Political bias in Wikipedia (Humans)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Sunday, June 24, 2012, 23:02 (4533 days ago) @ xeno6696

My 2 cent definition of what bias is, it's all the parts of some (story, issue) that by nature, is incomplete by act of deliberate or accidental ommission.
> 
> The trick in the notion of bias is that as humans, we're not all that great at being objective. (Nietzsche would have laughed Kant out of the room.) 
> 
> So what is objectivity? That's a more important question, than "What is bias?" I will say that it is the state of discussion in which all sides are represented. In the case of the news stations, I would say that what is objective is what two of them agree on in regards to the same story.
> -I kind of agree with you here. I think the problem is a bit more fundamental than that though. There is no such thing as objective. It is impossible. The simple act of observing something introduces a bias. In other words, you are more likely to see what you are looking for. Even science suffers with this problem, where tools are designed to look for one particular thing, or one subset of things, and so are completely unaware of surrounding events that may contribute to what is being observed. -The truth is, humans are experience based creatures. We only know what we experience directly, or what we are told indirectly, which in turn is what that person experienced or was told. The problem is that, not having experienced something directly, you are constantly being fed information that has been filtered through repeated layers or experiential bias as one person after another determines what is important to pass on and what is irrelevant. -Even when you experience something directly, there is a bias because not only are you limited to the information your senses can give you, but that information is filtered through the lens of your past experiences. -So, in response to one of your later post, you will never get 'just the facts', and even if you did, they would still be biased.

--
What is the purpose of living? How about, 'to reduce needless suffering. It seems to me to be a worthy purpose.