Personal Bias: Are we overdue for a tune-up by strengthening our humility?

Vince Kern  
Last week's episode sharing recent developments in AI and its possible contributions to the world. We wondered where it's taking us and take it as an octopus with a million tentacles. In our post production review, we began wondering about how much has changed in the way we personally seek and consume information, the cross media platforms we use, and how great the divide seems to become over the main components of our American culture. In this episode, we'll share some of those topical tentacles from last week's episode, and talk about how and why we decided to examine our personal bias and work on developing our own humility to develop a more open and hopefully unifying Outlook to create positive ripples. In doing so, we laid the question bear on the table, are we in the middle of a battle for our minds? And if yes, what can we personally do? To be sure we don't pollute our thinking, energy and relationships by promoting bias and division, even if it's unintentional,

Joe Luther  
right. And what we found in our research, and even some of our personal anecdotal stories, is, there's a lot of interesting things to consider that really point the opportunity back at us to empower us so that we can help answer that question, and really see that we have the tools in our own hands. So I'm really excited to talk about this today.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. What's that? Motto we talked about is the best outcome for the ripple effect of this podcast.

Joe Luther  
Well, yeah, today, it's really all about United We Stand divided we fall.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. And what we found when we examined our own information consumption habits is that it was like looking across the divide and seeing ourselves. And we realized that there's some new subtle ways in which our own personal bias leads us to decide what information we see, consume and allow into our brain. Yeah, and

Joe Luther  
I think what we need to do to start this conversation, though, is let's start back with this concept of United We Stand divided we fall, which really, when we looked into that, we found that that was originally attributed to ASAP from 620 BC. And what we found was so interesting about that is, you know, today, everybody thinks, Oh, we've never been more divided than we are now. But look at that. This is back in ancient Greece and ASAP, coined the phrase, so it got us thinking, you know, are we really as divided as we think we are? And I was even wondering further? Is it just as an excuse or a cop out sometimes to put blame somewhere else, then to look at itself? And so we thought we'd look at this idea a little closer, like, are we really as divided as we've ever been? Or are we more divided than we've ever been? And, obviously, we can, we can talk about ancient American history, and we see going back to the Civil War and slavery or a women's suffrage in the, you know, in the early 1900s, and, or, more recently, civil rights or, or even the protests against Vietnam in the 60s. And now today, we've got we've got so many things to be embattled about. Abortion has been going on for forever. But is it really any more than it was in the past? You know, you go back to McCarthyism in the 50s. And, and then we found a really interesting study, in fact, going to the 1950s, we found that there's research done to kind of look at this question. And it found that in the 1950s, more than or approximately 70%, of all people question said that they wouldn't want their child to marry somebody from a different political party that's in the 1950s over 70%. Guess what, today, the exact same percentage are within a half a percent. So really, how are we that different?

Vince Kern  
Those two things that ace up from 620. And this particular stat that you just referenced, really kind of blew me away when we were researching this, and I think they're great points and maybe in the 50s family structure was different and it was so much easier. to compartmentalize or escape the divisiveness, if you think about a marriage age daughters, let's just say 20 years old or 18 years old, back then there was no Internet, there was no social media, there wasn't there were no tools where they could just sort of hide away. And, you know, look at how habituated we are to those tools and how much time people spend with them. So that parental authority probably isn't quite the same today, as it was back then you got to do what I say, and, and so forth. And the other thing that this brings up to me is that I hear the media telling us that there's a division and that we're more divided than ever all the time. And isn't that a great tool to click their intended audience? Whether it's on the right, or the left, you know? Yeah, right. And, you know, the other thing that I think is different between now in the 50s is incivility has risen to a level that to me is unheard of, I mean, when you look at the the hate speech on Twitter, and it doesn't matter which political side you're on or what, what you're protesting, it's really gotten out of hand. So you know, everything's getting retweeted, and it's all coming into your feed. And, you know, it just feels like adults, are the ones that are engaging in more hate and incivility these days in some ways, then, you know, then the kids are. So if this is the case, I think we got to ask the question, are we following in the United We Stand divided we fall equation?

Joe Luther  
Well, right. I guess that's the question. If the axiom is true, united, we stand divided we fall. And if we are divided, does that mean we're falling? And, and that's what got us wondering. And as it relates to artificial intelligence, and this war for our minds, or, or this information war that we may be in, it got us thinking, are we really in an information war?

Vince Kern  
Yeah, and, you know, some of our favorite philosophers will remind us that the purpose of war war is to eliminate the other side. Right. So I mean, it's what the outcome should be, you know, should the output outcome be unity? Or should it be elimination? And, you know, maybe the, to ease it in tone a bit, I, you know, asked the question has the internet and the birth of social media and the creation of this 24/7 cycle of news and our personal consumption, because we're doing scrolling into the middle of the night? Is that what the Battle of our brains is all about?

Joe Luther  
Right, and we're not pushing the agenda here. We are not talking about any kind of like, quote, unquote, conspiracy theories here. What we're talking about is what is really going on, obviously, as we discussed last week, there's lots of money being invested in information technology and artificial intelligence. So it got us wondering more about AI. What's our involvement in this? And what can we do

Vince Kern  
it, you know, we're as guilty as everybody else with this, you know, when that's what we found, and

Joe Luther  
right. And then, and then what was really kind of the aha moment for me was, a couple of weeks ago, I went to buy a book, and you're with me, we were up north, and we went into this bookstore. And as I was going in, I was kind of thinking to myself, I had these, like preconceived ideas, what's going to happen before I go in this bookstore? First of all, is there going to be, you know, a table out there where the owner of the bookstore is pushing, you know, whatever agenda the owner has, and I was just, I just kind of had this like defensive feeling before I went in, like, Oh, what am I going to be exposing myself to, but I went in, and I was open minded, and started flipping through books. And I ended up finding a book that I absolutely love. And I'm not going to tell you what the book is. But I loved the book. And it opened my mind in ways that I never would have imagined. And the reason I found that book is because I went in and kind of went into waters that I'm not normally that I wouldn't put myself in on my own. And that got me thinking, Well, what's my handle? What are my own personal habits? And what's my own personal involvement in kind of closing my mind down? Because had I gone on Amazon or the internet to find a book, I probably would have gone to very comfortable categories that I'm used to and not open my mind up to something bigger

Vince Kern  
categories that are more towards the bias that you're, you know, looking at,

Joe Luther  
yeah, personal bias, personal bias in and what we I think what we really want to talk about here is how much does this happen all of us? How much do we find ourselves thinking that we know best how to consume data and information?

Vince Kern  
Yeah, and, hey, I haven't got the book title out of Joe's head either yet But I promise I will and for 2995, if you want, I will send you that book. But we'll save that for another pocket.

Joe Luther  
I'll put it in the show notes. It is a great.

Vince Kern  
One of the other things and Joe, Joe referred to some research earlier. And it's interesting house, our research about human behavior can really inform us across our whole span of life. And we found something that maybe you're familiar with, maybe you're not, I wasn't, it's called the Dunning Kruger effect. Let me just describe it. It says the Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area. This tends to occur because a lack of self awareness presents them from accurately assessing their own skills now

Joe Luther  
prevents them from accurately assessing their own skill. Exactly exact I love this.

Vince Kern  
And, you know, if if we started talking about examples, and, you know, look, we can do that in our media consumption probably pretty easily. But let me give you one of my own, that's a non media example. And this is you can apply this to your own life. But Joe knows I'm not the best driver in the world, I tend to pass exits and do things and so stop at Green lights. Yeah, and that's in a car. And it was about six years ago, I bought my first boat because we had moved to an area that was near Lake now it's a pontoon boat, and it was at a dock and I really never driven one before. So the first time my lovely wife, Sheila and I went out, it was an early spring day, it was kind of raining. And I had a little bit of anxiety about how to dock this thing and get it out. But the first time out, it went swimmingly. It was like, I'd been driving a boat all my life and, and it was great. We got off the boat, and I was like, Oh, this is really great. The second time we went out, there was a friend with us. And I backed away from the dock, hit the engagement tool and ran right into a ladder slide that was at the end of the dock and wound up putting the boat at a 90 degree angle with one of our friends at the top of the rail, who fell into the 14 feet deep water fully clothed, and had to have somebody help us get the boat off.

Joe Luther  
So your one's your one successful voyage as an admiral got you believing that you got this?

Vince Kern  
Absolutely. That's the Dunning Kruger effect.

Joe Luther  
No, no. And we look at we all we can all give examples of where we overestimate. But what's interesting is how pervasive this issue is. And you know, certainly I described it in my own book buying experience that I know better how to find information. But you know, let's dig into it a little bit deeper, because what we found is there's a 2013 study that asked people who identified with political parties to rate their knowledge of various social policies. And the results showed that while people express confidence in their own political expertise, their explanations of specific policies, and ideas suggested their knowledge and understanding were limited. And this is the Dunning Kruger effect. You know, right there and you know, yeah, it's like, people, and how many do we know like that? We're all like that. I mean, it's, you know, what's I think's funny about the Dunning Kruger effect? And when we first talked about it, I said, Oh, yeah, isn't that true? All these other people?

Vince Kern  
Right? Not me not. Right. Right, exactly. What's that old saying? When you point your finger at somebody else? There's two pointing back at you, or three or, or three or four? Well, here's another one pointing back at ourselves. In 2017, there was a study that noted, people who analyze the least and could most benefit from questioning their beliefs also tend to have the most confidence that they're right. This is one reason political debate often seems futile, said the author. And this can lead to a narrow minded view of the world and a rejection of alternative viewpoints. Now, how often do we see that in the Twitter feed?

Joe Luther  
Yeah, right. Exactly. The Twitter feed you know that. It's It's so sad that people are so addicted to the dopamine of being liked, so that they find themselves wanting to just retweet something that everybody else is going to put a thumbs up and in really surrounding yourself with people that you know, are going to, you know, continue that loop. But it's not mine. It's not about being open minded. It's about just all this kind of like minded group think,

Vince Kern  
you know, I gotta tell you, Joe, I was probably one of the first I don't know, several 1000 users of Twitter and part of my media job in r&d was to look at Twitter. And, you know, for the first few years I was, man, I was putting out, you know, my bias and retweeting my bias and bias Seeing my bias. And finally I got to a point where I was like, What the heck am I doing?

Joe Luther  
And who gave me this soapbox in the first place?

Vince Kern  
Right, exactly. I think we got another study here, right? Yeah. And

Joe Luther  
this one's great, too, in 2018. These are all studies related to the Dunning Kruger effect in 2018. An article further argues that people with low levels of political expertise, so lower levels of political expertise are also more likely to align themselves with a political party. So this increases their political competence and sense of political identity. However, it effectively allows that party to make the decisions for them. So you have lesser knowledge about something you align with a party, and you let the party do the thinking for you. And I guess that is something that we see commonly too, and it kind of drives the point home, that there's so much that we do ourselves personally, that really contributes to this divisiveness that we're talking about today.

Vince Kern  
Especially if we're not aware of it. I mean, I guess one of the things we're talking about is how, again, how can we take personal responsibility to understand our own biases, and not put them out there so much, you know, let's make the tsunami wave of bias into a little ripple, you know, or see if we can get rid of it. But here's the thing, this particular one, this could lead us this is where some false information out here if you're on the left, or the right, or the middle, or what party you belong to, but if you listen to the extreme, and just, you know, simply just retweet what they're saying, the talking points, a lot of times it is misinformation,

Joe Luther  
right? Well, you don't even know what kind of information it is, you're just seeing it, taking it in regurgitating it without really thinking yourself. And there's so much of that going on right now.

Vince Kern  
And I think the Dunning Kruger effect really exemplifies the fact that we are all guilty of thinking we have more knowledge in policy, politics, all of those things than we actually do. So when we watch the newscast, or look at a tweet, you know, I finally kind of learned to ask the question about it. Is this something that is, you know, strictly pure bias? Is it thoughtful? And like I said, I'm raising my hand, I'm as guilty as everybody else with my personal bias. But that doesn't mean I'm going to always share them and kind of got us wondering about something else, which is all of this a battle for our mind. I mean, if we're honest about the bias around us in the bias that we see, you've got to take personal responsibility with. And here's the key word for today. Humility, I mean, the ability to say, Yeah, I've got it, I've got that bias, I know it's there. And I'm going to do something about it.

Joe Luther  
Right? If you don't want to be guilty of, of being part of the Dunning Kruger effect of, of believing that you know, more or you know, best, the opposite of that is going to be humility. And I think that's really instructive today. And I know, it's something that I'm trying to do, personally. And I, I certainly was awakened to that in my book buying experience. And now I'm trying to think a little bit more without bias.

Vince Kern  
And you, you actually did something about it to help yourself.

Joe Luther  
So as part of our preparation for for this episode, I was thinking, Okay, what's the best way to talk about kind of politically charged topics with people without really taken aside because you and I don't want this to be about taking aside about being part of the polarization. And so what's the best way to have a conversation? Because I don't think it's right to just say, Well, I'm not going to engage or, or this is too divisive. So I withdraw. I mean, yeah, I guess if you don't want to be involved in that, that's good. But what I was, this is something I've been thinking about for for really, a few years. And that's kind of a fantasy of going to a party, where you know, there are people with differing views than you and having a conversation in a way that isn't all of a sudden finger pointing, oh, you're a conspiracy theorist, or you don't think critically, you know, whatever it is, and going back and forth at each other. And I thought, well, the best way maybe to do that is to always start from place of truth. And I know that sounds kind of corny. But what I did is I sat down and started writing down this at first I called it a manifesto, because I didn't really know what I was doing. But I just made these bullet points of things that I know nobody can argue with. And I in that first group of bullet points, I called facts that nobody really disputes. And I don't know I mean, maybe we should give a few examples of this. spin. So yeah,

Vince Kern  
well, I've got a few freebies for our listeners. And for 2995 I'll sell you the whole thing. I won't be able to do that, though, because Joe's actually already kept Oh, because

Joe Luther  
because what I did what Vince and I did is after I, after I wrote this kind of manifesto, we looked at it, and, and we stopped calling it a manifesto, because that has, you know, interesting connotation, we

Vince Kern  
now call it a credo.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, and really what it is, is we want to use it as a lens, because they're kind of a way to reflect back when you're talking about something, or you're coming from a place of not knowing or a place of opinion, are you coming from a place of Bath?

Vince Kern  
Well, let me give some of these freebies to our listener, this is the starting point. So there's, there's the things that are not necessarily in dispute. And then there's some things that what were the categories in that credo? Joe? You had like three categories?

Joe Luther  
Yeah, there's, there's things that that nobody would disagree with? You know, I think one of them is like that all corporations have profit as their primary motive, you know, right. Nobody's gonna disagree with that. And then then there's like the lesser known ones, but nobody would really disagree with. So you know, they might be a little bit more esoteric talking about government agencies and stuff like that. And then, and then we got down to human behavior. Similarly, you know, nobody really disagrees with but there might be some people because it is a little gray area. But again, all of this stuff is really non disputed. If you look at it on its own bullet point by bullet point is when you start bringing them together that people think you're making crazy arguments.

Vince Kern  
So here's a few things that we think people really would all agree with. The primary objective of corporations is to maximize profits. The news media corporations are for profit organizations, social media platforms want you to stay on their platform as long as possible. The pharmaceutical corporations are for profit organizations, information technologies, are for profit organizations are the companies that is and money can influence politicians, government policies, and certainly even business. So if you start from those premises, and start boiling down, some of the other thing is, it starts to give you that lens.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, yeah. And I don't think we really want to get into this into this, you know, credo, any deeper than that, other than to say, we're probably going to use it in future episodes, because it's a way of kind of checking yourself, are you? Are you just spewing noise? Or are you speaking from a place of fat? Let's go a step further and say, Is it a given that divisiveness is used by the media and politicians for their advantage? I mean, is that a given or not? Some people would say it's a conspiracy theory, but I don't I look at if you know that they're profitable. If we know that they want you to stay on their platform as long as possible. And divisiveness can help make that happen, then is it a stretch to say that social media is using divisiveness to manipulate our minds like we were talking about in this war of information?

Vince Kern  
Yeah, let me just tag on to that, or that, because one of the things I found is that even though I was in the media business for about 30 years, my consumption habits really aren't that much. How do I say this? I don't wanna say different, but they were ingrained at a young age. And I haven't really stopped and taken a look at them throughout that time, and now I am, right, it's very,

Joe Luther  
it's easy to get into a habit or a rut, I would say,

Vince Kern  
the goal is to try and mitigate the impact of the Dunning Kruger of the political and media bias that we have,

Joe Luther  
right? And this whole idea of if we're in an information war, and if if artificial intelligence in in the high tech companies out there, and all this data collection that's going on out there is all part of an effort to win our minds, which they say it is right, this information, a war is really a war for the mind of the consumer. Well, then, the good news is, we've got something to say about that, right? Because it's our mind, you know, we can see our own part. If we can see our own part in our ability to be manipulated into stop that and really not be part of the problem, then we have a chance, right? And it comes back to like you said Vince, humility,

Vince Kern  
humility, and really stepping back from it all. You know, there used to be a time where I would turn everything off for the weekend, except for the emails because I ran a 24/7 operation, but no news, no Twitter, no Facebook, no internet, other than that, and on Monday morning, I felt a hell of a lot better now. That's taking action of personal responsibility. And I guess the humility part of that was knowing that if I spent my weekend Doom scrolling and and In reinforcing my own bias, what what kind of time was I given to my wife, my, my energies, my, my lovely cat, you know all of the things that we really want to love and enjoy and have in our life instead of this constant fear about, Oh, what the Democrats are doing this and the Republicans are doing that and this extreme person just said this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Joe Luther  
Good lord. Right. And, you know, we can have probably other podcast episodes that talk about, you know, how this works in the, in the setting of politics, how this works, you know, more deeply in the way we use social media. But today, we just wanted to really talk about our own personal biases, and and shine a light on, you know, anecdotally ourselves and how we tend to overestimate our ability to understand and do things, and to talk about this idea that it really happens. It's so much of a phenomenon that there's there's a, an effect, right, the Dunning Kruger effect, and so we're all guilty of it to some degree. And so the good news is, we can do something about it.

Vince Kern  
Yep. And one thing we'd like to just recommend people do after listening to the podcast is take a look at the Dunning Kruger effect, Google it, read a little bit about it, and then reflect

Joe Luther  
Yeah, do some do with humility. Yeah,

Vince Kern  
you know, hey, like we said, we are just as guilty as everybody else, but we're happy to talk about it. We're happy to share it with you. And you know, we'd love to hear your thoughts on this issue as well. And you can reach us at talk at friends in wonder.com. And what's our webpage? Joe?

Joe Luther  
I don't know. I think it's friends on wonder.com.

Vince Kern  
Thanks for listening. Have a great week. We'll see you next time.