write about their statistics, hoping you won't notice it.

2. To make things worse, hardly anybody is willing to do their own research. If you use one search criteria, you find a thousands sites which all get their information from one site. If you use another set of criteria, they use a different site for their information, but they're just as copycatting. On, and on, and on it goes.

3. Most of these sites don't have information more recent than two years ago.

4. I have a headache.


Seriously, though, I suspect there's this one real lesson to be learned: All sides (I suspect it's far more complicated than just two sides) think they're right, and they probably are, at least in a few important ways. Unfortunately, this information probably won't go over very well with anybody. I should keep it to myself.

I wonder if this applies to other situations in life?

Comments

[dkmnow.livejournal.com]

From the firing of a single neuron, all the way up to a concept of "objectivity," bias is the fundamental building-block of all human cognition. To ignore this fact - or to "acknowledge" it while failing to heed it's call to action - is to be enslaved by one's own biases. For the de facto disease of habitual and reactionary "monkey-mind" bias, the only antidote is the continual cultivation of humility and self-awareness.

Just call it my bias against unchecked biases.