I would guess that the concept of bias as used in cognitive psychology is not well known in the broad public. It's generally mixed up with the concept of having a conflict of interest.

Most people also don't think in terms of probability which you need to think about implicit biases the way it's conceptualized in cognitive science. Even someone like Obama had episodes like his "it's 50/50" comment in the hunt for Bin Ladin.

The problem is that the statistics don't show the claimed bias. Normalized on a per-police-encounter basis, white cops (or cops-in-general) don't appear to shoot black suspects more often than they shoot white suspects. However, police interact with black people more frequently, so the absolute proportion of black shooting victims is elevated.

The fact that the incidence of police encounters with blacks is elevated would be the actual social problem worth addressing, but the reasons for the elevated incidence of police-black encounters do not make a nice soundbite.

None of this is important of course because, as is usual for politics, the whole mess degenerates into cheerleading for your team and condemning the other team, and sensitive analysis of the actual evidence would be giving aid and comfort to the hated enemy.

Clinton said “implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police,”

This doesn't mean cognitive bias in a LW sense, it means everyone is racist, specifically against black people. I also don't think its true - if everyone is a little bit racist, why would people get into interracial relationships? Its possible that the majority of people prefer their own race but don't admit it, indeed the fact that racial groups cluster in cities could be argued to show this is the case via revealed preferences, but it seems obvious that some people have no racial bias.

Dem candidate Tim Kaine said, "People shouldn't be afraid to bring up issues of bias in law enforcement. And if you're afraid to have the discussion, you'll never solve it."

This, like all politics, is far from rational. It starts by painting the issue in terms of 'people who disagree with me are cowards' and proceeds to assume that this discussion must conclude that the bias exists.

Interesting rhetorical sparring point taking place in the U.S. election that relates to rationality here at LW.

In the first presidential debate, Hillary Clinton referenced bias when discussing the recent spate of police shootings of African Americans. Clinton said “implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police,” and went on to say “I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other," and “I think we need all of us to be asking hard questions about, ‘why am I feeling this way?’”

In the VP debate last night, again in the context of recent police shootings, Dem candidate Tim Kaine said, "People shouldn't be afraid to bring up issues of bias in law enforcement. And if you're afraid to have the discussion, you'll never solve it."

Clinton/Kaine have predictably drawn criticism from the Red Team for the comments (who try to paint the Blue Team as anti-police), but it seems to me the Dems have been more defensive than they need to be, given it seems obvious to me (from my time at LW) that humans are biased, and this bias would obviously be likely to play a role in high stress situations (like when guns are involved).

It will be interesting to me to see how this is adjudicated according to public opinion. Do people generally accept everyone has biases and of course this would affect police officers in high stress situations? Or do they view bias as a rare condition that only affects people without the proper virtue? Is this argument actually over different definitions of the word "bias"? Is it just a Red v. Blue argument that has little to do with facts?

I, for one, think Kaine and Clinton's comments were correct and made a very salient point. (But I'm biased against Trump.)

Good point.

Every emotion is in your head only, so that's not useful advise. The same argument could be made for virtually every form of social insecurity.

If I may ask -- you are the same registered user who made the initial comment. Why reply to yourself? Are you multiple people using the same account?

Early returns:

• 12 Link Posts
• 10 Total Comments
• 7 of the 12 Link Posts have zero comments

tonight—and the U.S. POTUS election writ large—is shaping up to be a very consequential world event

Is that actually true? I've lived through many US presidential eras, including multiple ones defined by "change." Nothing of consequence really changed. Why should this be any different? (Rhetorical question, please don't reply as the answer would be off-topic.)

Consider the possibility that if you want to be effective in your life goals (the point of rationality, no?) then you need to do so from a framework outside the bounds of political thought. Advanced rationalists may use political action as a tool, but not for the search of truth as we care about here. Political commentary has little relevance to the work that we do.

'Tis a shame that an event like tonight's debate won't, and ostensibly never would have, received any direct coverage/discussion on LW, or any other rationality sites of which I am aware.

I know (I know, I know...) politics is the mind killer, but tonight—and the U.S. POTUS election writ large—is shaping up to be a very consequential world event, and LW is busy discussing base rates at the vet and LPTs for getting fit given limited square footage.