What Is Bias?

Suppose a friend asks for your advice about buying a car.

You recommend a particular model. You tell your friend about its good qualities and strongly encourage them to buy it.

Your friend follows your advice and buys the car.

From that moment on, you do not want anything to go wrong with it.

Why?

Because if a serious problem is discovered, your friend may think that you do not know much about cars. They may no longer value your opinion as much as they did before.

Of course, the important thing is not simply whether your friend asks for your advice again.

What matters is that you may lose the position you once had in your friend’s mind. In this case, that position was being someone whose opinion about cars was worth asking for.

So if a problem does appear, you may try to make it seem less important. Or you may blame it on special circumstances.

For example, you might say:

“This happened because the previous owner did not take proper care of the car. This model does not usually have this problem.”

Before recommending the car, you had no special feelings about that model.

But now you do not want to discover a flaw in it.

By “flaw,” I mean a flaw in its design, construction, or the materials used to make it. In other words, a flaw that could be attributed to the model itself, not a problem caused by one owner’s careless use.

But suppose you had taken a different approach from the beginning.

Instead of simply saying, “This is a good car,” you had told your friend about the particular good qualities you had personally noticed. You had then left the final judgment to your friend.

In that case, your own position in your friend’s mind would not have become tied to the overall quality of the car.

If a problem were later discovered, you could simply accept it as a fact. You would feel no need to resist it.

The same is true of a restaurant.

Instead of saying, “That restaurant is very good,” we can simply describe what we have actually experienced:

“I have been there a few times, and I enjoyed this particular dish.”

Now, if someone visits the restaurant because of what we said and has a bad experience, we do not need to worry as much about what they will think of us.

The same principle can apply to politics.

Suppose we do not describe a politician as completely “bad” and do not publicly define ourselves as totally opposed to that person.

Later, we hear something positive about one of that politician’s actions.

We will have less reason to immediately deny it or make it seem worthless before even checking whether the report is true.

Nor will we need to respond by listing all the politician’s bad actions just to prove that our opposition was not based on ignorance and that the politician really is completely “bad.”

Instead, we can judge the politician’s performance and ability according to whatever standards we consider important. We can then use those standards when deciding, for example, whether or not to vote for that person.

This does not mean that our standards are necessarily correct.

It does not mean that we will never make mistakes.

It simply means that we are trying to use our own reasoning—even if imperfectly—in a relatively fair way, rather than beginning from a position of bias against that politician.

By doing so, we reduce the chance of error.

Bias can develop toward a car, a sports team, a person, a restaurant, or almost anything that we have publicly described as “good” or “bad.”

At first, this bias, or blind loyalty, may simply be connected to our desire to protect our status and reputation in the eyes of others.

But if the bias continues for a long time, something deeper may happen.

A person who has held a belief for many years may eventually become afraid of changing it—even when no one else is present.

Why?

Because changing the belief may feel like admitting:

“I was wrong all those years.”

It may even feel like admitting that they had foolishly lived according to a false belief for a large part of their life.

Their image of themselves may be threatened. They may begin to fear that they were not the wise or thoughtful person they had always imagined themselves to be.

You may ask:

Could giving up a bias toward a restaurant or a car really create such a powerful feeling?

Usually not.

Bias toward things that are not deeply connected with the way we live does not normally create this kind of fear.

But some beliefs are different.

An idealistic or revolutionary belief can shape a person’s life. So can a religious belief. The same may be true of loyalty to a public figure who represents an ideology—for example, communism.

Such beliefs may come with many rules about what we should and should not do. They may influence the way we think and the way we live for many years.

Now imagine seriously examining such a belief and discovering that it is wrong.

We may feel that this would mean admitting that we had foolishly followed it for years.

We may fear losing the pride and inner self-confidence with which we had lived.

We may fear becoming permanently disappointed in ourselves.

But this fear does not tell us whether the belief itself is true or false.

People who have managed to overcome this fear, examine their beliefs, and then change their minds may have a very different experience.

Instead of losing their self-respect, they may become proud of their ability to change their minds and think freely.

Their self-confidence may even increase.

What matters for our discussion, however, is what happens before a biased person reaches that point.

Suppose they encounter an argument or observation suggesting that one of their beliefs is wrong.

Their first reaction may be:

“This must be wrong.”

Notice the order.

They do not first examine the argument and then decide that it is wrong.

They first assume that it must be wrong.

Only then do they begin looking for a reason to reject it.

And when they find the first possible reason—even a weak or superficial one—they may accept it immediately.

At that point, they may no longer allow their mind to investigate the matter any further.

Bias, or blind loyalty, can arise for other reasons as well.

In our discussion of religious clerics, four kinds of bias are especially important:

the desire to protect one’s reputation,

the fear of becoming disappointed in oneself,

the fear of losing one’s job and source of income,

and sometimes the fear of losing power.

Earlier, I used the expression “playing with our own minds and the minds of others.”

Why did I use this expression?

Because when we use a fallacy, our real method is not aimed at discovering the truth—even though we may sincerely claim that truth is our only goal.

Our method is fallacious reasoning, even though we may believe that what we are using is nothing but logic.

This is not something done only by bad or dishonest people.

It is part of human psychology.

All of us may use fallacious reasoning with other people at different times in our lives. We may use it even with members of our own families.

And, perhaps most importantly, we may use it with ourselves.

At the same time, all of us may become victims of other people’s fallacies.

In this book, we will examine the fallacious methods used by one particular group in human societies to influence the minds of others. We will also examine how these fallacies can be recognized in their words and actions.

Why have I chosen this particular group?

There is an important reason.

The fallacies used by its members are not employed only for a short time in order to sell a product to a customer once.

Their customers are expected to remain customers for life.

There is another important difference as well.

In most cases, the sellers themselves sincerely buy their own product.

They genuinely believe that their beliefs and statements are correct.

This book, therefore, is an attempt to discover the fallacies we human beings may fall into when we occupy the position of a religious cleric.