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> talk in terms of ridiculous tribes like "tech bros" without realizing they're stereotyping people in a way nearly indistinguishable than the kinds of stereoty
by logicprog 3y ago
> talk in terms of ridiculous tribes like "tech bros" without realizing they're stereotyping people in a way nearly indistinguishable than the kinds of stereotyping that goes on in the minds of bigots
It's actually quite distinguishable.
Stereotyping is when you assign characteristics to a group that are unrelated to the group's actual defining characteristics, and so there's no reason to think the group actually has this characteristics. For instance, saying all black people like hot sauce or something to use a silly example.
Meanwhile, if you are talking about a group that you've defined in terms of characteristics relevant to whatever you are discussing, and are only assigning characteristics that are relevant to how you've defined the group, then that's just a necessary part of reasoning about the social dynamics of whatever subject you're talking about.
Furthermore, it's only bigotry when you are speaking negatively or hatefully about a group with morally irrelevant characteristics and members that can't choose whether or not to be part of that group (so membership in it is also morally inert). None of this is true for 'tech bros' as a group.
Tech bros are a specific tendency/subculture of people who work in tech, with attitudes toward technical progress characterized by a brash and hubristic belief that purely technological solutions can solve everything, and that qualitative considerations of human experience and existence are irrelevant to decision-making and should be ignored as "irrational."
Thus, talking about "tech bros" in this context perfectly meets all my criteria for being valid. The group is defined in terms of characteristics relevant to this discussion, isn't assigned any characteristics that don't follow from that, only garners a negative connotation for reasons based on the actual definition of the group, and it is a group that's just a philosophical category and so of course people can volitionally join or leave based on their actual beliefs.
- gfodor 3y agoNice mental gymnastics and self-rationalization, but I never said calling people tech bro's was bigotry. It absolutely is tribalistic stereotyping though, which is a key part of the same underlying mental phenomenon that leads to bigotry, particularly in the way it is being done here, to be disparaging and generalizing about people.
- logicprog 3y agoI like it how people can just call actually carefully reasoning through definitions and logic "mental gymnastics" or "rationalization" so they don't have to actually engage with the point or demonstrate where a mistake was made. It's a very convenient way to poison the well indeed. > It absolutely is tribalistic stereotyping They're talking about an actually real philosophical and ideological tendency among some people in Tech. It's not a tribalistic stereotype. By that definition talking about any group of people that hears to a general ideology would be tribalistic stereotyping and that's extremely stupid. Being able to talk about the people that have a certain ideological tendency is a necessary part of talking about the social dynamics of issues. > to be disparaging and generalizing about people If you are talking about a general group of people and it's a group that is defined by their adherence to a squishy set of bad ideas, I don't see the issue with that. It seems like you and the other people objecting to the use of the term "tech bro" just feel offended and want to wiggle out of that any way you can. So you try to reduce discussions down to purely only ever being able to talk about specific individuals, essentially ripping out an important conceptual aspect of the discussion by removing the ability to abstract, which is a crucial part of reasoning. Referring to the group of people that adheres to a certain attitude or ideology is not tribalistic nor stereotyping. Assigning arbitrary unrelated attributes to a group is stereotyping.