I am going to write something a bit overblown and emotional.
It is about how one’s values quietly transform under bias without noticing.
Against surrounding bias, resisting with a confident “I’ll go this way; I won’t be swayed” — that kind of strong awareness — feels hard.
Working every day, talking with all kinds of people privately, all kinds of thoughts pass through your head.
It is an accumulation of bias.
For example, whether you read this blog or not already generates more or less bias. Not zero.
I am using the word “bias,” but more as a broader thinking process than the usual “unconscious discriminatory assumption.”
Of course positive thoughts are included, and not only thinking processes — emotional sides like sensibility too.
Suppose you have values you hold dear; they may be roughly shaped by how you were raised, but they must keep transforming.
Claims like “common sense gained by adulthood becomes the foundation of the rest of life” are probably mostly not wrong — but I do not think it is that simple either.
I wrote in a roundabout way; this too is what comes out when I try to put daily feelings into a blog and end up imaging something.
People reading this will probably think: I don’t really get it — what are you trying to say?
But wait a moment. I do not particularly have something I want to say.
Even now, writing this sentence, I did not start because I wanted to assert something.
Still, if you have values you want to cherish, saying No to what does not fit them can positively be “courage,” and negatively “rejection.”
Of course both do not apply equally in every concrete case.
Saying No to values that do not fit you is mostly interpreted as courage, and praised.
That is the courage success speeches and self-help books repeat: “value your own will; don’t be swayed by temptation.”
On the other hand, rejection toward people who think that view is correct — acceptance of diversity and so on — also belongs there.
Respect both and you become less and less able to decide. You become less able to act — so day to day you act by selecting inside bias.
By the way, this claim (not that it is grand enough to call a claim) is fragile enough that someone can easily say, “Well, in a case like X your claim is wrong.”
Still, what I have felt lately is noticing: this thinking is influenced by something so-and-so said, or by a past experience.
Even if it is “correct,” when it does not match the state I think I should be in, or my direction, I feel cramped.
I do not know if this is related, but recently an entrepreneur acquaintance went to meet a successful entrepreneur, asked “What business do you think one should challenge now?”, felt the answer clicked, launched a business based on it, and is fully committing — that story.
I felt they were influenced, for better and worse, by biases like “copy successful people” and “while immature, shut up and follow people more successful than you.”
As I keep saying, “for better and worse” is the key — set aside the probability of that bias for a moment.
While listening, I finished with a pure wish to cheer them on: “Oh, great that you heard something good and found what you should do.”
But afterward, walking alone after listening,
“Wait — isn’t deciding what you should do with your own head the most fun part?”
“Ah, but asking someone while gathering information toward that conclusion is right, and because you asked a successful person you’re still deciding with your own head,”
I thought, and was satisfied — and then suddenly wondered: what is “deciding with your own head” versus “not deciding”?
On impulse I started this writing.
As I wrote, the state of my head got better.
It is writing already influenced by bias — and yet I feel a sense of being away from bias.
Somehow I feel I am thinking with my own head.
Writing that entrepreneur acquaintance’s story too, I “got it” again that there is this kind of bias.
(※ I put “got it” in quotes because somehow that phrasing felt special. I wonder why.)
Day to day like this, maybe I should put into words the things I notice as “ah, that’s bias,” and make a bias dictionary.
For example, a few others I just remembered.
The other day my iPad Pro broke and I took it to an Apple Store for repair.
A staff member asked, “What’s your main use for the iPad Pro?” I answered, “Reading books on Kindle, I guess?” and got “For that, an iPad Pro!? Unusual” — implying it was overspec for that use.
It was not snarky, and I did not feel particularly unpleasant either.
I did not buy an iPad Pro thinking “I need it to read Kindle,” but originally I wanted to draw digitally and try making something in 3D.
Factoring in software weight and so on, I vaguely bought an iPad Pro thinking I might need it.
And I do sometimes draw digitally — terribly, but still.
If I had said my use is digital drawing, maybe a reaction like “Oh! You draw! What kind?” would have embarrassed me. I am bad at it.
As bias in this story: “Buying an iPad Pro to read Kindle is overspec” may be fact, not bias.
But they were probably surprised because they consciously do not meet many “people who buy iPad Pro for reading” — so that part feels like bias.
Turning it around, my idea that “it’s embarrassing to tell people I draw when I’m bad” is also bias.
The other day when asked what my hobbies are, I said something else because saying I draw felt embarrassing.
In this way, putting into words and observing what biases are embedded in daily thoughts and speech somehow yields new discoveries.
If I keep this up, I feel I might become able to “think away from bias.”
That is all. Done for now.
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