The "Everyone Is Biased" Bias

Excessive cynicism is not the way to deal with Elon Musk’s departures from truth.

Norm McDonald doing standup comedy, Aspen, 2003. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic, Inc.)

One of my favorite Norm Macdonald bits is when he ponders, “Imagine if you woke up and you realized you were wrong about everything”:

You just woke up, and you go, God damn, I’ve been wrong about every single thing I’ve ever believed. Huh.

After a pause, Macdonald recommends, “Then it’s time to go down to the rope store, in my opinion—because it’s not going to get better.”

I like the bit because the scenario is absurd and yet connected to real anxieties.

Why couldn’t you be wrong about everything? I don’t mean this in the way philosophers raise annoying skeptical scenarios about whether an external world exists or whether the universe popped into existence five minutes ago. I mean, when it comes to our deep-rooted convictions—what most people have in mind when they use the word “belief”—getting things completely wrong seems like a live possibility. If you have strong beliefs, you must think those you disagree with are wrong. But if they can be totally wrong, why can’t you?

It’s alarming to contemplate this possibility. We organize much of our lives around our beliefs. We identify with them. We stake our reputations on them. It would be devastating to wake up and discover you had been wrong about everything. Going to the rope store might seem appropriate.

That’s probably one reason why most people don’t spend much time contemplating the possibility of radical error.

Am I Wrong About Everything?

Lately I’ve been wondering whether I’m wrong about everything.

In domains where I have strong opinions, I spend a lot of time confidently arguing for those opinions and criticizing views I think are mistaken. I spend much less time contemplating the possibility that I’m deeply mistaken.

One thing I’ve become especially concerned with recently is that my writings and the broader political and philosophical outlook they reflect fall prey to what might be called the “everyone is biased” bias.

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Everyone Is Biased

The “everyone is biased” bias isn’t merely the conviction that everyone is biased. Everyone is biased when forming beliefs about the world, or at least those features of the world that lie beyond immediate experience.

First, we tend to think and reason about reality in ways distorted by goals like emotion regulation, self-interest, and social signaling. When we’re driven to adopt a belief that would make us feel good or promote our interests, we become motivated reasoners, adjusting how we seek out and process information to reach congenial conclusions rather than correct ones. Only “such truth, as opposeth no man’s profit, nor pleasure, is to all men welcome,” wrote Hobbes. And when truth is unwelcome, we’re skilled at interpreting reality in ways that protect us from it.

Second, even when we can’t directly convince ourselves of falsehoods, we still communicate and self-censor in ways shaped by status competition, reputation management, and social pressure. As evolved social primates, we often care more about getting along and getting ahead than being honest or intellectually courageous. Over time, this skewed but socially adaptive communication shapes how and what we think.

Moreover, precisely because such behavior is itself an unwelcome truth—because caring too much about what others think of us makes others think less of us—we tend to deny such tendencies, even to ourselves. To maintain a self-image as honest truth-tellers, we internalize those views and perspectives that are socially rewarded in our political or cultural tribes so that their expression feels sincere.

Third, reality is inherently difficult to understand, and our access to it is typically highly indirect. In forming beliefs about complex or distant matters, we rely on the partial, fallible, and occasionally deceptive information we acquire from others. And we’re forced to interpret that information through low-resolution mental models, explanatory narratives that simplify and distort reality, and interpretive systems that were also primarily inherited from our culture.

Finally, we tend to be oblivious to the partiality and fallibility of our beliefs. That is, we’re not just profoundly and unavoidably biased in our understanding of reality; we’re typically ignorant of the deep and ineliminable nature of this bias. We’re instinctive “naive realists,” treating our convictions as direct reflections of self-evident facts rather than partial and fallible interpretations of shadows on a cave wall.

Naive Realism

I find these observations to be widely under-appreciated. Naive realism isn’t just mistaken; it’s harmful.

At the individual level, naive realism breeds intellectual complacency and arrogance.

At the collective level, it drives polarization, animosity, and a sense of mutual alienation when the self-evident truths affirmed by different political tribes diverge. If reality is transparent—if the truth is manifest—why don’t others see the same reality you do? They must be lying, crazy, or stupid. There must be sinister forces conspiring to obscure or hide the facts.

For this reason, naive realism doesn’t just blind us to our own biases. It leads us to exaggerate the biases of our rivals and enemies. Worse, by driving us to explain other people’s mistakes in terms of malevolence, it conjures rivals and enemies out of mere disagreement.

Given this, it’s important to point out that naive realism is itself a mistake.

Everyone is biased.

The “Everyone Is Biased” Bias

Nevertheless, it’s possible to focus excessively on the universality of bias in ways that are also intellectually and socially harmful. This is to succumb to the “everyone is biased” bias.

I’ve become worried that my broader intellectual outlook is often biased in just this way.

For example, in recent years, I’ve been highly critical of elite discourse surrounding topics like “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “fake news,” and “post-truth.” As is well-documented, such buzzwords became highly prominent in 2016 after the Brexit referendum result and Donald Trump’s first presidential election. Surprised and disgusted by these events and the growing popularity of similar right-wing populist movements worldwide, many highly-educated professionals—the sorts of people right-wing populists malign as “liberal elites”—developed a new piece of conventional wisdom: that these movements are distinguished by their uniquely hostile attitude towards truth, facts, and honesty.

Whereas political disagreement once occurred against a backdrop of shared facts, right-wing populists embrace “alternative facts.” Whereas politicians and pundits once paid respect to truth, right-wing populists are “post-truth.” Whereas the public once listened to experts, right-wing populists have “had enough of experts,” as Brexit leader Michael Gove once put it.

I have been suspicious of such narratives because of their association with prominent ideas and research that I find philosophically or scientifically objectionable. However, I’ve also objected because such narratives are typically highly biased.

They often obscure the possibility that one reason for anti-establishment backlash is establishment failures over many years, including shocking epistemological catastrophes. In the UK and United States, for example, this includes the Iraq War, the financial crisis, and many aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic response. However, these are just the most striking examples amidst a wide range of persistent failures by elites and establishment institutions over decades.

Moreover, much of the discourse surrounding “misinformation” and “post-truth” exhibits a naively realistic attitude to the orthodoxies that prevail among highly educated liberals and progressives. Not only is it absurd to imagine a golden age of objectivity or “truth era” preceding 2016, but there is plenty of “misinformation”—falsehoods, lies, propaganda, cherry-picking, omission of context, alarmism, biased and misleading narratives, and so on—among those who sanctimoniously pontificate about the dangers of misinformation.

This is true at the level of popular belief systems and narratives. However, it’s also true at the level of the most prestigious liberal institutions throughout Western democracies. Elite outlets like The New York Times and the BBC don’t merely report on “the facts.” They frequently select, omit, frame, package, and contextualize facts in ways skewed towards supporting specific narratives. And at the same time as liberal discourse has exploded with concerns about widespread anti-science attitudes (“science denial”), we’ve become aware of just how much of modern science is unreliable, ungeneralizable, overhyped, and frequently outright fraudulent.

And Yet…

I stand by the literal content of everything I’ve just written. And yet, I have to admit that after witnessing the behavior of Elon Musk and the broader right-wing media ecosystem in the United States over the past year or so, I’m worried that this kind of analysis misses the forest for the trees.

Yes, everyone—including highly-educated professionals who “believe in science” and “trust experts” and read broadsheet newspapers and go to farmers’ markets and so on—is biased, but “bias” doesn’t begin to describe somebody like Elon Musk.

Almost everything that Musk communicates or amplifies on X—and he posts and reposts a staggering quantity of content to a vast audience—is an outright lie, half-truth, or flagrant propaganda. And, of course, the only reason he can do this is that he inhabits a right-wing ecosystem in America which has wholly abandoned even the pretense of caring about truth, reality, or objectivity.

This ecosystem is increasingly dangerous, including in the way it is opening up intellectual space for repugnant anti-Semitic conspiracy theorizing. And given the extent to which America influences other societies and the American right is explicitly allied with right-wing populist parties elsewhere, there’s a significant risk that this radical epistemic dysfunction will have a broader global significance in the years to come.

I know many people will point out that what Musk is doing is simply a continuation of Donald Trump’s behavior. Maybe they’re right. Seeing where we are now, I have to admit that many of those who characterized Trump in what struck me as extremely alarmist ways had better judgment than I did. However, I’ve always viewed Trump as a run-of-the-mill ignoramus and bullshitter whose absurd exaggerations and fabrications are so obvious that they’re priced in by audiences who care more about authenticity and triggering libs than factual correctness.

Musk seems qualitatively different. Contrary to progressive wishful thinking, he’s clearly highly intelligent, and he can easily acquire accurate information about anything he wants, including from his own large language model, Grok, which will readily inform users that Musk is the most prolific source of misinformation on his own platform.

When confronted with this behavior, the observation that everyone is biased obscures more than it illuminates.

More generally, an excessive focus on the universality of bias encourages at least two kinds of errors:

1. The problem of flattening

2. The problem of intellectual defeatism

The Problem of Flattening

Cynicism gives rise to a problem of moral flattening. Even if everyone is highly limited in their propensities towards altruism, some are more limited than others. And even if cynicism is correct at one level of abstraction, sweeping generalizations about human nature inevitably obscure such individual differences.

Yes, everyone is biased, but some are much more biased than others. There are significant individual differences in how intellectually virtuous people are, and some people—Musk included—are, let’s say, less circumspect than they might be in their attitude towards truth and honesty.

Moreover, profound differences exist in the social norms and procedures enforced in different communities and institutions. For all the genuine flaws of elite knowledge-generating institutions like science, academia, legacy media, and so on, they implement norms designed to encourage conformity to Enlightenment values and responsible intellectual conduct (fact-checking, peer review, sourcing claims, issuing formal corrections, etc.), even if they often fall short of this goal.

The Problem of Intellectual Defeatism

An excessive focus on the universality and unavoidability of bias can also undermine one’s own motivation for participating fully in political discourse and debate.

You can become so preoccupied with identifying other people’s biases—in pointing out how others’ perspectives on reality are selective, partial, and distorted by grubby motives—that you avoid taking a stance on reality yourself. This move buys a feeling of intellectual superiority at the expense of achieving anything of substantial intellectual value.

Then, just as naive realism drives intellectual complacency, overconfidence, and arrogance, the rejection of naive realism can easily give rise to the opposite vices of intellectual cowardice and defeatism. If you’re too paranoid about the inevitability of bias—if you’re too focused on the unavoidable subjectivity and partiality of political judgement—you can become excessively intellectually risk averse.

The easiest way to avoid bias is simply to avoid taking any stand at all.

Looking at how most people approach politics, the problem of intellectual arrogance seems much more widespread than misplaced humility. Nevertheless, a rare vice is still a vice—and one worth taking seriously.

Ultimately, we need the humility to acknowledge that everyone is biased whilst maintaining the ability to notice that some people and some institutions are vastly more committed to truth than others—and that this difference matters profoundly.

A version of this essay originally appeared in Conspicuous Cognition.

Dan Williams is an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Sussex. He works on issues at the intersection of science, politics, and technology. He blogs at www.conspicuouscognition.com.

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