Abhijit Naskar's Blog - Posts Tagged "biases"

Black is not evil.
White is not trash.
Brown is not illegal.
Muslims don’t crash.
Women ain't weak.
Jews ain't greedy.
Men ain't playboys.
Queer ain't sickly.
Hijab is not oppression.
Hourglass ain't beauty.
Faith is not delusion.
Atheists don't lack morality.
Assumptions only reveal shallowness.
Beyond stereotypes lies humaneness.

Life is one big prejudice,
Unless you question everything.
Perception is one big bias,
Unless you see beyond the seeing.
Opinions are a bunch of lies,
Till curiosity surpasses comfort.
Beliefs may very well be delusion,
Till traditions are examined with real effort.
Faith can very easily be fiction,
Unless you distinguish superstition.
Morality can turn out to be myth,
Unless you embrace evolution.
There's no place for rigidity in liberty's lands.
On the odyssey of revolutions life expands.

The watchwords of civilization,
Are reason and inclusion.
Yet we live by the golden rules,
Of rigidity and exclusion.
We dress up in fancy clothes,
To feel powerful and important.
Beneath the lies of civilization,
Beats a heart most impotent.
We boast proudly about equality,
Unaware of our biases most inane.
We admire the rights of our own,
Rights of others are business of the UN.
Enough of this make belief ascension.
It’s time to humanize our synthetic civilization.

If a tradition endorses hate and mistrust,
It’s the tradition that we must reject not people.
If a heritage endorses division and discrimination,
It's the heritage that we must reject not people.
If an ancestor passes on bigotry and barbarism,
It’s the ancestor that we must reject not people.
If a bible teaches phobia and separatism,
It’s the bible that we must reject not people.
If a messiah preaches blindness and conspiracy,
It's the messiah that we must reject not people.
If God commands oppression and occupation,
It’s the God that we must reject not people.
Above all commandment, love is the highest truth.
Anything that divides love is a stoneage residue.

To hell with fear,
To hell with insecurity!
Stand up with conviction,
To hell with serenity!
Enough with pretend revolution,
Enough with jungly aum shanti!
For once in your life grow up o soldier,
Breaking all biases become krantistani.
Your footsteps will strike terror in terrorists,
Your voice will give chills to the divisionists.
Turn your existence into a beacon of help,
Possess this world with acts of love and uplift.
Killing terrorists and tyrants don't end inhumanity.
Oust them all, then irrigate the soil with solidarity.

(Krantistani: Citizen of Revolution, Aum Shanti: Archaic Peace Chant)

You can code tasks,
But not consciousness.
You can code phony feelings,
But definitely not sentience.
Nobody can bring a machine to life,
No matter how complex you make it.
But once a machine is complex enough,
It might develop awareness by accident.
So let us focus on humanizing AI,
By removing biases from algorithms,
Rather than dehumanizing AI,
By aiming for a future without humans.
Rich kids with rich dreams make good movies.
Be human first and use AI to equalize communities.

Woman empowered is civilization empowered.
Dream empowered is progress empowered.
Parents empowered is children empowered.
Teachers empowered is future empowered.
Don’t defund the police, use those funds,
To send the officers to behavioral therapy.
To have an understanding of justice and order,
We must have a grip over our impulses and biases.
Discrimination don’t disappear if we shut our eyes,
Each of us must live as an antidote to discrimination.
Ignorance doesn’t become knowledge when peddled by scripture,
Better burn all scriptures if they peddle hate and division.
To conquer our biases and stereotypes is to conquer inhumanity.
To expand our heart beyond assumption is to empower humanity.

Old is not necessarily gold,
New is not necessarily cool.
Stereotypes without scrutiny,
Sustain only a society of fools.
Answer to one stereotype is not another,
Answer to one assumption is not another.
To make assumption is not wrong but,
To assume it as truth supreme is rhubarb.
Perception is all about assumption,
Our brain hasn’t evolved to observe reality.
Biases prevent the observation of biases, unless,
You are hellbent to expand across comfort and luxury.
Stereotypes are archetypes of self-preservation.
Look outside the self and you’ll find assimilation.

Life is one big prejudice unless you question everything. You say, you don’t have any prejudice! Let’s put that to test, shall we! Read the following phrases, pausing a few seconds after each.

Hallelujah!

¡Viva la libertad!

Shabbat Shalom!

Allahu Akbar!

Black Lives Matter!

We’re Here, We’re Queer!

My body, my decision!

Now bring your faculty of reason into action, and think, which of the terms induced a negative emotional response in your mind? It’s nothing out of the ordinary, it’s just common animal nature.

How your brain got conditioned to react in such a way that’s a different matter. The main thing is, your brain just reacted exactly like the brain of pavlov’s dog every time it heard the bell. The only difference is that, a dog doesn’t have further brain capacity to question such conditioning, but a human does.

Brave is not the one who has no dark corners in their mind,
Brave is the one who is friends with their dark corners.
Courageous is not the one who never sheds a single tear,
Courageous is the one who draws strength from their tears.
A sound mind is not one that has no superstition,
A sound mind is one that has a grip over its superstition.
A sane mind is not one that does not believe in fiction,
A sane mind is one that knows good fiction from bad fiction.
Education is needed, but not mere education of the head,
What’s really needed is education of the whole being.
It is easy to fill the head with facts and figures,
Use a fact to lift the world, then you’re an educated being.
More than in head and body, we gotta grow up in heart.
A billion pounds of head is worthless, if there is no heart.