Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Glimmer of understanding
Good point by Paul Carr in TechCrunch.com this morning.
Carr goes on to cite a couple examples of how it doesn't work. The examples don't strike me as especially compelling, but the main point is still important.
It's good old Diversity, public enemy #1. Supposedly all hatred is caused by ignorance, by lack of education, by lack of contact with The Other.
Nope. There are isolated cases where purely false stereotypes, or government-induced stereotypes, can disappear with familiarity; but most hatreds are based on observed facts.
"Familiarity breeds love" is dangerous and deceptive because it superficially resembles a tautological truth.
Tautology: Contact with a variety of people gives you a realistic picture of human nature, including both differences and similarities.
False extrapolation: Contact with a variety of people teaches you that all people are identical, that everyone wants the same things in life.
I figured out this fallacy rather early. In 1969 I was about to head for Mansfield as a result of my really stupid decision to evade the draft. The local Communist mentoress, an Earth Mother type with long and solid Party connections, advised me: "I think you're awfully judgmental. This experience will be good for you. By encountering all those men of different colors and classes, you will acquire more sympathy for their plight."
Being a fucking stupid hippie, I responded with appropriate humility and guilt. But after six months in Mansfield, I knew with harsh certainty that Earth Mother had been lethally wrong. My before-jail 'judgments' were wildly insufficient and hopelessly naive. I hadn't realized that incurable evil was real, hadn't understood the innate difference in violence and dominance between blacks and whites, hadn't understood the innate differences between criminals and non-criminals. Now I do. ¶ 1:15 AM
And yet increasingly I wonder whether, for the sake of humanity, it might not be a bad thing if the earthquake comes and tips all of web 2.0 into the sea. ...
The Internet — particularly “web 2.0″, with its communities and tagging and reuniting and friending and liking — was supposed to civilize us all. The idea was that by connecting the whole world through a variety of social networks and crowd-sourced standards of behavior (from reputation scores on eBay to Yelp reviews for dog walkers) – people would be driven to greater empathy for, and responsibility towards their fellow man. When Randi Zuckerberg sat on stage at DLD ’08 and told us the story of the Palestinian and Israeli children brought together through their joint membership of a Facebook group about soccer, we all shed a tear. Web 2.0 is working — it’s really working!
Carr goes on to cite a couple examples of how it doesn't work. The examples don't strike me as especially compelling, but the main point is still important.
It's good old Diversity, public enemy #1. Supposedly all hatred is caused by ignorance, by lack of education, by lack of contact with The Other.
Nope. There are isolated cases where purely false stereotypes, or government-induced stereotypes, can disappear with familiarity; but most hatreds are based on observed facts.
"Familiarity breeds love" is dangerous and deceptive because it superficially resembles a tautological truth.
Tautology: Contact with a variety of people gives you a realistic picture of human nature, including both differences and similarities.
False extrapolation: Contact with a variety of people teaches you that all people are identical, that everyone wants the same things in life.
I figured out this fallacy rather early. In 1969 I was about to head for Mansfield as a result of my really stupid decision to evade the draft. The local Communist mentoress, an Earth Mother type with long and solid Party connections, advised me: "I think you're awfully judgmental. This experience will be good for you. By encountering all those men of different colors and classes, you will acquire more sympathy for their plight."
Being a fucking stupid hippie, I responded with appropriate humility and guilt. But after six months in Mansfield, I knew with harsh certainty that Earth Mother had been lethally wrong. My before-jail 'judgments' were wildly insufficient and hopelessly naive. I hadn't realized that incurable evil was real, hadn't understood the innate difference in violence and dominance between blacks and whites, hadn't understood the innate differences between criminals and non-criminals. Now I do. ¶ 1:15 AM
