The issue of stereotypes can be broken into two parts - i) How they are formed and ii) How they are used.
Bad stereotypes(not negative stereotypes) are either formed on poor sources of knowledge (think memes or online cherry picked content) or are used to enact broad institutional policies(eg. if women are disallowed from holding the post of a CEO).
Its always good to discuss stereotypes and cross check them with data. And specific stereotypes can always be debated. But rejecting the very concept of stereotypes is impractical, and probably insane. Censorship and shaming, as usual, are not appropriate solutions to counter harmful effects of stereotypes
It seems wrong to characterize believing what a person says about themselves or what they are planning to do as stereotyping. Clearly, it is stereotyping to make predictions about what sort of personality or character a person has based on immutable characteristics, but is it stereotyping to do so based on things people have chosen? This is so broad that I am hard pressed to think of something that doesn’t count as a stereotype. I’m sure there must be some, but still, this Venn diagram has too much intersection.
I don't think this quibble undermines the basic argument presented in the article, but perhaps it makes it seem less persuasive because the author is trying a bit too hard and lost perspective.
This does seem like a key difference. What about stereotypes of political or religious groups? You can choose to join or leave these groups. Maybe they’re somewhere in between immutable traits and declarations of one’s intentions?
Something that comes to mind of the "stereotyping based on choices" sort is "Vegans will always tell you about how they are vegan, and how great it is". Being vegan isn't an immutable feature, but there is strong correlation between making the choice and wanting to tell everyone about it. Another example might be how people who quit smoking are hyper keen to tell smokers to quit (I am not personally aware of that one, but it is what I am told.)
I think you are right that if an individual tells you they are going to do X, thinking they are going to do X is not stereotyping; the reason there is that you are making judgements about the individual based on individual features (specifically telling you X) and not based on some group they are part of, whether due to immutable features or choices. Stereotyping seems to require applying statistical evaluations from the group to the individuals in that group.
Yet another brilliant post. You have quickly turned into one of my favorite writers and one of the few writers I read immediately when the email shows up in my inbox.
I think the best argument against stereotypes would be that individuals may not be given a fair chance due to beliefs about a group they belong to. Let’s say a football coach believes white guys aren’t fast enough to play positions like cornerback which require exceptional speed. He’s correct that most cornerbacks are black, but an individual white cornerback may not get a chance despite being qualified and this seems unfair.
You addressed this in Part C, and I don’t personally agree with this argument. However, I do think it’s the best one opponents could offer.
Excellent article, including the references. And interesting point.
As far as I can reconstruct it, the argument against statistical evidence seems to proceed as follows:
P1: Employing statistical evidence is useful for an agent, as it, like the consideration of evidence more generally, reduces the risk of misjudging a situation.
P2: Employing statistical evidence imposes a cost upon individuals who deviate from the statistical measure (e.g., mean, median, mode / majority frequency), as when a gifted athlete from a generally non-athletic population is disregarded or must bear the expense of demonstrating their exception to the rule.
P3: There exist particular groups towards whose members we bear a moral duty of not imposing additional costs.
C1: Therefore, it is morally impermissible to act upon (certain) statistical evidence when interacting with members of these specified groups.
P4: Most people can't actually comply with a rule like C1 because they are idiots, bad people, ...
C2: Therefore, it is wrong for most people to form doxastic states based on statistical evidence
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P1 > The desirability of such superior accuracy, however, is contingent upon the agent’s moral disposition. In a good actor, higher accuracy is desirable, enabling them to act more effectively, whether toward maximizing utility, fulfilling duties, or cultivating virtue. Conversely, higher accuracy becomes undesirable in a bad actor, such as a terrorist, as it merely enhances the effective execution of a destructive goal, like optimizing a bomb's placement.
P3 > tbd. But even if accurate, C1 does not seem to follow. For if an individual points a firearm at you, you should think that they are likely to intend to shoot (if there is statistical evidence that the vast majority of people who point guns at others intend to shoot them).
Your defense of stereotypes assumes that they emerge innocently from empirical observation. But this ignores the strategic possibility that any game theorist would recognize: if stereotypes are treated as reliable by default, then agents with greater power and control over public narratives have every incentive to manufacture and propagate false, harmful, and self-fulfilling stereotypes.
In other words, the very system of trust in stereotypes amplifies the power of symbolic manipulation and degrades accuracy in the long run. Stereotypes suffer from Reverse Tinkerbell Effect: the more people accept stereotypes as useful and reliable, the less useful and reliable they become. The Nash equilibrium, in this case, calls for quasi-systematic skepticism—not benevolent naiveté. Being skeptical of stereotypes, therefore, is not just prudent; it is rational and moral.
I disagree with the post. You clearly don't mention what the problem is with most critics of stereotypes. It's like someone would have argued in 1860 "I'm against slavery", and another responded "There's nothing wrong with working in agriculture." Yeah true, but that's not the issue.
The big problem are wrong or exaggerated stereotypes that are negative. And there are many of them. What people in the Middle East think about Jews, anti-market/anti-corporation views, the belief that only women can be victims of domestic violence, STEM nerds are autistic creeps, etc. Right now the U.S. is extremely polarized because of false and negative stereotypes of political ideologies (right-wing and left-wing) or parties (Republicans and Democrats). They each falsely accuse each other of the worst possible things, and this division has the potential to destroy the country.
Stereotypes are bad and shoud be fought against. I think everyone agrees with it (you could have called your last book "Progressive stereotypes and why they're wrong"), but anti-wokists somehow pretend to defend stereotypes to own the libs. But no, stereotypes are bad, and we should reduce them.
Honestly at this point I think the U.S. should make it illegal for politicians to have social media accounts, negative campaigning should be illegal too ("My opponent wants to raise taxes because he thinks that will help the budget and will not have negative effects on the private economy, but I disagree and here's why" is okay, but "My oppponent is a communist who hates every productive member of society and wants to tax the shit out of them!!!" not). If not, the negative stereotypes in politics could destroy the country.
Regarding the section on whether stereotypes can be oppressive, I don't think it's sufficient to merely point to evidence that individuating information has much greater effects on our judgement of people than stereotypes. Principally, because the stereotypes stop evidence gathering early (e.g. not calling a man for an interview based on his name), and secondarily due to the well documented halo effect- we are more likely to interpret individual information in a way consistent with our preexisting stereotypes.
Extremely interesting post but it fails to offer quite a crucial story about how we come to reject stereotypes. I think most of us look back on the past and see there were stereotypes which we view as wrong both morally and empirically. Ie the stereotype that enslaved people are not deserving of rights because they have less developed consciousness and sense of self. I think this was a stereotype believed about many enslaved people in the past.
Was this just empirically correct? No! How did we come to reject it then? There was a moralistic and empirical rejection of the stereotype which over time enough people agreed with. We need to have some level of awareness that stereotypes, while they can reflect empirical truths, can just as often be indicative of irrational prejudice - 'just so' stories which justify the way things are and suit the people who benefit.
This post does not leave any room for future versions of us to look back and judge our stereotypes as wrong in a similar way to how we now look back on the past.
I think most progressive people genuinely believe that stereotypes are generally false or exaggerated in the extreme. In my experience, these people genuinely believe that stereotypes are self fulfilling prophecies and in their absence, differences would be much smaller or non-existent. To be fair to these people, there are examples of genuinely erroneous, stereotypes like thinking, illegal immigrants are more likely to be involved in non-immigration related crimes or past generation’s belief that gay people were more likely to be paedophiles. There are certainly quite a few mechanisms in real life which could lead to inaccurate associations like the fact that your access to most of what goes on in society is highly indirect and reliant on anecdotes and media reporting, and your evolutionary instincts are not adapted to a society of our scale. In actual practice, of course, progressive people hugely overestimate how often stereotypes tend to be in accurate. Like you said, it’s ironically, an example of an inaccurate stereotype itself. But that’s the underlying reasoning and indeed people only retreat to other arguments once you demonstrate that they are mistaken in thinking stereotypes tend to be erroneous. It’s a case of people adopting bad policies because they started with bad assumptions. Indeed, if you start from the same assumptions, they do, you’ll come to the same conclusions. Classic case of garbage in garbage out.
The issue of stereotypes can be broken into two parts - i) How they are formed and ii) How they are used.
Bad stereotypes(not negative stereotypes) are either formed on poor sources of knowledge (think memes or online cherry picked content) or are used to enact broad institutional policies(eg. if women are disallowed from holding the post of a CEO).
Its always good to discuss stereotypes and cross check them with data. And specific stereotypes can always be debated. But rejecting the very concept of stereotypes is impractical, and probably insane. Censorship and shaming, as usual, are not appropriate solutions to counter harmful effects of stereotypes
Excellent article, but I have a quibble.
It seems wrong to characterize believing what a person says about themselves or what they are planning to do as stereotyping. Clearly, it is stereotyping to make predictions about what sort of personality or character a person has based on immutable characteristics, but is it stereotyping to do so based on things people have chosen? This is so broad that I am hard pressed to think of something that doesn’t count as a stereotype. I’m sure there must be some, but still, this Venn diagram has too much intersection.
I don't think this quibble undermines the basic argument presented in the article, but perhaps it makes it seem less persuasive because the author is trying a bit too hard and lost perspective.
This does seem like a key difference. What about stereotypes of political or religious groups? You can choose to join or leave these groups. Maybe they’re somewhere in between immutable traits and declarations of one’s intentions?
Something that comes to mind of the "stereotyping based on choices" sort is "Vegans will always tell you about how they are vegan, and how great it is". Being vegan isn't an immutable feature, but there is strong correlation between making the choice and wanting to tell everyone about it. Another example might be how people who quit smoking are hyper keen to tell smokers to quit (I am not personally aware of that one, but it is what I am told.)
I think you are right that if an individual tells you they are going to do X, thinking they are going to do X is not stereotyping; the reason there is that you are making judgements about the individual based on individual features (specifically telling you X) and not based on some group they are part of, whether due to immutable features or choices. Stereotyping seems to require applying statistical evaluations from the group to the individuals in that group.
Yet another brilliant post. You have quickly turned into one of my favorite writers and one of the few writers I read immediately when the email shows up in my inbox.
I think the best argument against stereotypes would be that individuals may not be given a fair chance due to beliefs about a group they belong to. Let’s say a football coach believes white guys aren’t fast enough to play positions like cornerback which require exceptional speed. He’s correct that most cornerbacks are black, but an individual white cornerback may not get a chance despite being qualified and this seems unfair.
You addressed this in Part C, and I don’t personally agree with this argument. However, I do think it’s the best one opponents could offer.
Clearly you have excellent judgement.
Excellent article, including the references. And interesting point.
As far as I can reconstruct it, the argument against statistical evidence seems to proceed as follows:
P1: Employing statistical evidence is useful for an agent, as it, like the consideration of evidence more generally, reduces the risk of misjudging a situation.
P2: Employing statistical evidence imposes a cost upon individuals who deviate from the statistical measure (e.g., mean, median, mode / majority frequency), as when a gifted athlete from a generally non-athletic population is disregarded or must bear the expense of demonstrating their exception to the rule.
P3: There exist particular groups towards whose members we bear a moral duty of not imposing additional costs.
C1: Therefore, it is morally impermissible to act upon (certain) statistical evidence when interacting with members of these specified groups.
P4: Most people can't actually comply with a rule like C1 because they are idiots, bad people, ...
C2: Therefore, it is wrong for most people to form doxastic states based on statistical evidence
-----
P1 > The desirability of such superior accuracy, however, is contingent upon the agent’s moral disposition. In a good actor, higher accuracy is desirable, enabling them to act more effectively, whether toward maximizing utility, fulfilling duties, or cultivating virtue. Conversely, higher accuracy becomes undesirable in a bad actor, such as a terrorist, as it merely enhances the effective execution of a destructive goal, like optimizing a bomb's placement.
P3 > tbd. But even if accurate, C1 does not seem to follow. For if an individual points a firearm at you, you should think that they are likely to intend to shoot (if there is statistical evidence that the vast majority of people who point guns at others intend to shoot them).
Your defense of stereotypes assumes that they emerge innocently from empirical observation. But this ignores the strategic possibility that any game theorist would recognize: if stereotypes are treated as reliable by default, then agents with greater power and control over public narratives have every incentive to manufacture and propagate false, harmful, and self-fulfilling stereotypes.
In other words, the very system of trust in stereotypes amplifies the power of symbolic manipulation and degrades accuracy in the long run. Stereotypes suffer from Reverse Tinkerbell Effect: the more people accept stereotypes as useful and reliable, the less useful and reliable they become. The Nash equilibrium, in this case, calls for quasi-systematic skepticism—not benevolent naiveté. Being skeptical of stereotypes, therefore, is not just prudent; it is rational and moral.
I disagree with the post. You clearly don't mention what the problem is with most critics of stereotypes. It's like someone would have argued in 1860 "I'm against slavery", and another responded "There's nothing wrong with working in agriculture." Yeah true, but that's not the issue.
The big problem are wrong or exaggerated stereotypes that are negative. And there are many of them. What people in the Middle East think about Jews, anti-market/anti-corporation views, the belief that only women can be victims of domestic violence, STEM nerds are autistic creeps, etc. Right now the U.S. is extremely polarized because of false and negative stereotypes of political ideologies (right-wing and left-wing) or parties (Republicans and Democrats). They each falsely accuse each other of the worst possible things, and this division has the potential to destroy the country.
Stereotypes are bad and shoud be fought against. I think everyone agrees with it (you could have called your last book "Progressive stereotypes and why they're wrong"), but anti-wokists somehow pretend to defend stereotypes to own the libs. But no, stereotypes are bad, and we should reduce them.
Honestly at this point I think the U.S. should make it illegal for politicians to have social media accounts, negative campaigning should be illegal too ("My opponent wants to raise taxes because he thinks that will help the budget and will not have negative effects on the private economy, but I disagree and here's why" is okay, but "My oppponent is a communist who hates every productive member of society and wants to tax the shit out of them!!!" not). If not, the negative stereotypes in politics could destroy the country.
Regarding the section on whether stereotypes can be oppressive, I don't think it's sufficient to merely point to evidence that individuating information has much greater effects on our judgement of people than stereotypes. Principally, because the stereotypes stop evidence gathering early (e.g. not calling a man for an interview based on his name), and secondarily due to the well documented halo effect- we are more likely to interpret individual information in a way consistent with our preexisting stereotypes.
Extremely interesting post but it fails to offer quite a crucial story about how we come to reject stereotypes. I think most of us look back on the past and see there were stereotypes which we view as wrong both morally and empirically. Ie the stereotype that enslaved people are not deserving of rights because they have less developed consciousness and sense of self. I think this was a stereotype believed about many enslaved people in the past.
Was this just empirically correct? No! How did we come to reject it then? There was a moralistic and empirical rejection of the stereotype which over time enough people agreed with. We need to have some level of awareness that stereotypes, while they can reflect empirical truths, can just as often be indicative of irrational prejudice - 'just so' stories which justify the way things are and suit the people who benefit.
This post does not leave any room for future versions of us to look back and judge our stereotypes as wrong in a similar way to how we now look back on the past.
I’ve often thought the same thing. Though stereotypes can suck for the individuals who fall outside them and are thus routinely misjudged.
I think most progressive people genuinely believe that stereotypes are generally false or exaggerated in the extreme. In my experience, these people genuinely believe that stereotypes are self fulfilling prophecies and in their absence, differences would be much smaller or non-existent. To be fair to these people, there are examples of genuinely erroneous, stereotypes like thinking, illegal immigrants are more likely to be involved in non-immigration related crimes or past generation’s belief that gay people were more likely to be paedophiles. There are certainly quite a few mechanisms in real life which could lead to inaccurate associations like the fact that your access to most of what goes on in society is highly indirect and reliant on anecdotes and media reporting, and your evolutionary instincts are not adapted to a society of our scale. In actual practice, of course, progressive people hugely overestimate how often stereotypes tend to be in accurate. Like you said, it’s ironically, an example of an inaccurate stereotype itself. But that’s the underlying reasoning and indeed people only retreat to other arguments once you demonstrate that they are mistaken in thinking stereotypes tend to be erroneous. It’s a case of people adopting bad policies because they started with bad assumptions. Indeed, if you start from the same assumptions, they do, you’ll come to the same conclusions. Classic case of garbage in garbage out.
Great insight. Great text.