Tag: Bias

Daily Life, Health, Politics

Yo Hippy, Get A Haircut!
  • Everyone has a chore they hate doing. Dusting, mowing the lawn, cleaning the inside of the microwave, organizing the Tupperware, everyone has something they dread. For me it’s getting a haircut. Don’t ask why, I just do. Maybe in part it’s because in my head I’m convinced I’ll soon look like Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall. The reality is closer to greasy Appalachian trailer park resident. The same with facial hair. Any day now I’m going to have a Jack Murphy beard. Reality is… well not that. So my cycle is let it go until it’s embarrassingly long and I’m coating it in major amounts of hair goop to keep it out of my face (or wear a hat every day), then shave it all off. And every time I cut it I swear I’ll schedule a haircut every five to six weeks like clockwork. At my age I guess I should just be grateful I still have a full head of hair to worry about. Anyway, today’s the shearing day.
  • Speaking of hats, an update on the surgical cap. I don’t particularly like it, but it’s doing the job and saving the tops of my ears from the surgical mask ear loops. It’s clear that even though they say “unisex”, they were designed for women. I ordered something that’s more like a doo-rag to see if that works better. Stay tuned, part two.
  • The injury update – I have a bruise that goes from my hip almost to my knee. It looks gruesome, but doesn’t really hurt. When I landed on the key fob it created a tennis ball size hematoma. All that blood has to go somewhere. It looks like I got hit by a truck.
  • So Project Veritas manages to secretly record CNN editorial calls for months. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that CNN is nothing more than a propaganda machine for the left. I’m sure secret Fox news meetings would be similar. Never air anything that hurts your political agenda. These are not news organizations. I’m not sure we even have just straight news anymore? For me the most humorous part is CNN “referring this to law enforcement” when they have no qualms about doing the exact same thing.
  • I was going to make a joke about the woman who “lured” a 14 year old boy to her home and had sex with him. I suspect my sarcasm wouldn’t be appreciated by the outrage crowd, so never mind.
  • I had a patient go AMA last night. For those who don’t know, AMA stands for “against medical advice”. The patient had a fall a week ago, finally came in and had an unstable vertebral fracture. The neurosurgeon ordered bedrest until a rigid clamshell brace could be fitted. The patient completely ignored the bedrest orders and spent the day walking around the room (complaining of pain) despite everyone’s attempts to describe the potential for further injury. At the very end of the shift the brace arrived and the patient took one look at it and said hell no I’m not wearing that, I’m leaving. After spending the better part of an hour (and ignoring all my other patients) trying to convince this person to stay and wear the brace, printing paperwork, explaining the consequences of leaving AMA (the massive bill insurance won’t pay), etc… the patient packed up to leave. Several minutes later he hit the call light so he could ask where his pain pill prescriptions were? I informed him that if you leave AMA there are no more scripts. Cue the lengthy, expletive filled rant on how we don’t care about people and do we not understand he’s in pain? Oh, and can I help him get his shoes on because he can’t bend over that far. Is it any surprise that I’m becoming very cynical about the human population?

Song of the day: Nena “99 Luftballons (Live 1983)”

Cool, Daily Life, Lists

Notions Of Cool V.004

A random list of things and shower thoughts that an old guy (who still thinks he’s 20) finds cool or worth pondering.

  • My new favorite way of thinking critically about things is a statement from Scott Adams. When you read or hear something that doesn’t jibe with your point of view, ask yourself – what would it take to change my mind?
  • Sympathy level for Hoda Muthana… zero.
  • Something Tim Ferris said got me doubting I was in ketosis. Per my new monitor I’m at 1.3 mmol/l this morning. Not definitive and needs more data, but I feel better that I’m on the right track. Next up, blood lipids.
  • A patient had an odd skin blemish on the forehead that turned into a melanoma that metastasized in the brain. I will be making an appointment with a dermatologist today.
  • Yo, politicians and journalists who were early to jump on the Smollett issue – if you aren’t publicly apologizing or admitting you were wrong, you’re an intellectual fraud and a blindly biased hack.
  • My new skis are ready today. I’m giddy like a little schoolgirl.
  • A week until I hit Hawaii where it’s currently 72, which is not the same as the current 14. Damn global warming.

Song of the day: Dirty Heads “Swim Team”

Confirmation bias

It Must Be True

Confirmation Bias – also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.

If you haven’t been following the Nathan Phillips/Covington High School controversy the last few days… you’ve probably been living under a rock, and may be better off for it. If you have seen it, what was your first reaction when the story initially came out? Be honest.

The media showed a video clip of a high school student wearing a MAGA hat, with what looks like a an odd smirk, standing all up in the face of a native American banging on a drum. News reports said the high school students were shouting racial epitaphs and “build the wall”, and generally disrupting a peaceful indigenous people’s march.

Within nanoseconds the social media warriors had fired up the meme machines. White privilege, this is what a Trump supporter looks like, this is what white supremacy looks like, this is not my America, bla, bla, bla.

As Paul Harvey said, “and now the rest of the story”. It now looks like that’s not at all what happened. A group called the “Black Hebrew Israelites” seem to be the ones responsible for most of the racial epitaphs thrown at the native Americans. The high school kids were just waiting for their bus and began singing their school spirit song to drown out the inflammatory chanting. Statements by most of the kids seem to indicate they were all pretty confused as to what was happening.

And best of all… new video shows that it was Nathan Phillips, the native American drummer, who walked into the group of kids, got all up close and personal and began drumming right in one kids face. The kid just stood there respectfully and smiled.

Back to my question. How badly did you want the original story to be true? How certain were you that, of course a bunch of Trump supporting, MAGA hat wearing, kids exuding white privilege would do this? Because all Trump supporters are one step away from the Klan, right? There’s now several hours of video of the events and people are examining it second by second looking for evidence to support whatever side you’re on. I don’t really care about that outcome. The bigger point is that so many people rushed to pre-judge something that didn’t exactly happen the way it was portrayed.

Confirmation bias has become so rampant and damaging to society today. Unfortunately the news is helping to perpetuate it. Don’t be a part of it. There’s a difference between not agreeing with a policy or statement, and being so blinded by bias you read evil into everything. Wait to judge, take what you see in the news with a grain of salt, and stop being a part of the problem.

“We all see only that which we are trained to see.”

Robert Anton Wilson