Open minded inquiry

I believe this topic belongs in philosophy. That might be argued, but I’d rather not.

I have someone trying to tell me how wrong my politics and sending me garbage YouTubes to prove it. RFK was pretty annoying, so I countered with a link to criticalthinking.org, one of the best websites out there on the topic. This page was really good.

https://www.criticalthinking.org/pages/open-minded-inquiry/579

It’s geared a little toward teachers, so I rewrote the entry on “Bias” for a more general audience.

Bias is not just an opinion, but an opinion that comes from reviewing evidence. That makes the opinion unbiased. Opinions can be firm to a degree (strong or weak) so a willingness to review the evidence before stating the opinion as fact or as something you are done considering is unbiased. And that is not impartiality, it’s a decision, a choice, to avoid bias. Factors that can turn a review of evidence into bias are favoritism, omission, corruption, loyalty that is not merited, and threats. If a review of the facts starts with the recognition that no one knows everything and an openness to learning, it is likely to lead to an unbiased opinion.

I took out the word “ignorance” because it has some baggage and put in the last sentence as a definition of how to overcome your ignorance. The missing piece is a definition of “evidence”, but I think it would clutter this up too much if was inserted into the definition. Without the understanding of evidence, some philosophy of epistemology, it’s hard to get off the ground with these discussions.

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