The two kinds of thought

Here I go again.  

    I feel, that all human thought, can be categorized into two types.  My claim is that this post will be valuable too you because, when we learn the two categories of human thought, we can more clearly understand human conflicts.  With that understanding, we will fear human conflicts less, and navigate them to a peaceful resolution more efficiently.  That is my claim, however honestly, I never really know if my theories are true or not, so just read them and listen to experts, as sharing ideas about sensitive topics like this is problematic, so believe other people, I encourage no one to take me seriously.  

    Here is the short, short version of this theory: all human thought fits into what I call the dreamer category, or the constructionist category.  The names are not important.  I will define what I mean with these words:

Dreamer: believing in something without worrying about the certainty if it being true. 

Constructionist: Believing in something only when it is well known and established.

    I've been thinking about this one for years.  Everyone uses both of these attributes of thought, however it's common to have one dominate over the other in most human beings.  Rarely do you meet someone who has both of them in a close balance.  

    Here is an example.  An example of a dreamer, would be an artist.  An artist doesn't need to understand why they create art, they just do it.  Also, they don't always need to understand what their creation is going to be when they start their project.  They have just learned to trust in their creative process, even without fully knowing the final outcome.  They don't need to justify their art, and somehow prove that it will be useful, they just do it, and they will know what it is, after they know what it is.  

    The constructionist doesn't like to work without a good understanding of how something will work, and thus will have a good understanding of what the outcome will be.  They trust in a creative process that is commonly done, and well understood.  They don't like to take chances, because they want the result to be correct.  An example of a profession that is dominantly filled with constructionist thinking is a school principle, or most engineers.  Managers often think mostly in constructionist terms.  To indulge in the unknown would mean unknown outcomes.  To this mode of thinking, dreamer thinking is wasteful, and possibly dangerous, and a lot of the time it is right.

    Where dreams often look at constructionists, and simply wrong, and/or limited in their perspective.  

    Both modes of thinking are not bad or wrong despite how they view each other.  Rather they both serve a different purpose.  The most important thing to understand is to have an increase capability created that didn't exist before, both disciplines of thought are needed.  

    One to step outside of what is known, and they other to correct for errors that will happen, because the unknown has been entered.  

    They both need each other, but they operate so differently, they will see each other as wrong.  Both types of thought have the same goal, which is survival, yet their methods of obtaining survival are so different, they they often believe the other is an enemy.  People who are dominate in one type or the other, are often very strong feeling about their way of thinking, and when others have a different way, it will seem like the other people just don't understand like they do.   

    So they don't get along sometimes.  In the past few years, the political dialog has become more contentious because of people loosing a balance within themselves with the two ways of thinking.  If someone becomes too abscessed with one way of thinking over the other, that is how extremism in belief systems is constructed.    They may be motivated to create the imbalance in hopes of solving the problem behind their pain.   But the ideas they come up with, come from a desperate imbalance of thought.  

    Constructionist thoughts are when we use real experience and logical reasoning to arrive at a conclusion.  Where as dreamer thoughts, like dreams themselves have no required logic or experience.  In fact, dreamer thoughts importantly leave logic out.  Logic would mean that the thoughts would have boundaries.  And moving beyond boundaries is what dreamer thoughts are all about.  That doesn't mean they are meant to endanger us with reckless behavior, constructionist or dreamer thoughts can be both be reckless or saver.  Dreamer thoughts instead, are used to help us image what we can't image, because we have not imaged them yet.  In order to image what we have not yet imaged, we have to get messy, and do things that may be described as silly, or based on feelings not logic, or just non-sense.  To be honest, a lot of dreamer thoughts are non-sense, and have no value.  Dreamer thoughts don't have to be right, they just need to go somewhere new.  

    So what often happens, is that many people who are dominate in the dreamer side of thought, all start to reinvent something important in the world.  All of them take great risks, and abandon prior conceptions, and attempt to do something different.  Most of them fail, some of them fail with severe consequences, but a few strike upon something that works, and begin to change the world.  They always run unto a common problem however.  Their dreamer thought process, brought them to success, yet to manage the success, they will need help.  This is where the constructionists will arrive and organize and update the new invention.  They likely didn't believe in the risks, but now with the discovery that was made, and the success from it clearly proven, they are believers now, and are ready to help.  

    Eventually the new discovery is gradually taken over, going from dreamer control to constructionist control.  This might seem like a bad story for the dreamer, and it may be to some extent.  But for this to work, they often need a constructionist at some point.  Someone with a more practical approach.  

    Have you the reader, ever heard a person say, "What is real for one person, may not be real for another."  This idea that truth changes for each person is a common explanation from my experience.  I have a different outlook of what truth is.  When people say "true for you..." in my mind, we are really talking about our ability to interpret what we experience and assign meaning to it, in order to help us make choices in our lives.  How we interpret what is happening in our lives, will modify our choices we make in the future.   But what truth is, goes beyond our understanding, it's how the universe really is.  The universe is endlessly complex.  All these forces and atoms interact in such a way that makes one outcome happen over another, to me that is what truth is.  That is truth to me.  It's how things really are, not our attempt to understand what they really are.  There is not a truth for you, and a truth for me.  But, here is the positive side to this argument: our different ways of thinking are useful not because they help individuals find truth, they are helpful because they help us find the truth by working together.  

    When one person dreams and the other constructs, they form a symbiotic relationship, that is a slam dunk to survival success, and legitimate prosperity.    

    From my point of view, men and women are commonly given traits by nature that intentionally put them at odds with each other.  Rather then a design flaw, this I feel, is how our ancestors survived.  Men and women will tend to lean to one type of though in some areas and the other type of thought in other areas.  Men and women lean differently so that they fit together.  Women tend to show mercy toward the weak, while if people hurt the weak, they want strong justice.  Men tend to not show mercy toward the week, and prefer more mercy toward the strong.  All of that is very general, but if we fully examine men and women, I feel like more and more, we will find, that if men tend to be one thing, women tend to be the complimentary opposite.  In the end, love brings these two different minds together, then when the love spell begins to wear off, they in fact, need to start opposing each other, because either has all the answers, but together, they likely will have the best answers.  This doesn't mean they should fight, likely that will not bring the comprise they both need.  Rather, the disagree, and process to work it out in a way, that they both get a livable outcome.  

    Another example of this is in politics.  Yes, politics are not a great subject to talk about, but stay with me, I need to make a point.  I feel like American liberals tend to favor the dreamer mentality, and the American conservatives tend to favor the constructionist mentality.   This is why they don't get along very well.  This is why they clearly see the other as having poor judgement.  Because, of course you would think the other had bad judgement.  Because to love one over the other, means you believe one has better rewards then the other, so they thing, "why doesn't my opponent understand this?"  But I don't believe in loving one over the other.  I believe the only good rewards come when both types of thought come together to make something new, and possible.  

    The dreamers make new things, and the constructionists make new things possible, that is the symbolic relationship.  

    So, we are all in this journey of life, constantly confronted with problems that must be solved.  Our brain is capable of two kinds of thought, to help us.  We will use both of them, yet one will at times dominate our personality.  I feel, that if we listen to the lessons of life, we will learn over time to create a more equal balance in our own mind, and not think so harshly toward others, as they attempt to make the world better using a different thought process then ours.

    

What is Humor

     I'm going to try and make this post short.  In addition restate my purpose in this blog; I want a place where I can publish my thoughts and ideas.  Not to tell anyone what to believe, or what to do with their lives; just share thoughts.  Perhaps some things in my posts can have value for the reader, but I'm not in a position to successfully make conclusions on behalf of others.  So use your own brain, and use it well.

    I had a thought that really caused a sense of profoundness and mystery to me late one night.  It was an idea of what humor may be.  I was thinking about how intelligence is created when ideas are linked together.  This works in computer databases as well as in the mind of all living things that have a recognizable mind, in my opinion.  

    It's becoming more and more obvious to me that this is how the human mind works.  All the understanding we have inside our heads is a vast collection of related data.  When there is enough of this data linked together in just the right way, it forms what we call understanding.  

    If we think of an orange.  We can picture a round ball in our mind, with the orange color.  We can image the feel of the skin of the fruit.  We can think about the indentation where it once grew on a stem.  When we think of an orange, it appears to us in our mind as one complete thought.  But what is really happening, is that a chain of related concepts, have been grouped together and executed together.  The orange is round like a sphere, it has a color to it called orange, it has a outside skin, it has a smell, it has a place where we get oranges, a shop.  There are so many attributes of an orange.  All these attributes exist separately in our mind, yet when they are put together with links, our mind contains a concept of an orange.  If we have a good list of attributes in our mind linked together, our brain has a useful resource of information available.  Whenever it needs to know anything related to oranges.  

    When someone says to us, image an orange in our mind, we access the key reference in out mind to the orange.  Every concept I believe must have one key reference of some kind.  When this data point is executed, it will then reference all the linked data points.  When all the linked information is assembled it doesn't feel like a group of information, it feels like a complete picture. 

    I have before in previous posts written about what I call the mental model of something.  It's when we have created enough links about a subject or thing, to be able to get answers to questions we ask our model.  If I ask you what happens when a ping-pong ball is dropped into a pool of water, what would you say?  Perhaps "that it floats, and it wont make much of a splash."  If I then ask you what happens when a bowling ball is dropped into a pool of water.  Your answer would likely be, "it would make a big splash, and definitely would not float."  We can make these determinations in our brains, because we have a mental model for water, and the ping-pong ball, and bowling ball, and gravity, and inertia.  We can input data into each of these models, or algorithms, get output for each of them, then put all this output together.  What we get, is not perfect, flowless, and exact information, but we do get an answer.  Perhaps the slash of the bowling ball ended up being bigger then we thought it would be.  

    Simple attributes, are linked into larger clusters which made up a concept.  Concepts can then interact between difference concepts and what we have in the end is an intelligence that can adapt and survive in a complex world.  At least it can try too.  

    On a side note, I refer to models sometimes as algorithms.  Likely because I can't make up my mind on which word works best to describe what I'm trying to say.  So just a warning.  

    So where does humor fit into all of this?  Well, we are constantly trying to improve out mental models.  To do that we have to test them out, compare them to the mental models others have using conversations and books, etc.  We can have experiences that give us clues that our mental models need improvement, and we can make new links whenever we find that two things have a relation that we have found.  

    Some relations are very easy for us, others are more difficult, the point is that linking and unlinking happening a lot, and needs to happen a lot.  In order for our mind to help us navigate the world successfully, it must adapt correctly.  Which means that every time an important relationship is found between to things, it must create a link.  If it doesn't, our brain will miss an opportunity to improve it's capability, which might make an important difference in our survival.  

    There are other times when the brain will attempt to link two ideas, but then will not.  It will attempt to make the link, however it will find by using it's own logic, that the link is invalid.  Some things just don't have a valid relation.  The brain must only have valid links, invalid links will cause our brains to give us the wrong answer to the questions we give it.  

    So to link, or not to link, that is the question for our brain.  Sometimes we need to make the link to make our mind more accurate, and at times we should not make the link to make our mind more accurate.  This is what I thought about late one night months ago.  I was thinking about how each emotion control this linking and unlinking process, and when I thought about humor, I thought; what if this link was more unique then the rest?  What if a concept needed to be linked, but at the same time should not be linked?  What if the brain was caught between to opposing sets of logic that contradicted each other, yet they both were valid arguments to link and unlink.  

    Consider the major problem this dilemma brings to the human mind.  If it makes the link, it will have an invalid algorithm, and then get wrong results from running the algorithm.  If it doesn't make the link, then the algorithm is then incomplete and again will get the wrong result when running the algorithm.  

    So what is to be done?  Well, through the process of evolution our brains likely just created a link or didn't create a link, and didn't go further then that, but at some point in the evolutionary process of our intelligence, these contradictory links started to become valuable to us.  It became important to treat them differently.  What happened, is that humor was created.  

    The links had to be made, but with an important additional link to them.  Connecting them to our humor algorithm.  

    Have you ever heard, or saw something funny.  Laughed about it, then in remembering it later, laughed about it again?  I have.  Sometimes we laugh at something only once, sometimes we laugh again and again.  When we do this, our brain is enjoying a contradiction that is somehow desirable to our mind.  

    So to review, there are three actions our brain will do, when it finds related information.   The first is make the relation if it believes it's valid.  The second is reject the relation if it believes it's invalid.  The third is related it as an in between valid and invalid.  When our algorithm runs, it will run through all the links attached to it, yet when it gets to a humor link, it will not categorize it as truly belonging, yet it may stop and explore it for a quick laugh with a friend.

    Understand, I'm not claiming this is all true.  It's another one of my interesting and unproven thoughts.  It makes a whole lot of sense to me, and I've been thinking about it while hearing jokes, and I have to admit, it does kill the humor a bit when I'm focusing on analyzing humor instead of just enjoying it.  

    Yet, my mind is very much drawn to some ideas, and for the past while now, this has been on my mind a lot.  The part that I find most mysterious about this, is why would humor be so valuable in the first place?  Spotting these inconsistencies I think may play a big role in helping us understand what is real, and what just seems like it's real.  It may also help us by finding an alternative to finding meaning in things.  

    I feel like our brain has a strong need to assign meaning to everything that happens.  Sometimes humor is the only real meaning to make sense of some things.

    One last item I feel I need to discuss, is confusion.  Confusion and humor I think are different.  In confusion, there is a strong believe in our mind, that a link is either true or untrue.  Not that it's in a state between.  So we feel confused, because our algorithm doesn't seem to work with the link, or without the link.  Add to that, we don't have a third option that we have available for updating our algorithm of links.  The end results is confusion.  

    Humor doesn't have this lingering problem.  In humor a solution was found, and making the link in the algorithm but only as a humor link, that will also indicate it's invalid.   

    If there was more to deliberate on, then confusion would be the result, but humor is not the same as confusion.  It can look like confusion, but it's not the same I would argue.  We may have a thought that starts as confusion, then as we have time to process it, we discover something to laugh about.  In this scenario, we struggled to know if the correction was correct, then found to our surprise, it's humor, and it's time to laugh. 

    I would encourage anyone reading this to leave a comment in this blog.  Let me know what you think of this, and what your ideas are for this odd, and interesting thing called humor.    

  

    

    

What an idea is

    When I was a child, I played with toys.  So do most children.  There are many kinds of toys, and   games available.  When I was thinking about toys, games, and sports, and all things children enjoy for fun, a thought came to me.   Play often simulates something from adult life.  A child can pretend to be a mother or father, with baby dolls, or a truck driver with a toy truck.  Play is a smaller simpler version of something big and complex.  Children would find it very difficult to operate real machines or be a real parent in the adult world.  Yet though play, they can experiment with a simplified version of responsibility, struggle, and achievement, in the adult world.

    When children become adults, play continues; yet in a more sophisticated form.  Examples of grown up play could be an appreciation of sports, theater, standup comedy, or collecting toys instead of playing with them.    Play is an important part of learning.  What play is good or bad is a big subject.  I will not discuss the pros and cons of play, however it did lead me to my second thought.

    Play seems like an example of how all human understanding is.  Our mind will build a simplified version of something complex in our minds.  This simplified version is what we call our understanding.  Think about the logic of that.  If you could not fit the famous Titanic ship inside a museum, because the Titanic is too big, and too sunk.  An alternative would be to put a model of the ship inside the museum so visitors could see closely what the ship looked like.  When things don't fit, just scale it down, until it does.  

    Now I want to ask you a question.  Can most people imagine the Titanic in their minds?  I'm thinking that you will say yes to that question, especially if you have seen it in movies.  However, are you really imagining the ship with all his halls and doors, and all of structure and machinery?  What I would like to point out, is the information in our heads when we think of this ship is really just a list of attributes of it.  

    Many of the attributes in our mind about the Titanic, can be shared with other ships.  What a ship is, is a concept of a short list of attributes.  In a sense, a mental miniature model of a ship can exist in our minds.  We can refer to this mental concept, with all it's attached attributes when ever it needs to be recalled.  Our mental model of a ship is so good, we can instantly recognize a new kind of ship we have not seen before.  This mental model of what a ship is, can help us understand unique ships and normal ships.  The Titanic with his history is unique, because it has attributes that other ships don't have.  Like tragedy, and being new, and grand in size.  My point is that mental models in our minds of the things we know, help us understand things.  Like the subject of ships, and specific subject of a particular ship.  

    I believe that all intelligence comes down to data that is related to each other.  In a computer database, data is only useful when some meaning can be assigned to the data.  How that is done is simple.  One piece of a data is related to another piece of data.  So when the computer reads the data, it can also read the other related data too.  Some pieces of data should be related to each other, and some pieces should not be.  When all the relationships between data are setup, a database can return the piece of information and all its related data to be displayed together.  

    Here's an example.  A school database keeps track off all the students attending the school.  If in the database every student is listed by their name, and birthday, and a list of other important details.  You could search for todays date, and it would return all the names of students that have a birthday on todays date.  This is easy because the database has a relation between a persons name and the day they where born. 

    Our brain has created so many relationships that we can navigate this world.  As we find something new that we don't understand, our brain will start making relationships with that thing.  We may have to study what we don't understand, or play, or compare it to what we already know, but with time, we can build a list of attributes.  

    The universe is so big, and so complex.  Our brains would likely need an infinite number of neurons to understand the vastness of the universe.  So our brains employ a brilliant short cut.  It simply makes a model in our mind, that is much simpler.  Our brain wants our model to be as accurate as possible.  So it's careful about getting the right attributes.

    Here is my main point.  We can believe, and know something, that is completely wrong.  How?  Because our models are limited.  They have to be.  We can only hope to improve them, not have them work without flaw. 

    Think about the game pool.  A human can tap a ball with a stick, and that ball can hit other balls which hopefully nocks them into the pockets.  A really great player can hit several balls in sequence, just as they predicted.  A normal player will often need several turns to finish the game.  We humans have limits to what we can mentally accomplish, and those limits keep us from truly understanding what is happening around us.  Like pool, we just can't make every shot perfect, nor plan every shot perfectly.  And if we can't be perfect, then what can we have?  The answer is, we can have a limited model of the truth that at least partially replicate and predict the truth.  A limited model may be correct at least some of the time.  To become an expert we have to spend a lot of time failing, also known as practicing.  

    What our brain can do, is give us a model of what the universe is.  Our mind, can't comprehend the number of atoms in the universe, or all the ways in which forces, matter and energy may interact.  Even if we understood the universe fully, it would be impossible for us to calculate the interactions of the universe fully enough to predict the results of every action.    

    So rather then do the impossible and create a perfect model to represent reality, we create a limited model to represent what we understand of reality.  Our limited model changes a great deal over time.  Sometimes, we need experiences that help us improve our models, other times, we must rely on others teaching us from their experiences.  Because it's a process, and not an instant success, this is what confusion, and cognitive dissonance, and conflicting ideas all come from.  

    Morality is so important, yet people have different ideas on what morality is.  Scientists debate what is true and untrue about the universe.  We each have our own models, and other people have theirs.  Sometimes different people will have very similar models, and other times, different people will have models that contradict each other.  

    In fact what is more odd, is that two people with conflicting models may be useful in different situations.   It is unwise to be so certain as to who has the best model.  Some people will have a model that predicts one situation well, and another person's model may be capable of predicting another.  Having a team of people with different models may make the team more effective, as where one person can understand a situation they may struggle with another.  

    This is how people can believe such different things, yet be so confident of their position.  Our models can also have false data in them.  Relationships between attributes that are not relationships.  In fact I believe that our brains are supposed to have errors in these models.  Why?  Because to learn, getting messy is often necessary.   

    I'm not saying its good to have incorrect information in our mental models, but I am trying to say that our brain hazards possible bad data a lot.  In the end, our brain hopes that most of this bad data will eventually be figured out as wrong, and removed.  The brain does not want to risk being idol.  It eagerly makes one idea related to another, using personal experience, and what others are teaching us, it does this so eagerly that incorrect ideas will eventually be fitted into our mental models of our understanding.  To cope with these incorrect related ideas, our brain will often work on the model.  This is part of the reason why we dream, to work on our models, to test them out within the dream simulation of our mind.  Eventually in the laboratory of our mind, we may reflect differently on our mental models and change them.  

    A second way errors are removed is by copying mental models from others.  As we come to know people that we trust and admire, we will consciously or unconsciously adopt their models.  This is how people follow political and religious leaders.    

    I don't believe people are mindless robots, who follow others, and don't think for themselves.  But I do think people have all the mental equipment in their heads to accomplish that.  

    As much as independent thought is a good thing, the truth I feel, is that it's hard to deny that people often have wrong conclusions.  Gaining good working mental models from people that have put a lot of effort into fixing and updating their mental models, is a positive thing.  I just hope we always pick people with good working models to follow, and not people with very wrong ones.  

    We should love natures shortcuts in our brain.  Without them, I doubt that intelligence for us would be possible at all.  What makes the human brain so different from other species may not be our brain size, but rather how well build these mental models.  

    What should we do with this knowledge?  That is up to you, what it has done for my mind, is that it has given a reason why I should not be arrogant, and believe that I'm at the end of learning.  Our models can't represent reality, their only ability is to approximate reality, as best as possible.  May we stop thinking we have reached the finish line in learning, and build our mental models together.   

    

    

Balance and Chaos; Creation and Destruction

    Balance.  All things that exist, exist because of a balance.  All things that die, die because of a loss of balance.  It's a principle governing the universe.   We can see this everywhere, including physics, biology, and human interaction.  

    When apposing forces are locked in a struggle for dominance, their opposing struggle forms a balance, and the right balance will become the catalyst for creation, and success of that creation.  As long as neither side over powers the other the two will exist, and create something from their struggle.  

    Yes, this is another theory, and we should all know that a theory is an explanation that may or may not be true.  It's another idea, I just can't keep out of my head, there is something about it that keeps drawing me back to it.  

    The sun sustains all life on earth. The sun burns because of a balance of forces, the force of gravity pushing inward, and the force produced by nuclear reactions pushing outward. The sun will keep this balance going for a long, long time, but eventually the sun will explode when the forces in the sun loose this balance.

    In order for planets to orbit the sun, the orbit must be at the correct angle, too steep or two shallow the planet would fall into the sun, or be lost into deep space. The planets that we see in the night sky, had the correct angle to their motion, and thus keep their occupation of the sky. Without this correct angle, objects would fall into the sun, or be lost out into space.

    So how long something can exist, is a matter of how long the balance can be kept, before it becomes imbalanced.

    Our bodies require salt, but too much salt, too much would lead to illness or death. We require heat, but not too much heat. Air pressure, but not too much air pressure. We require light to see, but not too much light or we would be forced to shield our eyes.

    I feel, that if we deeply looked around us, we would find that everything requires some amount of balance to exist. Without that balance, it's existence would be brief. All the things that become renewed or preserved with time, keep this balance as closely as possible.

    There are two states in the universe for all things, balance and unbalance. For a thing to be created and for it to last, a balance must be made. For a thing to be destroyed an unbalance must be made.

    Another interesting balance, is the balance needed in human society. A balance of ideas. A balance of views. A balance of power, and one of my favorites, a balance of ambition and modesty. If people can find a balance then success will be created. When a society becomes out of balance, it will create conflict and failure to a point that is eventually unsustainable. So many civilizations have disappeared through time, and I feel like each will have explanations of how one or more unbalances grew too to the point of causing their collapse.

    Even with the thoughts in our minds we must have balance. Conflicting desires are common in humans and all life that has to make decisions. Conflicting desires in our minds must find a balance for us to be capable of sustainable choices.

    While groups of people can debate, we can also have an internal debate in our own mind, and we often do.

    The main reason why I wanted to write about this, is because I feel like one of the balances we over look, is the need for opposing argument in our believe systems. We has human beings have limited abilities to understand things, even things we firmly believe we do understand. I'm not saying we can't be confident, but I am saying we can be confident that we humans are often wrong. Wrong about facts, wrong when judging other people, wrong when judging results from an experiment.     

    If we let ourselves think, we can help to improve our own beliefs and ideas. Ideas are easy to make, and hard to refine. Without using balance in how we consider all points of view, we can't refine our ideas. If our ideas are the lasting ones, the ones that survive despite all the opposition against them, then they can be used as a secure foundation for our systems of belief. New ideas have not had time to work out their imperfections, and may be unsafe to use as a foundation. I use the "may", as there is always uncertainty, but wisdom needs time, it needs experience, it needs to be tested against the oppositions it faces.

    If an idea comes from philosophers of any sort, however new and interesting it may be, until it becomes tested against the stresses of reality, it can't be truly understood. It's the difference between theory and practice. With balance, the things that survive and provide long term success are the ones that find a better balance.

    To make this post more meaningful, and less vague, I will list some of the opposing things, that are important to find a balance with.

• mercy and justice.
• suffering and pleasure.
• new ideas and old ideas.
• kindness and self preservation.
• humility and conquest
• logic and feelings
• sentimentality and ambition
• facts and intuition

    Some of the items I listed may seem very dangerous and negative, like conquest, or intuition over facts. The point I'm attempting to make is that these must be in balance, not on their own. Humility is good and peaceful, but a sense of conquest is needed to make a difference, yet if the drive for conquest is too great, then we may loose perspective on the real good and selflessness of our sense of conquest. Facts are so important, but there are times when using our intuition may lead to something good that the facts couldn't show us. Yet to ignore facts and embrace intuition too much may lead to us knowingly putting ourselves in harms way. An imbalance of obsession with just one of any of these items without it's opposite will create an unrealistic situation which will lead to brief success, followed by destruction, and loss.

    People all the time argue, and debate, that make points and counter points. The struggle to all get along is very difficult much of the time, for most societies. People can get along, they can find a balance of opinions, but that balance is going to have to include a greater balance inside ourselves, in our own beliefs. One extreme temperament must be balanced with another. Otherwise we are at risk of becoming emotionally entrapped by our own unbalanced passions. To embrace a balance of thought would cause us to gain the prize humans seek the most, mental growth.

  

    

Evolution verses Creationism

    One of the epic showdowns in the common culture conflicts is the disagreement on the origin of humanity.  This show down is the theory of evolution verses the theory of creationism by religion.  This battle started when Charles Darwin published "The Origin of species" in the year 1859, which taught a theory that all the diversity of life comes from living things mutating through generations, and natural selection of the most well adapted surviving to repeat the process.  In short, what works lives, and what doesn't dies, and over time living things change.  Because the earth is so big, with may different climates and regions there is lots of room for species to separate to different populations and mutate into different creatures, even very different creatures over time.  

    This theory, as the reader likely knows, came into conflict, as the explanation of how the world had been created, had already been told.  If there is one thing that commonly triggers human bias the most, it's likely being told that you are wrong.  Naturally, many people rejected the theory, in favor of what felt right to them, creationism.  

    At this point, I wish to show the arguments both sides have in this debate, I will attempt to be non-bias towards both sides as much as I am able. 

    In evolution, there is a long list of evidences that support the theory.  The fossils recovered from the ground seem to show creatures slowly changing over time.  Sexual reproduction seems to be designed to speed up evolutionary process.  The theory explains why so many creatures have similarities, in form and behavior, as change happens gradually and only with necessity.  It's easy to point out impossibilities in various theories of creationism, according to what is understood in science. Evolutionary scientists look at the world, and think, all clues point to the same answer, accidents that work, survive and create a world like this.  

    In creationism, evidence is not what is important, religion is a matter of intuition with faith to fill in what can't be understood.  Creationists point out, to truly know something is impossible, faith, in other words a trust in something that must be used.  Likely one of the best arguments creationists have, is that the universe is such a wonderous place.  Our human heart feels that some grand design must be behind it in some way, to them, that is evidence.  And the various creation theories all have this focus on purpose, not chance, or accident.  Creationists look at the world, and think, how could it all just be, without some force of intelligence to make it so.  

    So both groups believe they are right.  Some from either group even may villainize the other.  Our natural human instinct will push us to distrust and even hate people who think or believe differently then us.  I have seen creationists that distrusted the scientific community because of this, and I have even seen some scientists that have seen religion has an enemy, that is dangerous.  To be honest, with my own experiences, scientist tend to be the more mature, and patent ones in this debate, however there can be exceptions to this.  

    There is always danger, in villainizing those who act differently, look differently, or believe differently.  Extreme believes can grow in any group, because deep in us, is the emotional components of a warrior ready to fight and crusade against the enemy.   The right thing to do in an argument is to put off our natural selves.  We do this with mental exercise and by exposing ourselves to good influences that help us break from these impulses.  Stay away from angry mods, instead look for quiet discussions where both sides are allowed to speak, and both sides give effort to listen.  

    It never impresses me, when I see a person, however right they may be on a subject, dominate with anger over their foe.  If people are in physical danger, then anger can be helpful for that situation, but those situations are rare, and are only for real battlefields after humanity has already lost it's self, not the debates that hold civilization together.  I've been angry in debates before, and I find no joy in my personal history related to those moments.  I suppose this is a lesson that every deep thinking person will have to grow into.  Deep thoughts require deep control of our animal instincts that would have us kept as primitive people.  There are parts of our natural selves that are good to use, and parts that should give way to our ability to reason, and discipline.  Hate is one of these natural impulses, that will cloud our judgement.  

    I have witnessed many debates, some of them even good ones.  I have gone back and forth on this issue myself, and have arrived at the conclusion I will now give.  Both sides may not like my opinion.

    To supervise my conclusion.  I believe religion has never really had much in the way of evidence.  This has always been true, but people will often accept what is confidently taught to them, so the lack of evidence never was much of a problem.  Then came science, which said belief should be based on observation of evidence, not on what seems right, or feels right.  So does this mean, science wins?  No, like it or not, there is no clear winner in this case, because neither side has thought this through enough.

    This is what I mean.  To all those who believe in creationism, I say, evolution is the greatest evidence for the existence of God that has ever been confidently accepted.  More on that later.  Religion is not proven because ancient books are old.  To be fair, being old doesn't disprove them either.  To the religious I ask, if some of you dislike science or scientists, why?  How do you know that God is not a scientist?  God may very well enjoy this discipline of humanity, after all, if God created the universe, or a part of it, then it sounds like a scientist may be able to talk shop with God at some level of understanding.   I don't mean to offend those with religion, what I mean to point out, is that thinking, however limited, is better when it's controlled like science is.  It should be religions best friend, not an enemy.  

    Is not all of the universe a religious text in a way, cannot we know understand the maker a bit more, by understand the makers crafts?  If science gives us even a small amount of additional understand of this vast universe, then would we not examine closely this new understanding, just like sacred texts.   If God is the source of all truth?  Then wouldn't truth however it was found, as long as it was truth, be holy?  

    To the scientists, I say, why is it scientific to be an atheist?   Doesn't science teach to only believe in making conclusions from the observation of evidence?   Atheists look around the world, and say there is not evidence of God, but are they so sure they know what the evidence of God would look like?  Science has observed evidence that evolution is a process with living creatures, but how can this disprove the existence of intelligence in creation?  Who are scientists to determine what a greater intelligence would do with it's creation?  How does disproving ancient writings, disprove the existence of God?  If there was a hidden room behind a wall, does it not still exist when we have no evidence of it?  Does science really teach people to deny what is not proven, or disproven?  There may be some anthesis that think they have proven God doesn't exist, but I have never been remotely convinced by their logic, and I don't see how a true scientist would either.  

    Evolution is wonderful as a theory, I personally love it, and believe it.  However, the theory is missing a big portion of the origin explanation.  That is, how does it explain the human soul?  So, at this point, I can easily guess there is a lot of atheist's rolling their eyes right now.  If it's religious then it must be rubbish right?  Religion, that thing that is always suppose to be wrong, has come up with a concept call a soul, and it's the soul that is really what is alive according to common religious belief.  This explains death to them.  Well, I ask you this, what is the difference between a electronic computer, and a biological brain?   One has circuits, the other cells, and other differences, but do they not both store information, do they not both process input, and deliver output based on internal abilities?  Is a computer alive?  A computer can be very capable of processing information, even innovative, like living things, and making them better is just a matter of finding the right math to do it.  I feel like so many people have thought that life is created from intelligence, but how could that work?  So many living things live without brains, like plants and fungus.  I've heard atheists say the human body is like a computer that is turned off at death?  To me, consciousness is something that science hasn't yet come close to explaining.  We can't be just computer glitches gone right traveling through the universe on our two feet.  We are alive.  It's like the hidden room behind a wall, if we are not thinking of the possibility of it's existence, then it is truly hidden from us.   The question is, what really makes something alive?  If a bunch of atoms can come together and make a computer, and a bunch of atoms together can also make a living creature.  What makes the living creature alive, and the computer a non-living machine?  Are all thinks alive?  And intelligence makes them aware that they are alive?  My point, is that this is not answered?  Why do you need a living thing, to make a living thing?  Are we one consciousness that has been divided up trillions of ways into every living thing on earth?  I can't think of anything that could really explain life, and I feel like the hardest questions never get asked, when it comes to humans.  It's far from being answered, yet evolution is still sometimes explained as a strong theory, that solidly explains life, yet it clearly to me is still at it's beginning stages of explaining the origin of life.  

    Religion should love evolution.  Think about this, according to current theory, life on Earth started four billon years ago, but at that time life existed as singled celled life forms.  These cells were not like the cells that make up you and me, they were prokaryote cells, they had no nucleus.   Prokaryote cells are always singled celled life, so you can't make a multi-cellular life form from them.  Two billon years goes by with prokaryote cells being the only life on earth.  After two billion years, a mutation is finally ready, and eukaryote cells now appear.  Another half a billion years the eukaryote cells start to change into different kinds of cells.  About a hundred million years after this, these different eukaryote cells start grouping together to make multicellular life.  Different eukaryote cells make different living things, some become plants, some become fungus, and some very tiny creatures that move around.  There are so many points of interest to discuss in the evolutionary time line, and I just realized I can't write about them all.  

    Skipping to the point, one thing is very obvious to me, the necessary mutations to go from a prokaryote cells to a human being, keep getting closer together in the time line.  To finally see something resembling a fish is 500 million years ago, to have something like a mammal 100 million years ago, for something resembling a human, it takes 8 million years go.  But with all that accomplished, it is only 200,000 - 300,000 years ago that homosapiens appear.    

    The point to understand, is how far apart these events are separated in the timeline.  The evolutionary leaps are happening more frequently as the timeline progresses.  It seems to me, the more evolution establishes, the faster it gets and making a whole new stage of evolution.  

    So think about this.  If in four billion years, some prokaryote cells can become a human being.  What can human beings become in four billion years of evolution?  Whatever humans may become in four billion years, what could come from that living thing having another four billion years of evolution?  What limit would their be for life.  To have the power to create technology that can extend our body's ability.  All technology does this, tools extend the ability of our hands, vehicles extend the ability of our legs, cooking extends the ability of our digestive system.  Cameras around the earth extend our ability to see.  Medicine extends our ability to heal.  At what point does all this external technology possibly come back to directly update the abilities of our bodies, rather then augment them?

    Yes, this all probably sounds like science fiction, but to me, evolution is the best theory from science that shows that God is possible.  Is it possible that through evolution, something immortal and capable to creating this universe can exist?  Would that God create worlds in the same way others were created?  We don't know.  Yet with that thought, can we at least understand, that there are big things that we don't yet understand?  

    So to me evolution is the greatest thing given to religion.  Yet, religion rejects it.  This is an example, of how people should embrace truth.  That doesn't mean embrace everything people teach each other, because falsehood is possible, but if something is true, and it's embraced, it will become a boost for us.  We won't always know how, but it will help us somehow in the end.  Religion may need to have faith in truth, when it points to the unknown, and science may need to not rule out possibilities that it has not observed yet, or thought of yet.

    Perhaps our big problem in this debate is that we all think they know more then we really know.  

    

    

      

Money

     Money, is often misunderstood.  I'm surprised at this, because it's such an important concept in our lives.  So much of what happens in our lives is influenced by the use of money.  Yet, with this big subject, we setup expectations and conclusions about money that are truly odd.  Following my common style, I looked at common definitions of money, and will summarize what I have found.  

Common descriptions summarized:

• A medium of exchange.
• Assets or property that is owned by a person.  
• A particular object that is accepted as exchange of goods or services. 
• Money is wealth.

    These common definitions don't make very much sense to me, and they have not for a while.  Money can be a medium of exchange, but so can anything else.  Money is not wealth.  Money does not create wealth.  Money does not control wealth.  

    I hope I have created enough confusion, and if this doesn't all make sense, I will start a long explanation, because those are out of style it seems.  Money is rarely described in a way that makes sense.  What money really is, money is a measuring tool.  

    We have lots of systems of measurement, like kilograms and old English pounds are measurement types for weight.  Systems of measurement are very important in a modern world.  Money is just another measurement system like any other, only it's used to measure value during trade.  We trade products, we trade peoples voluntary time, we trade opportunities, we trade ideas.  

    So long as money is worth something to people, then it can be used in the process of getting wealth, but money it's self is not wealth.   My feeling is that this is the biggest misconception about money there is.  A database is just numbers, paper is just paper, gold is just gold.  When these things become money, that are given a power over society.  

    How happy would you be to have suddenly a million dollars of cash appear next to you?  Very happy.  Now image you are now transported to a tropical island all alone with no chance of rescue with your million dollars.  On this empty island there are no restaurants, no stores, no hotels and no people to staff them, what value does your money have?   This is my point.  Money is not wealth.  Money can potentially bring us wealth, when it works, but wealth it is not.  With money alone, you don't have a million dollars, just have a pile of heavy paper.

    This is why my definition makes so much more sense to me, and why the language we use around money doesn't make sense.  Does one "make" money?  Or does one "earn" money, or "acquire" money?  The only people that "make" money are the ones that manufacture it.  The rest of us are earning, gaining, or acquiring it.  Common language describing money leads us to indulge in fantasy about money, that it has some super ability to make everything better for us.  Money, has no power of it's self.  Power from money, is in the influence money has over people.  Money is useful, but only because it helps people organize their trade more effectively.  Money is powerful because people will often choose to honor it's value.  People have faith in money, and it's ability to provide an score or amount to something that can't be easily valued yet needs to be.  

    I have so often heard, how, "money makes money?"  Money does not make money.  What people are referring to is investments, and people can earn money from investments.  And how did they earn money from investments?  The same way all money is earned, by trading something.  What investors are trading is risk.  The investor risks money, and if the money is not lost by the investment, the investor is paid for assuming the risk.  Even if the investor creates a contract in which they would cease property if the money loaned wasn't repaid, they still have to risk the process of claiming the property, and hopefully getting the value or money they need from it.  

    I don't say all this to point out good guys or bad guys.  Trade is potentially a very good thing, when good judgement is used.  And the way human bias works, pointing out who are bad and who is good is much more complicated then people think.  There is a class struggle that has always been going on in human society.  The rich say the poor are not important like them, and the poor say the rich earn nothing unlike them.  The funny thing about rich people and poor people, is that they both think the other owes them something.  This post is about what money is, not about the squabbles we make over this age old debate over who has wealth and who doesn't.  

    Inflation is a fun concept in economics, and it's another example that money is only a system of measurement.  If you create more money, you have not created more wealth, instead with more money, the currency now only represents less of the economy.  

    What of the age old argument, I have heard so often; "money is evil."  Money does sometimes gets blamed for suffering in this world, but how can a tool of measurement be evil?  If people didn't have money, they would still want what other people have, and would scheme to get it.  They still would ignore the needs of people who are struggling while they were pursuing their own interests.  People would still judge others by their wealth, and yes without money there would still be wealth.  Money is no more evil than a kilometer can be evil.  Human behavior creates evil.  Saying money is evil is really how a child may understand something dangerous.  Somehow childish belief systems creep into adulthood, this is nothing to be ashamed of, it just happens.  Children need to sometimes understand things in a simple way, like calling something evil that has no intelligence, capable of choosing to be evil.  As our minds mature, we need to understand evil for what it is, something that only humans are capable of.  An animal can be dangerous, but it's following it's instinct, evil requires an amount of self awareness.  So humans can be evil, objects are just objects, not evil, and animals are just doing what they are capable of doing and are not evil.  It's so easy to fall into anthropomorphic way of thinking, and apply this to money.  Doing so we loose perspective, to fix the problems we think are created by money, we have to fix these problems with-in ourselves.   

    Long long ago, some very smart people figured out that rather then trading things, they could trade money.  Money is easy to carry, and easy to accumulate.  Money has a problem, our brain wants to think of money in an abstract way, and assign it meaning that it just doesn't have.  Money is important, money is useful, money is needed.  I'm not anti-money, money is great.  However, it's a great tool, nothing more.  

    My last illusion about money that I will attempt to discredit is "money solves problems."  Money helps trade, but the number of problems it solves ends there.  You can't solve a problem with money, and you still can't solve a problem with more money.  Problems are solved by people.  Yes, any problem a human being encountered that was solved, was not solved by money, it was solved by one or more persons.  Money can be used as one of the tools to solve a problem, but it will almost always not be the only tool, and tools will not solve a problem, people solve problems.  People have experience, people make plans, people use computers and write algorithms, people use tools and make tools.  Why do we indicate objects create success, people create success.  They may require tools to accomplish the success, and tools are important, and sometimes essential, but living intelligence solves problems, and only people have intelligence, not tools.  Automation of any kind is just another tool a person created.    So if there is a big problem that needs to be solved, what are the odds more money will solve it?  It depends on the problem, but likely money alone will not be enough, or may not be needed at all.  Because if something isn't being fixed, then what is really needed, is the thoughts, planning and experience of a person or persons.  Someone may say, "the project was failing, so we hired more workers, and we are back on schedule."  Well, to that, money payed for the works yes, but who hired them?  Who decided we needed more workers?  What research did they do to conclude that more workers were needed?  While money is important and perhaps an irreplaceable tool, it does not create success.  Even if you hire people, you still need them to make good choices, and learn or have learned the right skills for the job.      

    In conclusion, don't think that I'm indicating money doesn't mean anything, and can be spent without good judgement.  That would be foolish, always use good judgement in everything.  Personally, I love saving money.  I'm not a big spender, and it gives me joy to find ways of saving money, and a feeling of peace, when I can turn down a big expense.  It gives me a good feeling, knowing extra money is there, and has not been spent.  I feel safer, and safety to me is more important that luxury.   This is not the only good philosophy of money.  I can't describe the good ways and bad ways of using money in this post, and I don't feel I know them well enough yet to write about them.  Whatever your personal beliefs about money are, make it work for you.  Do you have to spend money?  No, it's a tool, if you don't need a tool, then put it on a shelf, and keep it save for when it's needed.  If you loose your money, because of some major bill that was out of your control.  Then don't worry, it was just a tool, and sometimes tools have to be used up to fix things.  One of the best ways to use this wonderful tool, is in helping others.  You have to be balanced in your choices, but each of us will at times get opportunities to use this tool to help others.   Perhaps the greatest lesson of money, is learning how we may use this tool, to bring something good into the world.  

    I like what money is, but I don't want in my own mind to become a servant of it, I want money to serve me.  

Why illegal drugs are bad.

     I feel like my posts have not been simple enough.  Long speeches are not popular today compared to the past.  So I'm going to briefly explain why I believe that drugs are bad for us.  By drugs I mean illegal drugs, and the misuse of legal drugs.  We are living beings, but more then that we are living beings with a brain.  Which means, our brain has to follow a algorithm in order to make decisions.  Now what that algorithm is like is a big mystery, however it's possible to get close to describing what it's doing.  To put it in my own words according to my own believe, that algorithm is using pleasure and pain to control behavior.  

    Yes, our mind is smart and can do things that can surprise us, but it's also very predictable.  Our mind wants pleasure, and it doesn't want pain, but the problem is that all pleasure requires pain first before pleasure can be obtained.  Now here is the complicated part, because some choices with pain in them will lead to pleasure, and other choices that also have pain will not lead to pleasure.  

    I can't seem to explain it with less words.  Our mind is trying to figure out which pain is profitable, and which is not.  For a farmer two-hundred years ago, this process works well, if the farmer plants their crops on time, the harvest is better, and eating creates pleasure.  The subconscious mind understands that planting at the right time is important to get pleasure again.  A rat will push a lever to get food in an experiment, so to do we push metaphorical levers all the time, in order to get a treat.  

    So why are drugs bad, because inside our brain is a list of all the pain that brings pleasure.  When we take a drug that gives us pleasure, the drug is added to the list, and it's set to a very high priority over other things.  Things like how you should work hard at your job, or get a better job, or get a job in the first place.  How you should study hard for the small business idea you have.  How you should take care of yourself so that others will be socially impressed by you, so you can form the social connections you need for your professional life.   

    More importantly what about family, family is on our list of things that bring pleasure, but if drugs is added to the list, it may and often does push family down the list, and drugs becomes more important.  

    Our fiction in entertainment is full of mythological creatures like zombies, and science fiction mind control of all sorts.  We are so intent on learning about these things, yet do we not see the mind control that is all over our society?  Mind, and mood controlling drugs hack our minds and change what is good and bad in a way we can little control.  How many drug addicts overcome their addition?  If they do overcome it, how well is their recovery?  No matter what they may have learned from their experience, think about how their lives could have been different without the mind control of those substances.  

    So many missed opportunities because of these substances.  When I watch entertainment, and I do watch a lot of it, I see so many different believes with drug use.  So entertainers want to make it into a joke, others want to show the tragedy of it, but only some.  It's clear many people are teaching a false believe that drugs are funny, and will bring happiness into your live.   All us anti-drug people need to stop trying to ruin the party.  Yes we can ruin a party but drug users and dealers will ruin peoples lives.  

    This is another thing that upsets me too, people need their own mind.  There own mind to find pleasure.  Live is full of pleasures, and we should seek after ones that are sustainable.  Because these pleasures will lead us to survival and prosperity, and the good things in live that money can't buy.  We need our own mind when we create relationships with others, both to protect us, and to help us accomplish it.  We need our own mind when we choose to work to create something, or improve something instead of stealing from what others have created.  

    Is pleasure good or bad?  I believe is a question of if the pleasure is natural not artificial.  Drugs are artificial pleasures.  We should avoid them at all cost.  They only justification could be medical use under a trained professional.  Not medical use for our selves.  Because if we take drugs, we metaphorically become like a zombie, with limited or no control over ourselves.  We cannot medicate ourselves with mind altering drugs, it obvious this is true when you finally see what they do to people.  

    People will become smarter, and wiser if they can give their natural mind a chance to work out how this world is supposed to be.  

How we choose, Part II

    I would like to re-address my first post, explaining my idea of "the purpose of pleasure is to repeat behavior."  However this time I will try to simplify it all in one story, hopefully a better story then the last one.      

    As a reminder I don't claim this idea is true, just that it's a theory of mine.  Use help from a professional for decisions, not this page.  This page is just for fun, and to have something to think about. 

    The story is told in a fairytale style, and it goes like this: 

    Two monkeys are sitting under an apple tree.  The first monkey tells the second monkey.  "Hey, there is food up in this tree."  The second monkey just ignores the first monkey.  The first monkey repeats, "there's food in this tree, don't you understand me?"  The second monkey says, "I don't need to, I have food."  The first monkey looks confused, "what food?"  The second monkey points down at the half rotten fallen apples under the tree covered in mud, bugs, fungus.  "You eat those!?" the first monkey says.  "Of course, it's food" says the second monkey.  Disgusted, the first monkey replies, "try the food up in the tree."  

    "No" says the second monkey.  "Why not, the food in the tree is better!" explains the first monkey.  The second monkey feeling irritated by this waste of a conversation says, "I don't need to climb the tree, because I already have food."  The first monkey being perplexed by the second monkey responses, climbs the tree and comes back down with a clean ripe apple, and hands the fruit to the now interested second monkey.  "Eat", says the first monkey.  The second monkey smells the sweat fruit, eats, and is very pleased.  "This food is better!", the second monkey joyously says.  Confidently, the first monkey says, "now you know what I mean, you can climb the tree and get food."  

    "No."  Says the second monkey.  The first monkey completely surprised, stares blankly as the second monkey continues to enjoy the apple.  "You saw that the apple came from this tree, how can you not understand?"  The second monkey looks confused, "no, I saw the apple come from you, you gave me the apple.  I would like another now."  The first monkey surprised yet again, says, "I didn't plan on giving you more food, I gave you food to show the tree has food."  The second monkey changes it's face, to a hurt and disappointed expression.  

    "You will not give me more!  I was fine with that I had, then you gave me a sweater apple, and it was better, I want better and if you don't give me better I will hate you, and I will hurt you!"  The first monkey now feeling scared and confusion, ponders how it got into such a mess when it was trying to help.  "Will I have to fight?"  It thinks.  

    The second monkey begins it's attack, swinging it's arms and gnashing it's teeth. The first monkey flees, climbing the tree, and the second monkey stops it's pursuit.  Under the tree the second monkey continues to eat the rotten apples, yet now finds them unacceptable.  The taste of the sweet apple in it's memory, it's old food is not good enough.  The second monkey feels many painful feelings, denial at it's loss, anger at the first monkey, confusion on what it all means, and finally, all those feelings turn to bitter sadness.  

    After some time, the second monkey looks up.  The tree is full of thick leaves, little can be seen.  The second monkey begins to reach up, garbing and feeling the branches, it clumsily tries to climb, it seeks to find a balance in the tree that it knew on the ground.  Slowly, and with discomfort, it climbs the tree and finds the first monkey, hiding and respecting the show of anger of the second monkey.  Upon spotting the first monkey, the second monkey also sees the color of a ripe apple, ready on the vine.  Picking it, the second monkey tastes what it once had.  Not by staying on the ground, but by climbing the tree.  More then that, by learning from a friend.  

    The second monkey's face changes.  It shows, regret, but more then that, admiration.  The first monkey reading the monkeys face climbs to join the second, and the two friends enjoy apples.  

The end.

    

How Normal Bias Is

I wish to answer five questions:

What is bias?

What is the good the bad, and the ugly of bias?

Who has bias?

Does bias come from culture or genetics, or both?

What can we do about bias?

    Before, I go further I will remind the reader, I do not claim I am correct. These are only ideas. Don't believe me, rather find out for yourself what is true. Follow advice from experts instead of advice from this post. I only write this to share a theory.

    This post is intended to help us all understand that mistreating people because of bias is wrong. A problem can't be solved until the problem is understood. There is no shortcut to solving the problems of bias, whatever bias is, it must be understood first before success against it can be made.

What is bias?

    To start this post, I wanted to write something about how bias is currently understood by the average person. I read several definitions for bias and compared them. Explanations commonly included these descriptions:

• Bias can be in favor or against something.
• Bias is a perception created in the mind.
• Bias is unreasonable.
• Bias may be persistent behavior or a tendency.
• Bias is prejudice. Prejudice is an interesting word, I think of pre-judgement when I hear it.

Definitions uncommonly included these descriptions:

• Bias is a lack of a neutral point of view.  
• Bias is a strong viewpoint.  
• Bias can be conscious or unconscious.  
• Bias can be good or bad.  
• Bias prevents objectivity.  

    Only some definitions concluded that bias can be either good or bad. In culture, the word is often used to denote something exclusively negative. In this post, I will be using the word bias to communicate when we make choices not based on evidence, but rather some other phycological reason. I will write about what I believe is good and bad about this.

    First we have to figure out what the word means to you and me. The word bias for many of us, may carry a huge emotional weight. I have no issue with those that think of bias as word describing only bad behavior, perhaps the differences of believes is only in the definition of this word, as I also believe it's bad to mistreat people. To me the word means more then finding excuses to hate each other. To me, it's a broad subject of human behavior of how we attempt to understand the world around us, and attempt to use that understanding to help us survive.

    My point is that we don't all use the definition of bias as the same. This leads to confusion. Forgive me, if my definition offends you. I ask you continue to read, and hold off conclusions for now.

    I call bias that is good for us positive bias, and bias that is bad for us as negative bias. After adopting this new mindset, I now think about society in a new way. If we can work out what is true and what is false in our believes about bias, the benefit will be sweet.

    Much of bias is in the unconscious mind. We believe our bias doesn't exist, and we may believe the bias of others does exist. All without really knowing what is happening around us, yet being confident of our conclusions.

In the definitions I explored of the word bias, I only have issue with bias being a strong viewpoint. It's true that people think of bias as being an extreme or strong viewpoint. The issue I have is that currently I can't think of any word that would indicate a small amount of bias. We could say "they have a little bias,". That kind of works, but not enough. Being indicated with bias is socially dangerous, even if it's a little bias. Honestly talking about bias becomes difficult, when it carries social stigma against the bias person. Because of this, we are likely to either deny it, and loose the self reflection that would have been good for us, or sink into self-hatred and again loose the healthy self reflection we need. If there are things about us that we know others will not like about us, we are likely to keep them secret. So the problem can live on.

    I don't like thinking that bias is only bias when it's a strong tendency. If we think this way I fear it would inhibit us from being open about something that is so common to our behavior. We need the word to describe the very big and complicated subject it belongs too.

    I wrote my own definition of bias:

    Bias: Working to achieve a goal of the subconscious mind, by ignoring evidence, or fabricating evidence in order to prove the validity of a belief that will bring about the achievement of the goal.

    Yes, I have an odd way of writing definitions, but I follow my thoughts while I write.  

    Now that I have discussed what bias is defined as, I will discuss what bias is.  To my understanding bias exists for two reasons, these reasons explain what bias is.  They are to give us mental efficiency, and to help us hold on to believes that we believe subconsciously will help us survive.  

    Bias is a thought that seems to be doing something to other thoughts.  It somehow lives in the information network in our mind as a filter, kind of like a committee in our head that is examining each thought.  It is very careful not to let any thought be completed without being first checked for contradictions to the bias belief.  If a contradiction to a bias is found, alterations to the thought will have to be made, or other information will have to be added to it, so that it will not contradict a bias we have.  All this is done to make the thought make sense in the matrix of our belief systems in the mind.  As odd or bad for us as this all seems, we have to ask the question; how can we act, if we have contradictions in our mind?   Have you even felt it was hard to choose between two things that you wanted.  Imagine a difficult choice like that for all the choices you make.  Our brain needs to keep things simple for us.    

    It makes sense to me, that the brain would not want contradictions.   Our brain has to make decisions. A lot of decisions.  Sometimes they have to be fast decisions, or constant decisions.  Do we really have the time to deliberate over every conclusion?  It seems we have been created with the ability to take a shortcut, instead of using careful deliberations.  We have pre-created deliberations, conclusions we don't have to recalculate.  When a stove is turned on, you know it's hot, you don't need to investigate, you learned what a hot stove was as a child.  We make decisions all the time based on previous experience. To question, test, and proof something has a cost of time, effort, possibly danger to it.  Pre-created deliberations are efficient.  Survival requires efficiency.  So it makes sense that some of our stubborn beliefs would have an efficient purpose.  

    Until modern times, people had to devote most of their time toward their sustainment.  People could not survive unless they kept themselves busy.  Farmers and craftsmen, and the many vital jobs women performed, greatly filled up their lives.  It's only in recent generations people have more time.  More time to think.  

    The modern world is getting more modern all the time.  Not only are we changing, but changing in ways not changed before.   I have seen people trying to adapt to the modern world, by doing one basic thing, speed up.  As the world becomes more complicated we attempt to keep up by quickly changing ourselves.  Should we adapt this way?  Can we?  What if the winning strategy is to not speed up, but to slow down? 

     Let me explain, I came to this conclusion after thinking about this:

    What I often see people doing, is that they seem to take a very complicated subject.  A subject in fact that is reasonably too complicated, and attempt to make a simple model of that concept in their mind.  This is not a conscious behavior.  Rather, our brain seems to be very naturally adapted to handle such an attempt.  Small information models that can be used to represent a large complicated subject have advantages.  They are faster to calculate, as they have less information.  They require less space to store them in.  Whether we are talking about a brain of a living creature, or an electronic computer, some of the same principles may apply to each other.  The fewer the calculations needed in an algorithm the faster it will run on a processor.  A computer programmer would want a small program over a large program, if it still did the same job.  Because smaller is faster.  

    Faster is one reason, a bigger reason would be capability.  Can we truly comprehend the vastness of the universe.  No, not even a small part of it.  So instead, we use a small conceptual model of the universe in our mind instead.  It's not a perfect representation of the universe, but it gives us more then nothing.  Can we fit a map of our city in our memory?  No, but we can represent some of the navigation in our memory model.  We can remember some of the street names, somewhat the order they are in.  We can have the route to our school, or work place, in our model.  When we want to find a location in our city, we compare the location to locations we already have in our small model in our mind.  We don't have to have the whole town layout of the city in our mind to achieve this.  In fact, we could note have the whole town, every street, every turn, every location in our heads?  

    The big concept to understand here, is that this process is used for everything in our mind.  Our beliefs, politics, religion and experiences from our past.  All of them have a model created in our mind, to represent something too big for our mind to store.  

    Perhaps evolution or creationism did this for us.  With the limited amount of brain power we humans have, we would need a way of maximizing our ability to comprehend the things around us.  Perhaps all this is a big part of what it means to be human.  It is our mental shortcut, that is more then just a shortcut, it makes us capable to not just see and hear, but to calculate all we see and hear and build an idea of it.  Rather then understanding a subject to it's infinite complexity, we would develop this simple model, and actually get the job done, then by experience and through instruction from others, continually modify it, and hopefully make it better over time.  

    If you couldn't hold the universe in your mind, wouldn't you settle for a small version of it, instead of nothing?  

    Partly of what bias is, is part of this model design in our heads.  Rather then having the overhead of a complicated model, we instead will fill in some of the concepts in the model with bias.  For example, rather then viewing a diverse group of people as all very unique, we instead will view them as all the same, with all the same attributes.  Instead of understanding diversity, we view people with uniformity.  This can be a very useful way for groups of people to compete with each other.  Here is a list of examples, of typical groups we would do this with in our mind: 

• other ethnic groups of people
• other religious groups of people
• other nationalities of people
• our enemies
• co-workers
• all unions
• other political groups of people
• All the rich
• All the poor
• All the teachers
• Our parents
• Our children
• The group of other children who bully us
• Criminals
• The police
• The lawyers
• The students
• The scientists
• The religious
• The educated
• The uneducated

    It's hard to image an end to this list.  There are so many groups we can have bias for.  Having an all purpose set of beliefs for a group of people will make our mental models simpler.  

    So with humanity prospering like never before, giving us time to think, and resources to share ideas, does this mean our methods of using small models needs to change?  Do we have enough power over our instincts to even change them?   I would say, yes, and a bit.  People in history, have limitations of time and communication. We have less limits today.  In the olden times people needed their models small, so they can be used efficiently.  It would take less effort to make them and use them.  The poor in olden times had the simplest models.  The rich used more time and effort, and communication to improve their models.  This helped them maintain their standing, but also have success against other wealthy rivals.  Today, we will need to more and more shift our stratagem to that of the wealthy people of the past.  We must sacrifice speed, for more utility.  This means more then just more classes in school, it means being open, to take opportunities to learn, even though it will cost us time, effort, perhaps even within reason, safety.  

    Information has always been complicated.  Some of the information we are given is true, some is not.  Most is both.  Simpler models will not help us identify false information as we age into adult hood.  Even older children and teens will need to have more complicated models then previous generations, to sort out what is true, and what will destroy us.  A small model will carry with it the temptation to change with every fad that interacts with us.  

    Let me simplify, do we like discussing things?  Sometimes no, do we like sitting in a court room, and see how slow things are?  Do we like a small fraise of a post, or do we like the long description over pages of thoughts building up to something?  Do we have enough time to reflect on what we heard others say, and what we want to say next?  What do we want with our modern world?  Do we want to skim over a subject, and feel there is nothing more too it, and move on?  Sampling many things that will make us an expert of none of them.  Or to go deep, and find things not often found.  

    Simple models are good, in that they are fast, it may be right for some people to use them.  But they are limited in what they can represent.  Complicated and large models are slow to run, and slow to build, and slow to improve.  However, what is gained is versatility, and accuracy.  I don't wish to imply one is better then they other.  It's a question like, do you want a race car, or a truck.  Both have advantages and disadvantages, both edify some kind of vanity, but a different kind.  We can be proud of our mental models, no matter what they are, as they are all uniquely good in some way.  

    These models are concepts that are taught to us by others as we are young.  So people will inherit them from others, and or, build them through experience.  We will refine them and pass them on from generation to generation as far as they can be passed on.  Some level of building them may require experience, teaching alone may not be enough to create models to represent the world.  

    So how does bias fit into all this?  It's coming.  I mention all this, because to understand ourselves we must understand why we are limited.

    To me, knowledge is a representation of reality only.  In my view this does not detract from the amazing beauty that intelligence has.  It fills me with wonder that a small thing can be used to grasp at such an infinite thing.    

    You might say, you already know our mind is limited, it's obvious.  There is more.  Our brain also has a powerful tool to allow our mind to use these models.  You can't use a small model of a concept, without accepting that it will not always be right.  If the model is not right, then it should not be used.  So we have a problem.  We need to use these models to comprehend the world around us, yet, if we do, these models can't always be right, and may never be perfectly right.  

    What we need is a powerful tool that can ignore the obvious information, that would contradict our model of reality.  We can't use the model if it isn't trusted.  For our limited mind, it's compromise or indecisiveness.  Our mind uses the best information available.  A model with flaws is still a model, and it's better then a lessor model or no model.  If a model cannot be fixed, then information will be ignored, or new information will be fabricated so that the model can still operate.  The best possible choice known is made, the contradictory information however obvious is ignored and the model is used.  

    This is bias.  It is not an alien force getting us to make bad choices.  Rather it's our own necessity that makes us ignore the obvious.  In a way we have little to no control over it.  

    I will explain the same thing, but in a different way.  The point of life is to survive and reproduce, and to also get better at surviving and reproducing.  If survival is the point, then is the truth important?  If something is true, yet contradicts something that we subconsciously believe will help us survive, then not only is there an obstacle to our survival in our environment, but there is an obstacle inside our mind too.  We must ignore something obvious in order to survive.  We must survive in order to reproduce.  We must get better at surviving and reproducing to overcome all the obstacles we will face.  Our mind naturally will want to avoid the truth, if it believes the truth is dangerous.  

    If you are religious or not, consider the line "The truth will set you free" from the Gospel of John, 8th chapter, 32nd verse.  This line was written down for future generations to read over two thousand years ago.  Yet, even with this idea injected into our culture, we still follow our instincts, and follow the bias that would help us survive.  

    At times, we may be able to push ourselves beyond this logic, and accept the truth, with a trust that the truth will somehow help us despite that in our mind the truth may cause us loss and pain.  This leap of trust is not often the case.  

    Should we be a sad about his?  No.  I don't believe that all this is bleak.  There are moments in the past, were ignoring the truth, seemed like a good idea, but still some people managed to trust the truth anyway, and in the end, it was believing in the truth that helped them survive, or at least their cause.  So deep inside us is the genes of people who were very good at times in ignoring the truth, and the genes of people who at times accepted the truth, however difficult it may have been.  Those people likely are not different people in our family history, they are the same people, at times doing both as best they could, and through it all, they survived, reproduced, and you are here to inherit their strength.  

    Humans being social creatures need bias.  All social living creatures use bias.  Even a swarm of bees gathering honey, have bias, as their mind drive them to produce for their hive, and none other.  To defend their hive with their live.  Humans being the most complicated of social creatures know, we have bias to control ourselves in society.  We make conclusions that conform us to those who we need, and we create mental models of the world that allow us to think in terms of compatibility with others.  Those without social abilities will have hardships with interacting with society.  We have these tools to help us with all this social complexity.  

    So what we have today, is a powerful tool called bias to help us make models, inherit models, improve them or keep them the same.  It's the best mental service that limited intelligence can provide.  Our intelligence achieves more by design then raw thinking power alone can achieve.  There will be dangers and rewards in the process of using and changing our mental models of the universe.  For at times better, and at times worse, bias makes this process possible.  

    When we are ready, we should always accept the truth.   When we are ready, we should move to the truth beyond that, when we are ready.     

What is the Good the Bad and the Ugly of Bias

    I do believe, that all bias will bring in the end, have one of three outcomes for us. It will either help us, hurt us or do nothing to us. There is positive bias, were good comes because we embrace bias, like the love parents have for their children, they will keep loving their kids even with foolish mistakes. This bias help kids get another chance as they are young and learning. Negative bias, like expecting your co-worker is not very good at their job, because they are attempting to do the job differently then what you are used to. Finally bias that is neither good nor bad, but is just there, for example, liking the color blue, just because as a kid you needed an answer to tell people, and it seemed like a fine color, over time you became accustomed to it. Bias is all around us, in fact all human actions have bias. Some of it we need, to be happy, and will help us be good people to other people. Some of it will cause us to treat others harshly, or ourselves harshly. We are best without this kind, despite how our natural selves will want to embrace it.

    Yes, bias all over human thought and actions! You love your family, that's bias. You love your sports team, that bias. You love your school, that's bias. You love your home town, that's bias. Ask yourself these questions: Is your sports team really the best? Is your school the best(past or present)? Is your home town the best? Good bias, is being bias towards the things that are good for us. Parents are bias towards their children. Children are bias towards their parents. If something brings us good, we are inclined by our biology to be bias towards it.

    Do you love all the cheese burgers in the world? If you like cheese burgers you would likely say yes. How much more do you love your cheese burger that is in front of you? Your cheese burger is special, it's special because it's your cheese burger. All the other cheese burgers in the world are far away, and not accessible to you, and you wouldn't need all the cheese burgers in the world, you just have one stomach. So the one cheese burger you have, in a way, is the best cheese burger in the universe. Bias will help us understand how important our cheese burger is, compared to all the other cheese burgers, because it's the one that we will enjoy.

    Likewise think of all the families in the world, all with intense biologically driven love between parents and kids, and kids and parents. Parents love their kids because they are theirs, and kids love their parents because they are theirs. Family is special because it's your family. There are families all over this world, but only one shares your gene's.

    My point with this, is that there is such a thing as good bias, and it is possible for good bias to be diminished, and lost. We need to help our feelings hold on to good bias, then help our feelings push away, or over write bad bias, and the ugly bias, can stay and can just find it's own path, as it's not critical for it to stay, but it's not critical for it to leave either. I will discuss more about what to do with our bias in the last section of this post, so stay tuned for that.

    Family, sports teams, schools, and our home town, all have a strong possibility of helping us in some way. Being bias toward them would improve our changes of making them stronger, and in turn making us more positively effected by them.

    Now what about bad bias? Think of the ancient romans, who followed their generals into battle. If their general was victorious, they would share in the riches gained. And the general would make sure his men believed the riches came directly from him and his leadership. As the general was proven to them as a source of providence, the roman solders would love their general, and be devoted to him.

    In the end, the roman general, may not keep his promises as they often didn't. Roman solders could spend years traveling in long marches, risk death, and in the end return home to find their land gone taken from them, and their family poor. Bias can sometimes lead us toward something we believe is beneficial, we will ignore warning sides of trouble with our bias. Very easily we will find ourselves hurting because we invested our believes, in other words our bias into something that could not provide what we thought it would. This is the negative side of bias. With bias we might invest our hearts into a venture that will lead us to what will ultimately cause grief and lost opportunity with false promises.

    That investment sounded good, but turned out those that sold it to you understood it was unrealistic. Maybe the ruling dictator promised equality, but in the end it was a palace for him and his friends, and long lines for bread for everyone else. Perhaps we wanted to buy expensive luxuries, to be happy like our neighbors who all had them, but in the end, the thrill of acquiring them left, and toys didn't add meaning to live like we thought it would. Perhaps, we thought the criminal gang would be a family to us, but in the end, it was only our Mother that really loved us, and was our family, that we ignored.

    What is bad bias and good bias, is a huge discussion, but finding out which bias is good, and which bias is bad is just a matter of looking deeply into it. We will sometimes misjudge our bias, thinking the good is bad, and they bad is good.

    Maybe your home town doesn't have good memories. Perhaps the days of school was full of troubles. If something is a source of pain, or at least you believe it's a source of pain, our bias will begin cause us to form a bias to conclude your home town is not worth traveling too. You may speak ill of your school, even when it could be a good fit for others. There is always bias, good, bad or ugly. To find it, and understand it, is the challenge.

    What about racism? You can't talk about bias without racism. Racism is obviously bias, and a flagship example of negative bias. Like all bias, racist bias is done because the racist person wants something out of it. If others are lowered in status, then all others are then higher in status, including those who create racism. Racism, causes what is unique about humanity to be ignored, we need to hear and understand people that think differently, we need people to also be genetically different. Genetic uniformity, brings the dangers of extinction.

    Think of what a child must feel, when they learn that others will not like them, because of how they look or act, or believe. What a heart break, for all the children of the world, that are first shown love by their parents, then show hate by others. Especially for children this is an major problem, for adults as well, but for children it's a bigger problem, because they still have young hearts, that are ready to be taught. For a child to learn they are hated for a reason that has no logic, it will create distrust, and problems that will lead to more problems with bias later in life.

    I wish I new what to do about racism, but I don't.  What I do know, is that our bias will be interfering with us in unexpected ways, that will cause people to drift apart and see each other as enemies, to solve racism, we will need to change their perspectives of seeing others as enemies to not enemies.  We will in the end always judge each other, but how you judge someone we feel we have a group identity with, verses someone that has an identity of an enemy will make all the difference.   Solving this problem of racism, or any kind of discrimination, will require people first understand bias better, then they can make smarter decisions on how to come closer together, and develop a single identity that they can bond with socially.  The more we can understand ourselves, and the bias within ourselves, the better our odds at fixing all social problems.  

    One of the most excessive forms of negative bias that I have seen in my own experience, is bias towards those that compete with us for the things we want. Road rage, is an example of this. We don't want to share the road with others, their existence will delay us, their choices effect us. In another way young people often experience this in romantic jealously, they will form a bias against those that may win favor with their romantic crush. For situations where others may get or will get what we want we have jealousy. Bias will create justification in our minds, allowing us to compete with them even in unethical ways. We may seek to undermine them, and rejoice in their failures. Why, because our natural selves is not always ethical, or good, but rather will fill us with emotions and thoughts to fuel our bias, and try to push us to get what we want.

    Negative bias is very common. The end result, is that we could of had more, of we would have embraced a different strategy. Negative bias, is seductive and seemingly easier. Yet, there is another path, by embracing good bias, bias towards things that are not seductive or easy, yet they have the potential of providing lasting rewards, sustainable rewards. Negative bias is a cheap breakable tool, easily sold, it will break unexpectedly. Positive bias, is a dependable tool, when used correctly, it will last, and bring you success as you put effort into it's care.

    One of the best examples of bias is tribalism. If we start a job, join a church or political party. We became part of a social group that will influence us. We humans need to be part of groups, because we depend on each other for support. There can be good groups and bad groups, and just groups, not all that good or all that bad. No matter good or bad, groups we join will influence us. Our biology is designed to develop our bias to match the humans we get along with around us.

    We have to be careful about who we trust. Who we trust will greatly influence what our bias will be.

    There are tribes that are bad to join. They're believes will focus on negative bias, and those that appose them will be blamed for being the ones with negative bias. It can be very difficult to recognize bias, because by it's nature, it comes from the subconscious mind, and in turn difficult to recognize when you have socially joined yourself to a tribe that has abundant negative bias. We would all like to think that we would never join a tribe that had lots of negative bias. But that is another trick about negative bias, there is always temping justification, that the most intelligent people may not understand it for what it is. People that are young can be very vulnerable to groups or "tribes" that indulge in negative bias, as they don't have experience enough to see counterfeits, or they may not have a healthy tribe in their live to have something to compare with.   Identifying tribes as good or bad is not easy, don't think it is. Bias will be in the way, to hinder your thinking. Very easily you may condemn a group of people falsely, or look past the negativity of a group you have sympathies for.

    So what about ugly bias? You may have a bias against a music bad, or an actor that annoys you, yet everyone else seems to like. It's not wrong to have opinions. It's not wrong to express how we feel. However, your opinions may just be useless opinions without any real purpose, and are not really harmful to you either. Consider for a moment that many of the thinks we hate or love, we may hate or love because we just need to have an opinion. We need to have a character. A person we can be in front of other people, that will maximize our ability to be someone. We will need to be part of a social group, and conform to that group to get them to like us. But often we will also need some distinction in that group, because we will want something unique that strategically can be used to help us perhaps climb the social ladder, and show we have value to others we have relationships with.

    This is part of creating an ego. To me an ego is like a mast we wear so we will fit in at parties. We will have lots of ugly bias to create the ego, others need to see in us, or we need to see in ourselves.

    Remember, some bias it's not good or bad, it's just there. Is it necessary? Perhaps in some way, or perhaps not. We have this tendency to wear a mask, and not show our true personality. It comes down to trust, can we trust others with our true selves, or is a mask safer? As imperfect as it can be, there is argument that we need these limiting social tools like the ego to help us. Most people wouldn't think much of us, unless we socially could provide something for them. It's just normal, for these kinds of bias to be a part of us.

Who has bias?

    Remember this most of all, we all have bias, it may be small or great, or something unique to us, but it's there. It is more in control of us, then we think.

    I once thought that bias was something that just bad people had, and that I was living a life above the evil of it. I thought this, because that is what society generally believes about themselves. I accepted that, because I'm bias. In fact, after many years of reflection, I've come to think that all choices, and conclusions I have ever had, had bias in some part of them. It's the same for all people, we are not capable of having a conclusion without some amount of bias.

    Our own bias, teaches us that we have little to no bias, and our enemies are loaded with it. This is all wrong, we all have bias, and lots of it.

    Why do we always have bias, because we always have needs of survival. We need to eat, sleep, stay warm, and pass on our genes to a health gene pool. This is going to require lots of social maneuvering. Which mean bias.

    This doesn't mean people are always morally wrong in their conclusions, it just means right or wrong, their conclusion will still have bias.

    If we attempt to abandon bias, we will find ourselves only removing one kind of bias, to make room for another. To me, it is not a question of if we have bias, it's only a question of how much, and to what.

    There has been much talk in the past few years about a concept often called tribalism. It's when a person favors the group of humans they believe they are apart of, over people of a different tribe. We don't have tribes today as we did long in the past, but the equivalents are present, and our biology still causes us to interact with others as if they are or are not part of our tribe. We make tribes and join them without anyone forcing us to.

    With bias, tribalism is possible. Rational thinking may cause us to not side with our tribe on a subject. So bias is used by the mind, in order to not upset the tribe. If contradiction is the price for survival, then the people of the world have ancestors that accepted contradictions. We need tribes. A tribe can act together on a problem. Wrong or right, they can get something done, and react in a unified way when an emergency happens.

    It's because of this, people want to subconsciously conform to tribes, and also will subconsciously want others to be recruited to their tribe to make their tribe stronger.

    Every person under the effects of tribalism, has bias. To me, that includes even the most independent minded people to some degree.

    Another important component to bias is ourselves. We have DNA that we want to share with future generations. To do that, we have to have bias toward ourselves. Even if logically others may seem to have more survival DNA then ours, we must still play to win. We must believe there is a chance for us to achieve greatness even if there is not. There is a profound logic to this, you cannot survive unless you try, so unless you try, there is no way of knowing how fit your DNA is.

    You may ask, why do people get depressed, why do people sometimes people hate themselves? Some of this may be that we are born with something out of our control, so survival instincts may not work in everyone, as they logically should. Perhaps it could be that our instincts to be bias toward our social group is overpowering our instincts to be bias toward ourselves. Our devotion to our group goes beyond reason, an we forget our devotion to ourselves as we should.

    The opposite could also happen, our devotion to ourselves goes beyond reason, and we forget our devotion to our group. This to me, is selfishness.

    If we have depression or self hate, then something is wrong. We should seek professional help. Bias in this case will make self treatment near impossible. Our natural sense of bias should have helped us already if we are to that point, so you will have to get help. If we have selfishness, then we will also need help, so that we can enjoy the benefits of the group.

    A good argument against what I'm writing, is the examples of human individually, and kindness toward others of different social tribes. Are we forever destined to stay within the mold we are created in, or can we become more? This is really still for me an open question. I feel that it is possible to break any biological mold, but can I do it, or can you?

    I will not fully answer this question for you. There have been times where I think it's possible, and other times were I have accepted that it must not be. We can always try. With an honest effort we are likely to make progress of some kind. Is it possible to make all of humanity our tribe? We maybe want to say yes, but can we live with the complexity of that. Though our instincts make us want to join a tribe, we do it because we want to survive. If we come to the conclusion our tribe is not bringing us survival as we would want it, we may instinctively have a change in mindset to join another tribe, and adopt their beliefs. We may even form a new tribe because of this too.

    Having all of humanity think of themselves as one tribe, is not just about doing it, and ending the problems of humanity. This world tribe that included all of humanity would need to have something special, to the point people would all want to be apart of it, not through compulsion, or manipulation. It would have to provide everyone what they wanted in a tribe, otherwise the tribe would break into two tribes. There has been many social groups of humans on planet earth, none of them have come close to achieving this.

    So the goal of eliminating bias by having all of humanity join the same tribe, to thus eliminate tribalism, is more difficult to the point of being near impossible.

    Despite how must we train ourselves, in the end we will forever have some bias, still locked away deep within us. After all, we want to survive. Our need for survival never disappears. So the next time your feelings control you in an altercation with someone. I'm not sure how much good it will do, but know, that you have bias, and others that don't like you do too.

Does bias come from culture or our genetics, or both?

    You likely already guessed the answer to this question, or perhaps I'm just being bias, and I just don't want to write anymore? So, I'm looking for ways to make answering this question easy, or maybe I'm thinking about this too much because I'm a bias intellectual wannabe. Bias is so fun to think about.

    The answer is both. I believe, it is not only culture that creates bias with in us. We genetically want to favor ourselves and or a social group we feel is like our tribe. Humans have acted this way all through history in all reaches of the planet. Genetics cause that kind of uniformity. Our culture does play a major part in determining what the bias of a tribe will be, and when the culture is set on something our personal bias is right there ready to adopt it. Our biology wants bias, our culture can give our biology what it wants. The two very easily can lead us from cradle to grave, toward good things, toward bad things, and toward things we perhaps ought not to care about, but will anyway.

What can we do about bias?

     I have written about what bias is. I have written that everyone has bias, both individuals and cultures. I have written that it's good, bad or just ugly for us and others. I have written that cultures alone can't be blamed for it, it's in our biology. It may be painful, but every culture has bias. Even ours.

    So with all this, what do we do about this?

    There is only one way we have, to help counter the negative bias.

    I will introduce it as a brief riddle, "We can. I cannot."

    How can one intelligent creature discover the truth? The answer, one mind cannot. It takes two minds. Two people, each with their own unavoidable bias. They only way to counter bias, is with another bias being added to it. When two different people of a different belief talk, process what is said, and talk again, and repeat the process, we begin to have a result of a more balanced, and accurate perspective.

    Not just two people, two people with opposite perspectives. Two people who will be bias toward there own view point.

    Think of a count of law. Counts have evolved in society for a long time, as they exist today, two opposing sides each debate their side, and their side only. The truth does not matter to a lawyer, rather it's the argument supporting one side that matters. This may seem foolish, for a person to defend one side of an argument no mater what is right or wrong, but it needs to be that way. It's the court as a whole, that gives the more accurate outcome. Say what you will about the imperfections of any court system. If it follows the principle of allowing both sides of an argument to defend it's self, it will do better at getting to the truth, then any other legal method.

    Friendly banter can be quiet healthy for people, as we get exposer to other opposing ideas, but in a non threatening way.

    My favorite example of this principle, comes from nature.  In sexual reproduction, a species will have a male and female gender.  Making both genders the same would mean, that both would have the same bias, but if they have differences of perspectives then the difference bias could interact with each other.  

    As humans we have always had bias through history.  All living things that we know of have bias.  It's really a part of life, we can't avoid it, or stop it, or ignore it to the point where it will disappear.  It will always be there.  Always.  But that's not a problem.  Because bias is like a tool in a toolbox.  All the tools in a toolbox have a function.  When used smartly, they work and are mostly safe, but if you use a tool in a way it's not intended, there is a real possibility something will go wrong.  There are things it's okay to be bias about, things that you have a right to be bias about, and good will come to you because of it, but there are other bias that is a misuse of the tool, it will lead to ignorance, or even outright evil.   

    For us to know the difference between the good bias and the bad bias, we will need the help of others.  We will need to listen, to people of other view points, and they will need to listen to us.  We will need to listen to the opposite gender, or a different political party, or a different scientific theory, or a different coaching method, or different view of history.  We don't need to accept other views, only learn to listen to them, and let them beat against the fortress of our own understanding.  If our concepts are strong enough, they will last, and if we loose a believe that was right, yet what we heard fooled us, then the truth will come out eventually.  

    We cannot eliminate our bias, but we can improve it.  

Conclusion

    Why does bias exist? Because our intelligence is limited, and therefore we must make choices on limited information, so the process of evolution created bias to help us out. Who has bias? EVERYONE! Less anger, and more listening would go a long way in this modern world, and the fact we have bias can help us make a starting point it learning to use our listening skills.

    How can we know what bias is good, or bad? You can't always know, but if listen to others, and let their words and yours battle in your mind it's possible to improve with time and effort, and experience. Here is a bunch of logic questions I wrote to help show what I use in determining good and evil. I will not promise they are right or useful, but I find obvious logic questions like these really can help the mind.

• If the choice produces a good outcome then it is good.  

• If this is true proceed to the next question. If false, the choice is wrong.  

• If the choice can be often repeated and still produce a good outcome over time, then it is good.

• If this is true proceed to the next question. If false, the choice is wrong.  

• If the choice leads to learning something new or improving something existing then it is good. Note that it is possible that repetition can provide improvement.  

• If this is true then conclude it is true. If false, the choice is wrong, because it will lead to stagnation or error. 

    What the questions don't help with is determining what a good outcome is, that is a bigger mystery.  A person could spend a whole lifetime learning what a “good outcome” is and still never fully understand it.  So that interpretation I leave with you with this important warning, we must always be careful when handling morality.  Handling morality is like handling explosives, a lot can go wrong.  Sudo-morality creates a lot of suffering in the world, so beware, and avoid extremism, and any morality that encourages people to not question it.      

    I leave you with one final thought, what would we humans be if we lived our lives never interacting with another person.  We would not survive without the help of caregivers this is true, but what if we could, what if we could be born into a world with any other beings to interact with, and we spent our lives in this way.  There are creatures on Earth that live this way, their minds are likely adapted for that time of existence, but ours are different I feel.  How could our mind understand the world without the help of others.  Even with how often other people in life will lie to you, exaggerate, or spread their innocently believed false ideas onto you, all that negative interaction is still worth it I feel, if you or I can get one person very different from us, to have a bias of love toward us.