The irrationality of our own brains

One of the philosophical questions I find most attractive in my field, Philosophy of Mind is: why is it that we cannot avoid cognitive bias, even when they override our most sincerely held beliefs? A cognitive bias is a way in which our own thinking process is influenced by considerations that remain unknown to our own conscience. My favourite example of cognitive bias is the one shown in the paper by Nisbett and Wilson. In their experiment, they mounted a stall in a supermarket. An assistant would show to some random buyers two pairs of socks, and the buyers had to judge which pair was better. The great majority of buyers chose the right-hand pair...although both pairs were identical.

Because of these sort of tests, which have been replicated in different ways, most of the current cognitive studies agree in the fact that our beliefs are formed mostly unconsciously, using many different factors, and these factors are not always logical or reasonable. In other words, beliefs are not formed using only logic or reason, and this process is mostly automatic.

However, I think that the concept of cognitive bias is sometimes being used to overjustify important decisions in the real world. For example, some institutions claim that in order to overcome their bias of only hiring white, straight, men, they will give preference to non-white, LGBT, women. In my opinion, this is an overuse of the cognitive bias concept. It is true that biases play an important role in decision making, but they don't go as far as to completely discard someone because of those reasons. The fact that someone is choosing a white straight male is mostly social. One instantiation is that people choose gay designers over straight designers in the fashion industry.   

Don't get me wrong, I think that all people deserve the same opportunities, and they usually don't get them because of social, historical, logical and illogical reasons. My point here is that cognitive bias is not really to blame here.