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The Water Cooler
General Discussion
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
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<blockquote data-quote="henschman" data-source="post: 2813774" data-attributes="member: 4235"><p>Man's ability to recognize patterns, prejudge situations based on previous experience, and discriminate between things that are good for him and bad for him are mechanisms that are vital to his survival. All of these things boil down to an ability to quickly mentally "run the odds" on what kind of outcome a situation will result in based on all of one's prior experiences and those related to him by others, and to act accordingly. My view is that stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are very good things, and their development should be taught more strenuously to youngsters.</p><p></p><p>There are problems that can arise when exercising this ability however. One would be the idea of "garbage in, garbage out." Man's ability to recognize patterns is very accurate when based on accurate and factual data, but if he is fed garbage beliefs about how the world works, he will make garbage decisions that are detrimental to his own well-being. Statistics can really help here. </p><p></p><p>Another issue is that a person can be taught, or even required, to suppress these vital survival skills, and to ignore the warning sirens that are being triggered in his mind. Obviously, with our survival in mind, this should be avoided.</p><p></p><p>Then there are all the different biases we tend towards that can distort our internal odds calculations in various ways, like hindsight bias, outcome bias, etc. If a person is aware of these tendencies, he can make himself more accurate in his pre-judging. </p><p></p><p>Obviously when a person has detailed knowledge of a particular situation, it should be evaluated independently instead of judged based on it's membership in some particular category... but the fact that we don't have time to acquire detailed knowledge of every individual or situation is why stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are such important abilities.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="henschman, post: 2813774, member: 4235"] Man's ability to recognize patterns, prejudge situations based on previous experience, and discriminate between things that are good for him and bad for him are mechanisms that are vital to his survival. All of these things boil down to an ability to quickly mentally "run the odds" on what kind of outcome a situation will result in based on all of one's prior experiences and those related to him by others, and to act accordingly. My view is that stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are very good things, and their development should be taught more strenuously to youngsters. There are problems that can arise when exercising this ability however. One would be the idea of "garbage in, garbage out." Man's ability to recognize patterns is very accurate when based on accurate and factual data, but if he is fed garbage beliefs about how the world works, he will make garbage decisions that are detrimental to his own well-being. Statistics can really help here. Another issue is that a person can be taught, or even required, to suppress these vital survival skills, and to ignore the warning sirens that are being triggered in his mind. Obviously, with our survival in mind, this should be avoided. Then there are all the different biases we tend towards that can distort our internal odds calculations in various ways, like hindsight bias, outcome bias, etc. If a person is aware of these tendencies, he can make himself more accurate in his pre-judging. Obviously when a person has detailed knowledge of a particular situation, it should be evaluated independently instead of judged based on it's membership in some particular category... but the fact that we don't have time to acquire detailed knowledge of every individual or situation is why stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination are such important abilities. [/QUOTE]
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