Perhaps they could be called "errors", errors we have systematic tendencies to make, and when describing them, explain every time why they are errors, why they fail to cut through to the truth. Then people may not find it so easy to interpret "biases" as being like taste in music or clothes.
Disclaimer: I have no experience of trying to teach this stuff to anyone.
I had sort of forgotten that "bias" could be taste in music or differential human outcomes based on "biased" treatment. Noticing that collision was helpful to me.
Also, I think there is an interesting quirk in the LW/local usage of the term "bias" and its general stance towards epistemology. The local culture is really really into "overcoming biases" with a zeal and cultural functionality that has echoes in the Christian doctrine of Original Sin.
(Not that this is bad! Assuming that people are in cognitive error b...
I'm afraid I haven't properly designed the Muggles Studies course I introduced at my local Harry Potter fan club. Last Sunday we finally had our second class (after wasted months of insistence and delays), and I introduced some very basic descriptions of common biases, while of course emphasizing the need to detect them in ourselves before trying to detect them in other people. At some point, which I didn't completely notice, the discussion changed from an explanation of the attribution bias into a series of multicultural examples in favor of moral relativity. I honestly don't know how that happened, but as more and more attendants voiced their comments, I started to fear someone would irreversibly damage the lessons I was trying to teach. They basically stopped short of calling the scientific method a cultural construct, at which point I'm sure I would have snapped. I don't know what to make of this. Some part of me tries to encourage me and make me put more effort into showing these people the need for more reductionism in their worldview, but another part of me just wants to give them up as hopeless postmodernists. What should I do?