From Humanoid Faults to Manipulated Consensus, 16

We’re biased:

We privilege our accepted certainties, our acquired positions, our pet fixed ideas above proposed ones regardless, only because these are inside us and those are outside instead, so these become prejudices, so we defend lies once bought and we become the most precious allies of our enemies. Lying, even to self, refusing to see what’s in front our nose for ideological reasons, is the order of the day among us. We’re perfectly willing to trample on any evidence for the most sordid and the most “elevated” reasons alike, perfectly willing to sentence anyone to death for reasons ranging from a despicable personal profit to the conviction that’s an acceptable offering to save the world.
In each case, we deliberately close our eyes and forget that our first responsibility as human beings is that of having the courage to look. And to have it always, no matter what, come what may.
Sure enough political bias can be a case in point here as a mere study of “How silly can we get? How tragic the consequences?” “Divide et impera”, divide and rule, shouldn’t we have learned this centuries ago? I’ll discuss later on how serious and precise is the meaning of this Latin saying, but I’m sure you already smell it out.

Our inclination to bias is a blessing for those aiming at exploiting it: it means that their endeavours will be fruitful, as once they’ve succeded in remote controlling our bias to their advantage and to our detriment, they will rest assured we won’t let them down at all and quite to the contrary we will repay their efforts on a very vast scale. And the bias can have a number of faces, and underlying forms, such as: blindness of loyalty, crave for certainties, meanness, pure and simple fixation and sheer inertia.