Bias and Butterflies

Bias and lying by omission is the easiest kind to do, intentionally or not. If no records exist for, say, a certain French peasant circa 1400, you’d be forgiven for not knowing their life story. But an omniscient historian with infinite historical knowledge could still tell a biased story by not writing every single detail into their historical account. An “annal history” of every single factual event that happened in human history, in chronological order and with (somehow) no subjective wording would be great. It would also be a gazillion pages long, and near impossible to use/read. So in order for it to be usable, you would create condensed versions. And is that French peasant REALLY important to your “exhaustive history of the American Wild West”? Of course! Had that French peasant not moved his cart during a rainstorm, a tree would have fallen on the daughter of a visiting merchant—who, of course, would be the great x15 grandmother of Buffalo Bill. And what is the Wild West without Buffalo Bill?

You’ve probably heard of the butterfly effect, which says that a butterfly flapping its wings affects human events far in the future. Maybe a butterfly flap caused a minute change in weather patterns that would warp into a tornado that destroyed Rome. If all of human history is interconnected, you really can’t tell the complete (and therefore not inherently biased) story of one thing without talking about everything that has ever happened. It’s a little ad absurdum, but I like thinking about history, and the sheer chance that everything turned out the way it did because of one little butterfly.

Kind of related to bias by omission is bias by narration. A king living in his palace knows his life: his surroundings, his food, his drink, his opinions and ideology. And as the most powerful and influential person in the area, his knowledge is a reasonable  “history.” Then imagine the scribe of the annals we read in class, who writes “712. Flood everywhere. / 713. / 714. Pippin, mayor of the palace, died. /715. 716. 717.” Presumably nothing happened in 713, 715, 716, or 717 that was of interest to the scribe or to the town of Saint Gall. But what about the history and story of the 709 hard winter during which Bede the presbyter had a religious experience, which caused him to become Blessed Bede by the time he died in 731? (A little bit of a ridiculous example, but made to show how the private lives of the common people can have a big impact later.) The king and the scribe are not wrong to say “these things happened and are important.” Bede the presbyter is not wrong to say “my life happened and is important.” But for the most complete, unbiased historical account we would need both the history of the common people and of the king. Of course, we don’t get it because records of kings tend to be better preserved than those of poor, illiterate peasants.

p.s. tell me if my blog is doing that thing where it runs off the side of the page.