3 ms·

You have a kid, you look for a nanny to look after him. You put it on news-paper, there's a 45 year old dude who comes offering his services to look after your

You have a kid, you look for a nanny to look after him. You put it on news-paper, there's a 45 year old dude who comes offering his services to look after your kid. Now tell me that you're so awesome that you'll not think what you are thinking right now. Exactly. People use stereotypes to save time. Many stereotypes are wrong, because you'll get them from CNN or Fox. People don't get on the news for being normal. When you're in a hurry, you don't want to change. You don't have that luxury because you want the result now. You're not in "experimenting, expanding comfort zone, increasing awareness" mode. You're in "Getting it done" mode with as few new parameters. Usual is better than confusing. Besides, some stereotypes are true so one can understand people behaviour. Black people go to jail more, geeks don't do well with girls, etc. And I know that some people will be butt-hurt and cry foul and it's 2014 and how it's a stone age thinking, but the stats are there. http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet (I don't have stats on the sex life of geeks, though). Someone might be offended at first, but there's a reason for these stereotypes to have had such a long, established life: If they don't represent the truth, they at least reflect it in some distorted way. The person coming to a booth has probably had a long life where, comparatively, he's met really fewer females in tech and come on, it's not like us humans are so pure that we'll go: Hmm, this is the first time I meet a female in tech. I'll speak to her in spite of being in a hurry, in spite of my question being complex, in spite of being used to talk with dudes all my life and this one comes out now. When you're in a hurry, you don't want to change, you don't want surprises: Usual is better than confusing. A lot of time, people won't deal with you simply because they don't like you. A lot of times, people won't deal with you simply because they don't know you. People who'll talk to you and give you the benefit of the doubt are giving you the benefit of the doubt. Meaning it's a privilege they're granting you, so having an entiteled attitude about it goes against the meaning of the words.

InclinedPlane 13y ago
> Black people go to jail more, geeks don't do well with girls, etc. Neither is accurate. Both are exaggerations. Comparing crime between blacks and non-blacks may seem like it's useful data, the rates are pretty significantly different. But it's not, because the majority of people, white, black, whatever, aren't criminals. So if you use that "data" to treat people differently you'll be making an error far more often than being right. That's the danger of stereotypes, because they are so seductive from a confirmation bias perspective. There are no stereotypes that aren't backed by some kernel of "truth". But stereotypes lead to more bad behavior, more ill-treatment of others than they avoid.
- Jugurtha 13y ago
  I'm not using this data to treat people differently: If I'm alone at 3AM and you come out of nowhere, I wouldn't care if you were blue, green, black or white. I wouldn't trust anyone equally. My point was, that one can understand how people think and stereotype given the data, as long as the data isn't corrupted. But coming back to the data: Sure, the majority of people aren't criminals, but the few who are, belong to a certain category. I'm not talking absolute, I'm talking relative. I'm not talking "divine truth", I'm talking correlation. And you can be a sunflower all you want, you can't deny it. You can deny it if you want, but that doesn't make it any less true, and that doesn't solve the problems in urban areas, poverty, lack of education, etc. So: One can either say it's not true and be liked by people as an open mind and non racist (that doesn't fix the root problems), or one acknowledges the problem and think about solutions (at the risk of being called names). I do feature extraction and classification of data, can't go against such stats. That's why I asked the commenter to put herself in their shoes: She's got a kid, between a 45 year old dude and a more usual nanny, she'll choose the nanny every single time (from the 60%). To be closer to her experience: She'll do an ad, a couple comes, she'll acknowledge the guy and ask the woman how much experience she's had with kids .. While it's the guy who came for the job.
  - onetwofiveten 13y ago
    What are you saying here? People who suffer from discrimination should just learn to understand why they get stereotyped and be more tolerant about it? That's extremely self serving and entitled. If you're in a position of privilege, it's up to you to make the effort to treat everyone as fairly as you can. It's up to you to help break down the unfair boundaries that benefit you. It's your responsibility to do that. Otherwise you're tacitly helping to perpetuate those boundaries, and are therefore complicit in their existence.
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      They're saying that you shouldn't pretend problems don't exist if you want them fixed. Problems like poverty, crime rate, sentencing rate. They are real, they have real effects, they shouldn't be discounted. Arguing that most people aren't in jail is just a way of ignoring the problem.
GFischer 13y ago
Reminds me of the "paradigms" video by consultant Joel Barker (based on Kuhn's work) The TL;DR version is that everyone creates some "filters" as shortcuts for efficiently analyzing situations (paradigms). transcript of the video here: http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/3298/course/section/1177/TranscriptClassicPreview_NBOP.pdf http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/3298/course/section/11... Kuhn's work expanded: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#3 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#3
Dylan16807 13y ago
>You have a kid, you look for a nanny to look after him. You put it on news-paper, there's a 45 year old dude who comes offering his services to look after your kid. >Now tell me that you're so awesome that you'll not think what you are thinking right now. Before that second line my mental image was close to Mr. Rogers, after that line it's a huge guy in a prison jumpsuit covered in tattoos. I don't think either one is what you were going for. Maybe a pedophile? I don't have a stereotype for those.

InclinedPlane 13y ago

> Black people go to jail more, geeks don't do well with girls, etc. Neither is accurate. Both are exaggerations. Comparing crime between blacks and non-blacks may seem like it's useful data, the rates are pretty significantly different. But it's not, because the majority of people, white, black, whatever, aren't criminals. So if you use that "data" to treat people differently you'll be making an error far more often than being right. That's the danger of stereotypes, because they are so seductive from a confirmation bias perspective. There are no stereotypes that aren't backed by some kernel of "truth". But stereotypes lead to more bad behavior, more ill-treatment of others than they avoid.

Jugurtha 13y ago
I'm not using this data to treat people differently: If I'm alone at 3AM and you come out of nowhere, I wouldn't care if you were blue, green, black or white. I wouldn't trust anyone equally. My point was, that one can understand how people think and stereotype given the data, as long as the data isn't corrupted. But coming back to the data: Sure, the majority of people aren't criminals, but the few who are, belong to a certain category. I'm not talking absolute, I'm talking relative. I'm not talking "divine truth", I'm talking correlation. And you can be a sunflower all you want, you can't deny it. You can deny it if you want, but that doesn't make it any less true, and that doesn't solve the problems in urban areas, poverty, lack of education, etc. So: One can either say it's not true and be liked by people as an open mind and non racist (that doesn't fix the root problems), or one acknowledges the problem and think about solutions (at the risk of being called names). I do feature extraction and classification of data, can't go against such stats. That's why I asked the commenter to put herself in their shoes: She's got a kid, between a 45 year old dude and a more usual nanny, she'll choose the nanny every single time (from the 60%). To be closer to her experience: She'll do an ad, a couple comes, she'll acknowledge the guy and ask the woman how much experience she's had with kids .. While it's the guy who came for the job.
- onetwofiveten 13y ago
  What are you saying here? People who suffer from discrimination should just learn to understand why they get stereotyped and be more tolerant about it? That's extremely self serving and entitled. If you're in a position of privilege, it's up to you to make the effort to treat everyone as fairly as you can. It's up to you to help break down the unfair boundaries that benefit you. It's your responsibility to do that. Otherwise you're tacitly helping to perpetuate those boundaries, and are therefore complicit in their existence.
  - Dylan16807 13y ago
    They're saying that you shouldn't pretend problems don't exist if you want them fixed. Problems like poverty, crime rate, sentencing rate. They are real, they have real effects, they shouldn't be discounted. Arguing that most people aren't in jail is just a way of ignoring the problem.

GFischer 13y ago

Reminds me of the "paradigms" video by consultant Joel Barker (based on Kuhn's work) The TL;DR version is that everyone creates some "filters" as shortcuts for efficiently analyzing situations (paradigms). transcript of the video here: http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/3298/course/section/1177/TranscriptClassicPreview_NBOP.pdf http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/pluginfile.php/3298/course/section/11... Kuhn's work expanded: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#3 http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/#3

Dylan16807 13y ago

>You have a kid, you look for a nanny to look after him. You put it on news-paper, there's a 45 year old dude who comes offering his services to look after your kid. >Now tell me that you're so awesome that you'll not think what you are thinking right now. Before that second line my mental image was close to Mr. Rogers, after that line it's a huge guy in a prison jumpsuit covered in tattoos. I don't think either one is what you were going for. Maybe a pedophile? I don't have a stereotype for those.