Stereotypes are memes, forming similarly to superstitions, in that a) whatever real-life context originally spawned them was likely exaggerated, and b) they get shared without proper understanding of said historical context.
Not to mention that stereotypes present the danger of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies, in that they’ll make people more likely to try to conform to them just to avoid social backlash.
Stereotypes are memes, forming similarly to superstitions, in that a) whatever real-life context originally spawned them was likely exaggerated, and b) they get shared without proper understanding of said historical context.
What evidence do you have for any of these claims? In particular, how do you know that stereotypes are on average exaggerated relative to the true conditional probabilities, or that they are slow to update in changing circumstances?
In any case, “stereotype” is just a judgmental term for statistical discrimination, which means decision-making in situations with incomplete information based on statistically derived conditional probabilities, and that is something everyone does all the time, usually because there is no practical alternative. I find it an absolutely fascinating question what exactly motivates and determines the present respectable opinion about the boundary between common-sense reasoning about conditional probabilities and evil stereotyping.
What evidence do you have for any of these claims? In particular, how do you know that stereotypes are on average exaggerated relative to the true conditional probabilities, or that they are slow to update in changing circumstances?
...Common sense?
I really didn’t think it would be something I’d need to prove.
Evaluate various stereotypes about ethnical, religious, political or really other social groups you’ve heard. How many of them are objective? How many of them are accurate? How many of such generalizing statements are made about groups so diverse that you really cannot say much about them in general? And finally, how many of these groups have you personally interacted with enough to authoritatively evaluate those opinions?
The article to which I linked lists a few stereotypes that seem clearly true to me, and any reasonable person would readily act on them. (Would you really get equally scared of old ladies and young men when walking in a bad neighborhood?) So how exactly does your common sense alone let you sort out true stereotypes from false ones, and to conclude that most stereotypes (by whatever measure) fall into the latter category?
Moreover, if you believe that acting on some kinds of stereotypes is unethical, that’s a defensible position which I’m not going to dispute in this discussion. However, this position leads to the awful problem of what to do when some stereotypes are at the same time unethical and accurate—and a common attempt to get out of this problem is to argue that all these unethical stereotypes must be inaccurate, which you seem to be doing. But this is clearly wishful thinking; reality is never aligned so conveniently with abstract moral theories.
Stereotypes are memes, forming similarly to superstitions, in that a) whatever real-life context originally spawned them was likely exaggerated, and b) they get shared without proper understanding of said historical context.
Its hard to think of a case where a) even though clearly exaggerated had no basis in reality. This naturally dosen’t automatically mean it is useful, let alone appropriate.
Before this derails, let me just say that I was claiming that in context changes in the dynamics of the sexual marketplace (changes in the attractivness of subgroups of males and females, availability of the opposite sex, ect.) would probably result in a perceptible change of stereotypes related to sexuality.
Not to mention that stereotypes present the danger of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies, in that they’ll make people more likely to try to conform to them just to avoid social backlash.
This has nothing to do with thinking about whether determining whether a particular sterotype is currently true or not or even whether employing it or not as a heuristic is rational.
Not really, since in the time span in question I can’t think of a time where access to other people of the same sex was made purposefully difficult because of their sex. Segregation by sex has however been a norm in many different times and places (its with us even today whenever you go to perform your bodily functions in a public restroom).
Stereotypes are memes, forming similarly to superstitions, in that a) whatever real-life context originally spawned them was likely exaggerated, and b) they get shared without proper understanding of said historical context.
Not to mention that stereotypes present the danger of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies, in that they’ll make people more likely to try to conform to them just to avoid social backlash.
What evidence do you have for any of these claims? In particular, how do you know that stereotypes are on average exaggerated relative to the true conditional probabilities, or that they are slow to update in changing circumstances?
In any case, “stereotype” is just a judgmental term for statistical discrimination, which means decision-making in situations with incomplete information based on statistically derived conditional probabilities, and that is something everyone does all the time, usually because there is no practical alternative. I find it an absolutely fascinating question what exactly motivates and determines the present respectable opinion about the boundary between common-sense reasoning about conditional probabilities and evil stereotyping.
...Common sense?
I really didn’t think it would be something I’d need to prove.
Evaluate various stereotypes about ethnical, religious, political or really other social groups you’ve heard. How many of them are objective? How many of them are accurate? How many of such generalizing statements are made about groups so diverse that you really cannot say much about them in general? And finally, how many of these groups have you personally interacted with enough to authoritatively evaluate those opinions?
The article to which I linked lists a few stereotypes that seem clearly true to me, and any reasonable person would readily act on them. (Would you really get equally scared of old ladies and young men when walking in a bad neighborhood?) So how exactly does your common sense alone let you sort out true stereotypes from false ones, and to conclude that most stereotypes (by whatever measure) fall into the latter category?
Moreover, if you believe that acting on some kinds of stereotypes is unethical, that’s a defensible position which I’m not going to dispute in this discussion. However, this position leads to the awful problem of what to do when some stereotypes are at the same time unethical and accurate—and a common attempt to get out of this problem is to argue that all these unethical stereotypes must be inaccurate, which you seem to be doing. But this is clearly wishful thinking; reality is never aligned so conveniently with abstract moral theories.
Its hard to think of a case where a) even though clearly exaggerated had no basis in reality. This naturally dosen’t automatically mean it is useful, let alone appropriate.
Before this derails, let me just say that I was claiming that in context changes in the dynamics of the sexual marketplace (changes in the attractivness of subgroups of males and females, availability of the opposite sex, ect.) would probably result in a perceptible change of stereotypes related to sexuality.
This has nothing to do with thinking about whether determining whether a particular sterotype is currently true or not or even whether employing it or not as a heuristic is rational.
Assuming heteronormativity here, are we? :)
:)
Not really, since in the time span in question I can’t think of a time where access to other people of the same sex was made purposefully difficult because of their sex. Segregation by sex has however been a norm in many different times and places (its with us even today whenever you go to perform your bodily functions in a public restroom).