Yesterday, I had an informational interview with a gentleman from Tableau Software.
He mentioned how he believes it is so important that we follow the scientific method’s means of determining what you suspect to find – i.e. the hypothesis – and then test for the “null hypothesis.”
In theory it helps people to overcome one of the greatest “weaknesses” of the brain – implicit bias.
Now, I must concur with respect to law land because I find it abject balderdash as to lawyers producing all the “relevant facts.”
Instead, we should probably freely acknowledge that the very act of advocating involves “cherry picking the data” if only unintentional – which as any jaundiced seasoned attorney knows is perhaps the only truth that is absolute in court.
The saving grace of a trial then is that both ideas clash and the judge – though likely not craning their brain – instead cranes their cranium to determine which way the facts appear to shake out most reasonable.
Judges simply apply the law to the facts … right? Wrong again! Remember, judges are also humans subject to their own implicit bias and thus view a matter whatever paradigm with which they view the world.
The best that we can expect to do then is to have a group of people – each with their own implicit biases (though nevertheless undergirded by the overall cultural zeitgeist) to hash things out in order to determine the facts.
This is why we have “juries of our peers.” These fact-finders serve to anchor reasonableness to that which is presented and determine the validity of the “relevant facts.”
Now here’s the question. What happens when the culture becomes warped in its views of people on the peripheria?
At some point a line has to be drawn as to who’s in and who’s out … right?
Well, perhaps it would be most appropriate to be a little – or actually a lot – more generous as to where that line is drawn.
Especially now that technology has allowed us to be anywhere and everywhere throughout the world, perhaps we should really start to explore very carefully our own hearts as to who is our “neighbor.”
I don’t know that a purely scientific approach is appropriate.
What I do know is that the maxim “love your neighbor, as you would yourself” is a lot better than the alternative in which folks project their worst fears upon “the other.”
When the later happens, we are reduced to our very worst form … and that’s not good.
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Photo Credit: http://latinalista.com/columns/blogbeat-columns/implicit-bias-shapes-our-views-without-us-knowing-it