Self-Serving Bias

The subconscious psychological engine that drives us to interpret information, attribute causes, and remember events in ways that flatter our self-image and protect our self-esteem. We attribute our successes to skill and effort (internal factors) and our failures to bad luck or external circumstances. It's the brain's auto-tune for life's recording, making you always sound just a little bit more in tune and talented than you actually were.

Example: "When he aced the project, it was due to his brilliant strategic mind. When he botched the presentation, it was because the projector was faulty, the audience was tired, and he had a mild headache. That's self-serving bias: the internal narrator of his life story is a shameless, flattering publicist hired by his own ego."

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026

Biased

adjective

The inability to read, comprehend, or process information objectively, usually while holding a position of authority. A biased person will confidently misunderstand plain text, ignore evidence in bold letters, and still believe they’re the smartest one in the room.

Often caused by favoritism, ego, or the dangerous combo of low literacy and high confidence.

Synonyms: Anshin, illiterate impartiality, agenda-driven hallucination, selective reading disorder

“The ruling was so biased it wasn’t even wrong — it was just Anshin speed-reading the situation, misunderstanding everything, and calling it judgment.”

by Fenrirsulfr February 1, 2026

Laboratory Bias

A systemic flaw where data and phenomena observed in controlled, simplified laboratory conditions fail to accurately represent their behavior in the messy, complex, and interconnected real world. This bias arises because labs deliberately isolate variables and eliminate "noise," which often strips away the very contextual forces that shape outcomes in nature, society, or technology. The lab result is "true" only within its sterile vacuum, creating a potentially dangerous illusion of understanding that cracks under real-world pressures. It's the map that's perfectly accurate for a single, empty room, but useless for navigating a city.

Example: A social psychology study on altruism conducted in a lab with college students playing for token rewards might show people are fairly cooperative. This Laboratory Bias would completely miss how altruism collapses under real-world stresses like economic scarcity, tribal politics, or anonymous online interactions. The lab finding is valid, but its translation to reality is broken.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Rationalized Bias

A sophisticated form of self-deception where one's pre-existing prejudices, desires, or ideological commitments are retroactively supported by elaborate, internally consistent rationalizations. The person constructs a logical-sounding edifice to justify a conclusion they arrived at for emotional or tribal reasons, believing themselves to be purely rational. The bias lies in the motivated reasoning that builds the rationale.

Example: A person opposed to immigration reform crafts a complex argument citing selective economic studies, abstract principles of sovereignty, and crime statistics. This Rationalized Bias allows them to believe their stance is reasoned, when its roots are in unexamined cultural anxiety and identity politics. The logic serves the bias, not the truth.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Logical Bias

The error of privileging formal, deductive logic above all other ways of knowing (empathy, intuition, experiential knowledge, moral reasoning) and dismissing any argument that doesn't fit into a neat syllogism as "illogical" and therefore invalid. It's a bias that mistakes a specific tool for the entire toolbox of human understanding, often to coldly justify inhuman conclusions.

Example: "Logically, a corporation's only duty is to maximize shareholder value. Therefore, laying off 10,000 people to boost stock price is not just permissible, it's illogical not to do it." This Logical Bias uses a narrow, amoral logical framework to justify a human catastrophe, dismissing ethical concerns as sentimental "illogic."

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Bias of Controlled Bias

A meta-problem in experimental design where the researchers' attempts to eliminate one form of bias (e.g., selection bias) unintentionally introduce another, often by creating control groups or conditions that are artificially sterile, non-representative, or so constrained they don't reflect real-world complexity. The study becomes a perfectly controlled test of an irrelevant scenario.

Example: A psychology study on stress uses a "controlled" lab stressor (like a timed puzzle) to eliminate life-history variables. But this Bias of Controlled Bias means the results only apply to acute, performance-based stress in weird lab settings, not to the chronic, social, and economic stressors that define real-world mental health.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026

Historical Normality Bias

The fallacy of judging past societies, actions, or norms by the standards of the present, or conversely, of justifying outdated, harmful practices by arguing "that was normal at the time." In its dismissive form, it's used to invalidate modern moral critiques of historical figures by claiming a lack of historical context. More perniciously, it's used to defend the persistence of antiquated injustices by appealing to their historical commonality.

Example: Defending a founding father's slaveholding by saying, "It was normal then, you can't judge him," commits the Historical Normality Bias. It uses historical descriptivism ("it was common") to avoid moral judgment, implying that collective moral failure excuses individual participation in atrocity.

by Dumu The Void February 4, 2026