Bias Vs. Accuracy

If there is a glass of water on the table that can hold one liter, and there is only half a liter of water in it, is it half empty or half full? 

We all know the distinction between being an optimist and being a pessimist, and I am sure we have all heard the glass of water example.  The fact is that there is half a liter in a glass that can hold a whole liter.  If we say that the glass is full, we are not being accurate, we are claiming that the glass has a whole liter of water in it when it does not.  The same would be true if we claimed that it is mostly full.  It is not mostly full if it only has ½ of a liter in it; it would have to have more than ½ a liter to be mostly full.  Of course, the same is true for the opposite: empty and mostly empty. 

Of course we also have the crazy opinion that we could talk about it being half full of air, or half empty of air.  We could even talk of it being full because it is half filled with water and half filled with air.  But, those are beyond what I want to address here and beyond what most people would consider normal. 

If we can agree on the facts, in this case the quantified volume of the water in the glass and the total capacity that the glass has, then we can agree on what is accurate and what is not.  Once we agree on ‘the numbers,’ then we can venture in to bias.  If we can’t agree on what is accurate, then there is no bias that we can agree to disagree about.  If we can’t agree on what it means to be accurate, we are condemned to argue about the interpretation of things that we have not defined. 

After all, bias is a label for interpretations that you don’t understand or agree with.  We can’t call a person an optimist when they say the glass is half full if we don’t know (or can’t agree) that the glass has half the amount of water in it that is can hold.  A person that would call a glass that is 65% full, half full is not an optimist or a pessimist but a conservative.  If they called it mostly full they would be something else, a person of a different bias.  If they called it full, they would simply be wrong. 

It is often the case that debates and arguments skip over the question of accuracy and go right to matters of bias; this is a sure way to end up with a story full of sound and fury that means (and accomplishes) nothing.  If you can’t agree on what it is that you are talking about in a fundamental way (which these days often boils down to agreeing on data, or facts) then when you disagree, you can never be sure it is because you view it differently, or because you are talking about a different it.  That is not just a waste of time of your goal is to accomplish something, but it is a sure way to create and intensify divisions between people.

Note: I see this as part of a larger thought project I am working on that deals with the rehabilitation of the concept of opinion.  In a rough way, the word ’bias’ could be replaces here with ‘opinion.’