The No-Filter Delusion

Why Objectivity Clouds Your Mind

If I believe I can get closer to the truth by reporting just the facts, if I believe my snapshots on Instagram are more real when I don’t apply filters, I’m lying to myself — and most of my readers and viewers know it.

Because in reporting just the facts, I choose which facts to report and which to ignore, and that choice expresses my bias, my account of things. Because in not applying a filter I’m ignoring the fact that the way the camera is designed determines the way it captures and encodes light and color, which means the camera’s design is itself a filter.

The better approach is to recognize my choices and surface them when I’m producing text or images, and to recognize the choices built in to the text or images I consume. This doesn’t mean annotating my writing or my photographs with disclaimers or commentary about my biases and filters. And it doesn’t mean it’s best to read only opinion pieces and look only at images stylized through filters. It means embracing style and subjectivity without reservation, weaving it consciously into what I produce, and detecting and thinking critically about it in what I consume.

Claiming or seeking out objectivity amounts to wearing blinders, living in a fog, distancing myself even more from reality than if I’m mindful of my starting point and of the power I’m trying to wield over readers and viewers — it’s deceiving myself and attempting to deceive the world.

What bias of mine makes me want to teach this to my kids?

The purpose of this half-baked mini-essay is to experiment with Medium.