I saw an article just today arguing that emotion is a "cognitive shortcut" for assessing reality, that it has the evolutionary advantage of being a very rapid process, the disadvantage of not being terribly accurate. Also, aside from emotion, the literature talks about direct shortcuts like the snap judgments we tend to make about new individuals we encounter based on superficial appearance and behavior, and then are resistant to changing that judgment even in the face of overwhelming evidence that it was wrong.

In the face of all this, I think "epistemological humility" is important to have. Even we who fancy ourselves to be "critical thinkers" should not be overconfident just because we have avoided some common pitfalls like religion. Nor should we think we are now suddenly immune to confirmation bias and other logical fallacies as a result. Quite the opposite really.

It is impossible for an individual to strip cognitive biases from their perception of the world. You would have to presuppose the existence of Free Will in order to do this. According to Dr. Robert Saposlky, a neuroendocrinologist from Stanford, rational thought and emotional responses are impossible to separate, so purely rational thought is not something human beings are really capable of. When you observe something, the way your mind perceives it at that very moment is predetermined by the neural framework, memories and emotions present in your brain at that very moment.

The best we humans can do as individuals is to expose ourselves to other experiences and try to learn new things (all of which change our neural framework). As a group, I think it is possible to control for this and "smooth out" these biases as long you that group is diverse and not some type of tribal, echo chamber.

Thank you for this post. This is a very interesting topic!

Each and every one of us grows up in a specific culture.The enculturation process instills in each of us a set of beliefs, norms, values, assumptions, ways of doing everyday things, ways of interpreting our reality. Unless we question those -- which is difficult when faced with group pressure -- those become our filters. Through exposure to other cultures and social groups, we are often able to lift those blinders or cognitive filters, and expand and enrich our perception of reality.