0

When looking for knowledge, you'll often find conflicting information. This is because, in many topics, there'll be a "for" and "against" side. Those sides are biased towards what they want to believe. But as a third party looking from the outside in, can those two sides actually help you get the best knowledge possible, rather than there only being one side to get information from? Are there any articles or papers which analyse this?

prata
  • 101
  • 2
  • Sure, you get more information by listening to both sides, i.e. bias is not a good thing in that scenario, but see [Tobena-Dar, Advantages of bias and prejudice](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10580317/). Could you be more specific as to what is to be analyzed? – Conifold Jul 17 '21 at 06:26
  • @Conifold Like maybe if differing degrees of bias result in different opinions. – prata Jul 17 '21 at 10:30
  • Was talking about how good history keeping required the emergence of a culture that fostered productive contention - & so, respecting objects, archives etc even if they disagree with your narrative because of the risk of discrediting yourself, your institution, & being dismissed from the community of history shapers: 'Do historians have responsibility in how they decide to depict something?' https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/81915/do-historians-have-responsibility-in-how-they-decide-to-depict-something/81933#81933 Requires long-term goals +buy-in to values around productive debate – CriglCragl Jul 17 '21 at 12:57
  • 1
    @prata In principle one could also imagine bias leading to more knowledge quicker than nonbias under certain circumstances. A devout believer in God from the get go maybe finds proof of God quicker than the patient abductist. God has to exist for this hypothetical to work. – J Kusin Jul 17 '21 at 20:53
  • @JKusin But what type of bias would that be? Like there are different types of biases right? Specifically, what type of bias would this example fall under? – prata Jul 18 '21 at 09:50

0 Answers0