Duck Season

From the piece Hei Lun linked to yesterday:

Perhaps everyone does do this to a certain degree. I do believe that, to some degree, “facts” and even sensory perception are “theory”-laden. The brain is such that you rarely see the theory working in the background, but sometimes it can be glimpsed. Everyone has had the experience of seeing an object on the horizon, in one’s peripheral vision, or across the room that looks like just shapes and colors, or looks like an object you know it cannot possibly be. Then you get closer or view it from a slightly different angle and what it ”really” is suddenly snaps into place. This is your brain “recognizing” the shapes and colors and then defining or redefining it.

Assuming we all do it to some degree — that no one is totally and completely objectively realistic about the facts — is what I am now perceiving on the Left simply a more extreme version of the phenomena, both as measured against how I think the world really is and perhaps also against how even the Left was even a few years ago?

He's got a nice big whole that he's backed himself into. I find the whole concept of bias a bit disturbing because it is so hard to refute, and because in a lot of situation I think it's just picking a lot of nits.

Is CNN biased? Amy told me last night that she thought CNN was biased towards the right, most people in 'The Corner' will tell you it's biased left. So FNC isn't biased? Many people, myself included, will tell you that Bill O'Reilly is the devil, and that the FNC nighttime interview shows are definitely slanted.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us with an ineffective conception of the word 'bias'. If everyone in the world has a bias then the word becomes irrelevant because the word no longer differentiates between those who know "the truth" and those who ignore "the truth." All this word bias would do is aide you to differentiate how one spins the truth, we would be forced to categorically accept that either you're spinning left or right (these labels being entirely dependant upon where the person speaking stands). The would bias would become entirely dependant upon the adjective before it for meaning, making it essentially useless.

This potential reality makes me incredibly leary of the overuse of the word "bias" in our society. Is CNN biased? On some issues it can be said that their presentation of the news is done differently than the BBC or FNC. I'm hard-pressed to call this bias. Just like FNC (in the daytime), so long as CNN presents news which is entirely composed of actual verifiable facts, it's ridiculous to call it biased. Like Joe Friday said "just the facts, ma'am." To contest actual verifiable facts as biased is to deflate the meaning of the word bias.

Of course i'm not sure i've reasoned away the idea that we're all biased as much as i've decided "hey, why don't we agree that we're not biased and leave that awful word for the Ann's and the Michael Moore's of the world" - but the latter point is certainly more verifiable through our devotion to facts than the first. This is also not to say that I disagree with Randy at all about the current state of much of the Left, but that within the context of centrist politics where the two parties meet, far too much hot air is let go due to the constant assaulting of the other side everytime they open their mouths.