Stereotypes

The point of valid stereotypes, group statistics and averages is this: while it is true that they cannot be used independently to accurately evaluate or prejudge individuals, it is also true that they cannot simply be dismissed to assume that they don’t apply to any individual. While the latter may prove good dinner-table talk in the twenty-first century, it is ultimately naive, unrealistic, impractical, and almost always in service to some ulterior motive — typically in the interest of status or power: waxing poetic to feign enlightenment, appealing to others’ emotional sensibilities, ingratiating oneself with others, gaining social credit amongst one’s peers, or otherwise strategically aligning oneself with some political force in society. 

When people operate from the assumption that averages, stereotypes or group statistics should not extend to the individual (or any member of said group), they often commit the mistake of assuming that (in every case) they do not apply. In some cases, they even commit the grave sin of insisting that there is something immoral in merely considering the data, let alone allowing it to inform one’s decisions (however trivial or significant); this is particularly dangerous when considering the potential consequences of completely ignoring or rejecting the data.

Simply put, the safest and most reasonable operating assumption is that the stereotype or group statistic may apply to said individual; and this is a reasonable operating assumption particularly where there is a lack of pertinent disqualifying information or limited opportunity to obtain it. Naturally, of course, time, resources and information are always limited, and so, in any given case (or even most cases) it may prove impractical or functionally impossible to obtain the necessary disqualifying information, and so the safest and most reasonable operating assumption will naturally follow from the most salient and observable characteristics. What’s more, when considering the varying degrees of risk tolerance (i.e. traveling with a group, walking the streets alone, or strolling through the park with young children), then there are times when these operating assumptions are even more critical, even more necessary for the protection of those who cannot defend themselves and who have even less information and less wisdom at their disposal. While the person traveling in a large group may enjoy enough security to be able to get away with poor judgment or a lack of situational awareness, the risks are more obvious and direct when traveling alone or with young children. Just as we must often discriminate between good and bad, friend and foe, tolerable risks and unnecessary ones, so too must people accept the truths and wisdom in valid stereotypes, averages, and group statistics. This is particularly true where time is of the essence, quick decisions must be made, additional detail is not readily available, or much is at stake. 

The truth of the matter is that people do this all the time, to varying degrees, with people they know, people they meet, and people they pass on the street. The primary difference is in the illusions that they maintain in their own minds about the depth and complexity of their relationships and how well they believe they know the people in their lives. In some cases, such as failed romances, the real relationship is confused with some fantasy concocted in the imagination of one or both of the parties. The simple truth is that people seldom get to truly know people in their lives — their histories, their passions, their sorrows, their fears, their dreams, their weaknesses, their greatest secrets, their private thoughts. Without exception, people define and classify relationships on the basis of limited information and limited perspective, and in most cases this means hardly any information at all. This is a necessary compromise for one particular reason: people are mortal and time is precious. We can’t date everyone on the planet before we decide whom to marry. We can’t spend time with every person in the world before choosing our friends. We can’t try every line at the grocery store before picking one. We can’t walk down a dark alley then rewind the clock after getting mugged. Time is precious and consequences are real. Just as we have to make do with the bodies we each inhabit, so too do we have to make do with the time, resources, and information at our disposal. As for the people whom this logic and dose of reality offends, the irony is rich: in their expressed disapproval we have enough information to know that they are themselves committing the very same act that they are condemning (i.e. operating from assumptions and limited information) and, most importantly, they are high-risk people worth avoiding. 

In the context of group statistics, the truth is that no confidence level short of 100% can ever positively determine the guilt or innocence of any individual member of said group — a confidence level of 100% denotes a situation in which an attribute or outcome applies to 100% of the group’s members 100% of the time. After all, any confidence level short of 100% leaves the door open to the possibility that any given individual is one of the exceptions — extrapolating this notion means that, even where a statistic points to an extremely high confidence level, the doubt is deemed sufficient to assume that any and every given individual is a potential exception. This is a dangerous proposition, to be sure. Such a notion completely neuters data and makes it virtually unactionable, a novel academic exercise that is ultimately useless in practice. The truth is that human beings have no moral obligation to thoroughly assess each and every individual, nor do human beings even possess the capacity to do so. The truth is that every human relationship is ultimately condensed into some usable concept or classification which, regardless of its depth, shares some of the characteristics of what some might call a “stereotype”. Ultimately, they are just simplifications that make it possible for human beings to live, operate, survive, and adapt in a complex, dynamic and dangerous world, where the most common of human interactions, the simplest kinds we have in passing, are met with the simplest of simplifications: these simplifications, often binary (i.e. good or bad, helpful or unhelpful, safe or unsafe), are generally in the interest of safety or efficiency, with consideration for the fragility of life and the finite resources (including time, energy, and bandwidth) at our disposal. 

These facts and distinctions are not only true and interesting but necessary to appreciate for the security and survival of civilization and the human species, for an appreciation of the distinctions can quite literally mean the difference between life and death.