The Avoidability Of Biases

The idea that biases are unavoidable is quite predictably almost only brought up by people who are ironically biased against rationalism, as they are content to favor biases they are comfortable with and, when confronted with true rationalism and its rejection of all biases, they will pretend like biases are inescapable rather than just give up the biases they find appealing.  There is nothing irrational about realizing that one has been wrong or at least blind about philosophical beliefs (and all beliefs are philosophical).  It is the height of irrationality, though, to cling to assumptions of any sort while fallaciously using reason in vain to "justify" the inherent falsehood that reason is untrue or incapable of being consistently aligned with.

This gives them an alleged excuse to ignore some biases instead of others, to not even try to avoid all assumptions--which is a logically possible thing to do, but something that takes genuine effort and intelligence.  Of course, if something is logically necessary, such as the fact that only a total lack of assumptions and an emphasis on strictly logical truths as the inherent foundation of all things allows someone to arrive at provable truths without accident, whether it is a useful or appealing idea is of no relevance to its truth.  Even if every person did not intentionally try to avoid rejecting all assumptions to make their worldviews simpler, it would still be true that no one can know something and assume it at the same time--and that all assumptions are avoidable.

There is no such thing as a bias that someone is truly helpless against.  Anyone who merely thinks rationally could identify or at least avoid all biases in favor of various ideas.  Whether the bias is an assumption that theism or atheism is true, that a man or woman must have certain personality traits, that other people exist, and so on, it is always rooted in the failure of a person to rationalistically approach ideas.  There is no individually or socially inspired assumption that anyone must believe, and anyone who believes otherwise is either just trying to excuse their own asinine assumptions or use supposed knowledge to reject the fact that some knowledge is possible.  Such a stance has a contradiction at its heart.

If everyone was an inevitable, helpless slave to biases and even to less intentional assumptions, no one at all would even be able to recognize this.  If everyone was biased about everything, no one would know anything because biases would get in the way of rationalistic knowledge, even knowledge of how everyone is biased.  This becomes just another self-refuting epistemological and metaphysical position that cannot be true by default.  Starting with the self-verifying nature of reason and one's own existence and then not making any assumptions at all is not only possible, but it is the only way to avoid biases.  Anyone who would dispute this in their own mind or while conversing with others will be using reason, albeit from a false starting point, to argue against true knowledge gained by reason.

It is not impossibility but discomfort, stupidity, and laziness that keeps people from fully embracing rationalism.  A lack of willpower or intelligence is what stops someone from recognizing any foundational or less central biases that they might have, and there is nothing beyond a lack of willingness to align with reason that stops them from realizing this without any special life circumstances or social conversations to spark it.  Biases are not inescapable and the same biases are not universal among non-rationalists anyway.  The only way to escape the most trivial, small bias and the most devastating, obvious bias alike is to refrain from believing in anything that cannot be logically proven--even beliefs that are a source of great comfort and inspiration.  Sheer unwillingness and stupidity is what keeps assumptions of all kinds from being totally rejected.