3 ms·

"We are blind to our blindness." Where do the generalizations stop?

• the8472 11y ago
  As others have mentioned, we generalize all the time. We have to. No single stone is like the other, and yet we we talk about stones and pebbles like they were some uniform set of platonic ideals and some sharp boundary separating one from the other. We lack both knowledge about each individual and the capacity to hold all detailed information of all individuals in our heads to not shove them into categories. Of course once you know someone better you slice them into finer categories ("polite person", "work-a-holic", ...) and thus add facets and tidits to your model of that other person. But that in itself is a continuum from broad categories to unique bits of information about a person. If you're walking down a street at night in a city with a high crime rate and a group of tattooed, muscular youths comes around a corner then you're likely not going to treat them as individuals. You will at least consider crossing the street because you categorize them as potential threat. Even if that particular group of youths is no threat, it's still a matter of probabilities they might be and avoiding them seems a reasonable risk-avoidance strategy because it costs you little. You simply don't have the time or necessary information to treat them as individuals. So as long as your generalizations are statistically sound (instead of outdated stereotypes) they are useful and should only stop once better information becomes available.
  • yodsanklai 11y ago
    > So as long as your generalizations are statistically sound (instead of outdated stereotypes) they are useful and should only stop once better information becomes available. I agree with that. However, in certain cases, it's called discrimination and it's illegal.