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Truth in stereotypes

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Re: Truth in stereotypes

#51

Post by TeMPOraL »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #41

I think that this article highlights the left's version of climate change deniers. The climate change deniers on the right perceive that if climate change were true it would require significant government intervention in the economy (carbon tax, cap and trade, subsidies for clean energy, etc). Because that outcome is something they do not want, they try to deny the truth of climate change. On the left, because they p…

I agree with your comment, but I have to pick on one thing in the interest of accuracy.

> guilty of doing the same thing as the church did to Galileo

The Church didn't oppress Galileo because of his work in astronomy. He got that for being an ass to the Pope (and a part of a political problem). Also, Galileo was only somewhat right, but for the wrong reasons (i.e. data supporting his statements wasn't there for many years).

http://lesswrong.com/lw/lq6/the_galileo_affair_who_was_on_th...

Re: Truth in stereotypes

#52

Post by Klockan »

0134340 wrote: post #35
sevenless wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me quote Daniel Kahneman in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" "The social norm against stereotyping, including the opposition to profiling, has been highly beneficial in creating a more civilized and more equal society. It is useful to remember, however, that neglecting valid stereotypes inevitably results in suboptimal judgments. Resistance to stereotyping is a laudable moral position, but the simplistic idea that the r…

>neglecting valid stereotypes That's where the problem arises. Some stereotypes aren't based on truth but of individuals or groups fearing what they don't know. As I mentioned before in the thread, many stereotypes, especially those perceived as supernatural and being shunned or killed because of real medical issues, were outright false and started and perpetuated because man fears what it doesn't know. Epileptics we…

The stereotypes people usually mean are things like "Asians are good at maths", "Africans are good at running", "Girls likes dolls" and "Boys likes trucks".

Re: Truth in stereotypes

#53

Post by panglott »

Stereotypes are a form of information, just so low-grade that it more resembles misinformation.

Most Americans don't have stereotypes about, say, Mongolians, because most Americans have had zero contact with Mongolians. Maybe something about Genghis Khan? But go to, say, Beijing, and people there will probably have all kinds of stereotypes about Mongolians.

Stereotypes may or may not have a basis in reality: they can simply be a unsubstantiated prejudice (group A says goup B is dangerous and criminal; group B is actually very friendly to outsiders). They are frequently rooted in a history of social conflict (slavery, colonialism, &c). They lie within a specific social context/relationship (group A sees group B as lazy, group B sees group A as arrogant and overbearing). They are about social categories that don't have analytical basis outside the social context (national or racial groups).

The bigger problem is that they form an ecological fallacy—the assumption that something that may be true about the group is true about the individual.

Re: Truth in stereotypes

#54

Post by cbr »

Klockan wrote: post #38
whack wrote: post #19

Considering the great amount of statistical research the author has done, it's surprising that he's drawn some dreadful conclusions. He seems to be saying that in the face of incomplete/ambiguous information, people should form judgements on other people on the basis of racial/gender/physical stereotypes. The problem with stereotypes isn't that they have no basis in reality. The problem with stereotypes is that they…

If you had to bet on if a random Asian or a random black person would get the highest SAT score, what would you do? You would of course bet on the Asian because the odds are so much better. This is not discrimination. Discrimination would be if you still bet that the Asian would get a higher score even after I informed you that both of them got exactly the same score last time they took the test. That would mean that…

There's a lot of variability between people taking the SAT twice. So if you initially expect that A will score higher than B, then learn they were selected for having received the same score on one round of the test, your guess for A on another round of testing should still be a bit higher than for B.

Re: Truth in stereotypes

#55

Post by orangecat »

chimprich wrote: post #34
iopq wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may only have moments to get away from a dangerous situation. You don't have time to consider whether running away from a large black man is racist. It may, in fact, save your life some of the time at the cost of being mildly offensive.

Running away from a large man because he is black is strongly offensive if there he is not threatening in any other way. And if he is behaving threateningly, why would you be reassured if he was white? I find this a very odd argument.

"Behaving threateningly" is not a binary condition.

Re: Truth in stereotypes

#56

Post by zo1 »

CM30 wrote: post #2

I suspect much of this unease about stereotypes and researching them comes from the scientific community not wanting their work to be used to justify extremism or far right/far left political parties. After what happened with both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union misrepresenting scientific research to 'support' their policies, I suspect a lot of researchers want to avoid their own work being used for the same purpos…

How much of it is genuine fear of their research being misused, vs fear of the repercussions from a very reactive public that's been conditioned to think stereotypes are bad or evil by default?

Re: Truth in stereotypes

#57

Post by steanne »

Klockan wrote: post #45
steanne wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One where women refuse to date engineers because they're socially incompetent boring dorks? ...one where women and engineers are considered to be two separate categories?

No, (s)he is saying that women are socially incompetent boring dorks and thus refuses to date engineers of both genders.

Oh, you're right. My bad!

Re: Truth in stereotypes

#58

Post by qf303rjr3 »

Does the author define what they mean for a stereotype to be "accurate"?

For example, it is a stereotype that in the US, white people vote Republican. Is this an accurate stereotype?

On one level, it is - in recent elections around 55-60% of white voters voted Republican, so it is certainly true to say that most white people vote Republican.

On another level, given a random white voter from the US, there is only a 55-60% chance that they voted Republican, which is not much better than guessing. So it's not particularly accurate to say that white people vote Republican.

I expect that most stereotypes fall into this class - they are accurate in aggregate, but not particularly informative when dealing with individuals. And surely this is the problem with stereotypes? We take a characteristic which is true in aggregate for a group (white people vote Republican, black people listen to hip hop, old people are less open to new experiences) and assume that those characteristics are true of individual members of that group.

Re: Truth in stereotypes

#59

Post by adrianN »

jomamaxx wrote: post #43
adrianN wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the factors you listed are also just correlated with paying back a loan. You'd be hard pressed to find something truly causal, human brains are pretty complex.

Having a job vs not having a job + savings is pretty close to 'causal' when it comes to determining the ability to pay back a loan :) Far, far more so than skin colour :) which is absolutely not causal. I agree with your point theoretically, but pragmatically ... not so much :)

And a smart ML system would correspondingly put a lot more weight on those variables than on race.

Re: Truth in stereotypes

#60

Post by ysavir »

whack wrote: post #40
sevenless wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're cherry-picking stereotypes that are mostly incorrect (and look outright archaic). Whereas Lee Jussim (for example) has found that most stereotypes are mostly accurate. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/unbearable%20accuracy%20o... Interestingly, stereotypes based on political party membership are consistently inaccurate. As the Kahneman quote I posted elsewhere shows, the reality is that resistance to rea…

> But you're cherry-picking stereotypes that are mostly incorrect (and look outright archaic). Whereas Lee Jussim (for example) has found that most stereotypes are mostly accurate. So your position is that if the stereotypes about Women/Blacks/Jews/Southerners/Gays were mostly accurate, it would be ok to discriminate against those groups on the basis of those stereotypes? In my previous post, I never claimed that ste…

> the fact that you seem to be in favor of stereotypes, because you belong to a group that won't be strongly affected by it, is not relevant either

Either I missed where the poster listed their group, or you're stereotyping people that don't consider stereotyping abhorrent as people who aren't affected by stereotyping.

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