Posted: Jan 16, 2022 11:11 am
hackenslash wrote:Jesus Is Lord wrote:If you're afraid of other people seeing you as prejudiced, there's really no need.
You make it sound like prejudice is inherently bad. Prejudice - coupled with other features of out pattern-recognition capabilities - is an enormous part of our survival strategy. When you run away from the pattern that looks like a tiger hiding in the long grass, that's prejudice, and it kept you alive.
Prejudice isn't as big of a problem as some would suggest, though it comes with a suite of caveats concerning when and how it's applied.
Funnily enough, this is a topic I've been mulling at some length of late, as this core principle of pattern seeking, prejudice and common sense* is one of the topics I have under consideration for a book.
*Einstein once referred to 'common sense' as the collection of prejudices we accumulate by the age of eighteen. He wasn't entirely correct, but nor was he that wide of the mark. If he'd left the age restriction out, he'd have nailed it, because common sense and prejudice are in fact precisely the same thing, namely fallacious appeals to intuition.
I'll clarify what I meant. If you're afraid of other people seeing you as prejudiced, there's really no need, as there is nothing wrong with judging someone "pre" interacting with them. If you think you can't tell anything about someone from their face, then you really are naive. I don't know what your academic background is, but I get the feeling you've had a little too much academia and not a whole load of real world experience in dealing with people. Just a hunch.