
Stereotypes Are Poisoning American Politics - apsec112
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-16/stereotypes-are-poisoning-american-politics
======
anigbrowl
Fallacies of composition are a norm on online forums, while all problems are
treated as scale invariant - in online discussions, if someone find a negative
counter-example, it will typically be employed to invalidate the whole thesis
regardless of its actual significance.

I partly blame the popularity of the Action News format for dumbing people
down, but the epistemological roots of this social trend run much deeper.
Alas, demonstrating this to people seems to require a week of prior reading.

------
devoply
> blaming an entire ill-defined group for the failings of its individuals

The failings of individuals bring down whole groups, and vice versa. I mean in
the end if you belong to a disadvantaged group, due to network effects, it
makes everything harder to do. Want to make money? You can't because your
group does not have money. These problems compound. Want to raise capital for
your startup? Love money? Everyone is broke. There is none. Success of the
individual depends on the community and vice versa. The relationship is
complicated and interwoven. In any group there are a small number of people
that affect any group positively or negatively in disproportionate ways.
Companies worry about these problems, of the weakest links in the
organization.

Don't get me wrong, as a maxim you should judge people individually, but
reality does not work that way. It's much more complicated than that. Even if
individuals judge individuals fairly, it does not mean that individuals will
get treated fairly no matter what they do.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Want to make money? You can 't because your group does not have money._

So join a different group. Or just trade something of value to an individual
from a different group in return for money.

This idea that people are tied to their group, and that group interests exist,
is simply nonsense. I have no interest in increasing the wealth, population or
influence of my own group, I only have interest in increasing _my wealth,_ the
number of _my descendents_ and _my influence_. And if the best way to do that
is to abandon my group and work with another group (or none at all), so be it.

~~~
actuallyalys
I think devoply overstated their case in saying you _can 't_ make money if
your group doesn't have it, but it does make it harder, and occasionally
impossible. In the worst case, you face an effective catch-22 because your
group doesn't provide the resources you need but joining groups that have them
takes those same resources.

Also, in practice, people tend to identify with the groups they belong to, so
rationally or not, they are more reluctant to leave groups than you are.

~~~
yummyfajitas
What group with resources do you think it actually takes equivalent resources
to join?

In any case I'm disagreeing with devoply's use of "can't". If he wrote this I
wouldn't have disagreed: _" Want to make money? You choose not to because your
group does not have money and you prefer not to join or associate with a group
that does."_

I agree that many people have feelings tying them to a particular group and
are unwilling to leave their group. That's a matter of willingness, not
ability.

~~~
actuallyalys
I agree that there are many situations where joining a group gives you access
to more resources than it costs. My point is that, in some cases, you might
not have the resources to pay the costs, even if you could recoup them later.

For example, it might cost only a small amount of gas money to attend a group
that provides mentorship. If you don't have that money, you can't attend, even
if that mentorship would lead to a job that gives you a huge return on your
time and gas money.

------
doctorpangloss
It's ironic that a piece essentially advocating pedantry would then go on to
make subjective judgements about outliers versus national averages.

 _Poverty is higher among Appalachians than the national average, but not by
much -- Kentucky has a poverty rate of 18.5% and West Virginia 17.9%, compared
to a national average of 14.7%. The typical Appalachian isn 't poor..._

I don't know dude, define "typical." Kentucky and West Virginia have the 5th
and 7th highest poverty rates.

~~~
throwaway729
I think the more important point is that Appalachian is kinda short hand for
rural people from that region, who are poor in considerably higher numbers.
Pittsburgh and Birmingham are Appalachian, but politicians aren't referring to
the Pittsburgh Google office when talking about Appalachia...

(I agree w you, but If we're being pedantic, it's possible to be "the worst"
and still not that much different from average...)

------
nerdponx
The headline implies that somehow stereotypes weren't important in American
politics until recently.

------
mighty_atomic_c
Yep. There is a difference between a stereotype and a generalization.
Stereotypes are often bound to a kernel of truth, but the problem is that the
scale is exaggerated so greatly, taken seriously, and held for so long that it
begins to distort the worldview of the person who holds a stereotype. What's
the old saying: "In the province of the mind ideas are either true or become
true".

The article has a valid point, and yes, it is sensible to talk about
stereotypes in the wake of an election and how it can unhelpfully distort the
way you think about people.

However, it is always relevant, it isn't destroying US politics (whatever that
means); stereotypes are cartoonist approximations and are sort of an easy trap
to fall into, and their scope is as broad as civilization.

------
MichaelBurge
> One insight was that "the countries now at the bottom are distinctive not
> just in being the poorest but also in having failed to grow." That's true,
> but it yields no more information than the initial misleading aggregation:
> It's like saying, "Those at the bottom are distinctive not just in being at
> the bottom but also in being at the bottom."

"Poorest" relates to wealth, while "failing to grow" relates to wealth's
derivative, and there's no logical relation between a quantity and its
derivative.

~~~
anigbrowl
Put things in _italics_ to quote them on HN. Almost nobody uses a > delimiter
here and you're being downvoted because people are mistaking the pull quote
for your own argument.

~~~
douche
Why would you ever italicize something to quote it? Italics are for emphasis.
Either use real quote marks or the > block quoting convention, which, as
pmarreck notes, lots of people do use here.

My two cents, which is a vast over-estimate of their value, in a discussion of
internet pedantry.

~~~
anigbrowl
When you only have one typographic differentiator as we do on HN, you use it
for contrast. This is the most effective presentation for blocks of text on
HN. Quote marks are frequently overlooked, or I would still be using them.

~~~
pmarreck
Frequently overlooked?

How can you miss those? Perhaps I read slowly...

