Index Biases

The systemic, often invisible skews built into the methodologies of influential global indices (e.g., Democracy Index, Corruption Perceptions Index, Ease of Doing Business). These biases can include: conceptual bias (defining "democracy" only as multi-party liberal democracy), source bias (relying on surveys of Western-educated elites), methodological bias (weighting factors that favor neoliberal policies), and political bias (producing results that align with the geopolitical interests of the organizations' home countries). Index biases turn quantitative measurement into a powerful tool for ideological normalization.

Example: The Corruption Perceptions Index is often criticized for Index Biases. It tends to rate poorer countries as more corrupt, often because it measures the perception of Western business elites, not the reality of, say, legalized corruption (lobbying, regulatory capture) in wealthy nations. This bias shapes investment flows and political discourse, punishing the Global South for forms of corruption the index is blind to in the West.

by Dumu The Void February 5, 2026

Biases of Biases

The systematic, structural distortions in which biases get recognized and critiqued within a society or institution. The biases of the powerful (e.g., pro-corporate, status-quo bias) are often rendered invisible or "neutral," while the biases of the marginalized (e.g., advocacy, protest bias) are hyper-visible and pathologized. It's a hierarchy of perceived distortion.

Example: In mainstream political commentary, a politician's bias towards protecting Wall Street is framed as "pragmatic realism," while a activist's bias towards wealth redistribution is framed as "ideological extremism." This is the operation of biases of biases—the rules that determine which perspectives are allowed to be "objective" and which must wear the label of bias.

by Dumu The Void February 9, 2026

Biases about Biases

The preconceived, often simplistic, notions we hold about what bias is and who has it. These are stereotypes about bias itself—e.g., "liberal media bias," "conservative denialism," "academic elitism"—that people use as pre-packaged filters to dismiss information without engaging. It's bias at a meta-level: being wrong about how wrongness operates.

Biases about Biases Example: A viewer immediately dismisses a documentary on climate change because "It's from Netflix, and Netflix has a woke bias." This is not an analysis of the film's evidence, but the application of a bias about bias—a canned ideological shortcut that prevents any actual evaluation of content.

by Dumu The Void February 9, 2026