WHEN BIAS ANNIHILATES REASON

As many will be only too aware, my recent article “96: The Year of Victory” resulted in a veritable tsunami of disapproval expressed among more intemperate firearms enthusiasts and advocates.

While few bloggers today encourage, let-alone publish comments on their work, I do and regardless of whether they are positive or negative, provided they amount to something more than profanity-loaded personal abuse. 

I'm pleased to report most do. 

Not only do I publish comments, I routinely engage with those leaving them. While this is also comparatively rare in the bloggersphere, I believe it is essential, not only in the interests of basic accountability, but also in order to improve my own understanding of how people view the issues.

What this process revealed in the case of 96: The year of Victory, was the extent to which the condition known as “Comprehension Bias” pervades the shooting community and potentially contributes to disunity.

Put simply, the principle of comprehension bias as it relates to my article played out as follows:

Upon reading the title, rather than wondering to themselves "I wonder what his angle is" as one might have hoped, many simply interpreted the title as an indication of my approval of Howard's 1996 gun-grab.

Oy vei!

Having made that initial foray into the realm of fantasy it was nothing for some to apply this same principle to the article itself in order to back-up their initial assessment with evidence that I approve of Howard's reforms, none of which existed anywhere but in the readers' imagination.

The problem was then compounded by some, who, having indulged their biases and expended considerable effort misinterpreting the article, sped off to share a personal critique via social media, claiming:

Mallard wrote an article praising Howard’s #96 laws as a victory.

Despite the unlikely nature of this claim, the technical term for which incidentally is “arrant bullshit”, a percentage of people reading such a critique, having invested sufficient faith in the critic to believe his interpretation must be correct, whizzed off to the blog to leave disapproving comments, without bothering to read the article for themselves.

This failure to read the article objectively for themselves being considered "just details" by some, they set to work busily issuing their own critiques Facebook. 

Of course it wasn't long before fish & chips had morphed into roast beef in true Chinese whispers tradition, despite the fact the article itself didn't contain any of the betrayals and heresies attributed to it.  Not one!

Its message, for those who read only what was written, would turn out to be really quite innocuous. This is a fact many among the terminally bewildered would later come to realise, as one by one I encouraged them to read my words objectively, rather than attempt to read my mind in that very dangerous way so many highly restricted medications exist to regulate. 

There was no salute to Howard; in fact he was roundly condemned as a despicable opportunist with an agenda he was willing to exploit tragedy to prosecute. 

There wasn’t so much as a single lonely syllable dedicated to praise of his gun laws or banning of semi-automatic and pump-action firearms, and nowhere did the article suggest shooters should not strive for their return.

Nothing in the article indicated that shooters should break ranks with, or withdraw support for, even greater firearms freedom in Australia. Yet the article would come to be accused of all this and more, simply because that was the message it suited the biases of some to read.

What the article did say was that focusing solely on what we lost in 96, fails to acknowledge the unity, albeit flawed, which prevented us losing much more. 

It acknowledged the hard work of tens of thousands who wrote petitions, letters to local members, called meetings and organised rallies, all of which was hugely beneficial in sending the message “your actions will have consequences”.  

It was the ameliorating influence of this activity that I chose to identify as a ‘victory’, although by no means a total victory, which the article also very clearly said. 

I acknowledged these positives with a simple objective in mind i.e. to move away from the exclusive and angry focus on failure and defeat that turns many a shooter away from the cause before s/he ever gets involved.

What many chose to read as condemnation of anyone who strives for the return of our semi-autos, was in fact nothing of the kind. It was, however, a very clear condemnation of prosecuting that objective with angry fist-shaking, insults and ill-considered campaigns likely to have the opposite effect of that intended.

In a nutshell, focusing solely on the failures of an activity never motivated anyone to engage in it long-term, nor did it ever recruit so much as a drop of new blood to a cause. 

If you doubt this, just ask any football coach, recruitment agency or ad campaign manager.

‘Angry’ is not a plan, it is simply an emotion and a largely unproductive, self-indulgent one at that. While some would claim it is a great motivator, it more often that not motivates people to ill-conceived folly. It clouds judgement and only plays into the hands of our adversaries. 

Name-calling is not a strategy. It is just another energy-sapping indulgence that in the history of mankind, has never silenced a single critic nor caused one to reassess his position. It certainly hasn’t me!

It was this consistently unplanned, sabre-rattling approach of a minority, along with their contempt for its impact on the objectives of others, and their failure to recognise that the passage of time has made many of the old mantras redundant, that the article was most critical off, not the objectives themselves. 

In the final analysis, the fact that so many were committed to interpreting my article to complement their own comprehension bias, is unimportant. I’m just a blogger whose opinions, for what they’re worth, are his own and of little consequence in the great scheme of things.

What should be accorded great consequence, in my opinion, is the fact that many of those who are unwilling to assess material objectively, and time and again prove themselves incapable of interpreting it accurately, are also those who believe they are best suited to representing the cause in public and leading the charge overall.

Sending a loud united message is all well and good, but unless the right words are selected (and placed in the correct order too), the message will be lost on government and the public, regardless of its volume or how many shout it in unison. 

This will be my last entry on this particular drama. Those irrevocably committed to their angry simplistic approach are wedded to their course, while others engaged in the business of developing sound strategies are too busy to regard these dramas with more than wry despair and a sense of inevitability.

As for me, I will continue to support the sound, prioritised and strategic pursuit of the full range of ambitions held by law abiding firearms owners and responsible ethical hunters. Of course, how the individual may choose to pervert that statement is completely beyond my control.

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now...

©gmallard2016 all rights reserved

Follow the Hunters' Stand on Twitter @Hunters_Stand

If you'd like to share this post the link to cut & paste is http://thehunterstand.blogspot.com.au/2016/07/when-bias-annihilates-reason.html

For those wishing to leave comments either anonymously or under their own names (go-orn, I dares ya!), please select the 'Name/URL' option from the drop down menu beneath the comments section at the bottom of this page. You do not need to enter a URL.


If you would like to receive notifications when new posts are uploaded to the Hunters' Stand, send your name and email address to thehunterstand@gmail.com This service will not include notification of new comments. 

All information provided will be treated with the utmost confidentiality and discretion and your personal information will not be shared with third parties for any reason.