EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Except crypto was almost always purely in the realm of theory-applications.
With AI, right now, I can do things like generate custom flashcards for subjects I'm learning (job interview prep). I can get more in-detail answers about random questions without spending hours on Google piecing things together (just yesterday, asking for details about how stomachs process different macronutrient profiles). I can generate custom mini-apps for a wide variety of tasks (recently I made a custom task-selection spinner for my todo list that weights the important tasks more than smaller tasks, while occasionally mandating a break). It can make sure an email I send to a recruiter doesn't have obvious mistakes or commit a faux pas. I can get personal advice of at least middling quality without friction on a wide variety of topics. Obviously, it can code really well, and that touches my field very directly in a lot of ways. There are plenty of other use cases, too. These aren't "lines of code" type accomplishments, they are concrete deliverables of various scopes. Some of which were previously high-friction or even impossible.
Sure, some of these are gratuitous or busywork, but they are all real. Crypto stuff was like, "what if the government keeps track of property listings on the blockchain" which is a) something the government already does mostly just fine and b) obviously never happened and c) would have required very significant network effects. And currently, crypto is extremely useful for pretty much exactly two types of people: those who treat it like digital gold (it does OK at that) and criminals who can move money around that's difficult to track. Nothing else. So sure, in that sense it was real, but AI plainly can do more than two things and will continue to do more than two things even as hype dies out.
And sure, my IRL friend will give me better advice than Claude will, but there are some things that are so low-stakes that it would be disrespectful of their time to ask or discuss. Paradigms like that are all over, because of the speed and cost AI offers. In that sense, it's more like the Industrial Revolution, where speed and cost enable things to happen that previously were functionally impossible at scale. In fact most of the Industrial Revolution was about things that were already feasible to do, but were cost-prohibitive (or took too long). This in turn generated new industries that were previously only theory. Now, I don't think AI will have that level of impact on society, and I'm also not sold on it 'creating new industries' at all, but probably it's somewhere on the level of the impact similar to the invention of Google at least?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Somewhat an aside, but I consider that first link to be a first-degree chart-crime. First of all radar plots are inherently iffy, since we pay close attention to the "area" and the area is highly dependent on how the categories are organized (a "spiky" radar plot has much less total area than if you sort the axes to create a "lopsided" plot, despite showing the same information). This is a little bit defensible if the adjacency of the categories is obvious and inherent, but they frequently are not. For example, "Occupational: Writing Literature and Language" is NOT next to "Text: Creative Writing" for no good reason at all. And furthermore, what is the scale of the chart? It's "Arena rank"... which is NOT equally spaced. The chart implies that the difference between #1 and #2 is the same as (or even slightly bigger than, considering how the radar chart "expands") that between #3 and #4, but this is plainly not the case. They should be using some kind of actual score instead, perhaps a scaled one. Sure, it allows consistency across axes, but if we are comparing a model to its successor, the rating scale definitely shouldn't be implicitly including other models like it does now (in one spot it drops from rank 2 to rank 5, does this mean in that category some other model class does abnormally well, or that did Claude truly degrade?). Even worse, the center of the plot, usually a natural "zero", is not a zero at all - it's rank 6. There are, as you know, dozens and dozens of models in the rankings, so rank 6 being a zero score is totally nonsensical.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
It's not about profitability, it's that they got a giant wave of users but not enough compute to fill that demand. So, it's pretty obvious what must happen next, you do some mix of increased mandatory token efficiency (adaptive reasoning) + stricter limits (across the board, free and paid, but mostly targeting the super-user hogs who theoretically will pay for extra API usage after limits run out).
I will say though this probably bodes poorly for Claude in the near-medium term, because ChatGPT had the same thing more or less happen with their 5.0 launch (forced adaptive model selection for mandatory token efficiency) and it definitely took the wind out of their sails for at least 4-5 months.
At any rate, however, I strongly, strongly disagree about this empowering the skeptics (or being evidence of a shift against AI adoption). The fact that people are whining about problems with their tools is selection bias. It's kind of like the classic armoring spots on the airplane that didn't have holes (because they didn't survive to be examined), in that people wouldn't complain so vociferously if they weren't so needy for the tool in the first place. The complaints to me are evidence of a generalized latent enthusiasm, not pessimism. In the grand scheme of things, it's far, far better for a company to have complaints that users can't get enough of their product, than it is for the product to be simply ignored. In the near term, I expect a decent chunk of users to swing back toward the OpenAI offering, Codex (which is undergoing a PR blitz of sorts right now)
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
protip: the smaller bananas are almost always the most flavorful ones. Maybe the same is true of strawberries, I dunno, but I have found the banana tip to be pretty consistent.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
3d ago
Is there a way to download our complete comment history from themotte? I am considering seeing what sort of results I can get from training a model to mimic my writing style and tone, and it would be helpful to add my comments here to those from reddit.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
8d ago
The bigger AI-to-AGI problem is that the monetizable market right now is pretty heavily coders and some corporate usage. The gains in general knowledge and more abstract problem solving are having a rough year, partly because there aren't good benchmarks for that kind of thing so it's hard for the labs themselves to optimize for it, much less try to prove it if they get a real improvement!
To elaborate slightly, it often takes a certain amount of personal, longitudinal usage with a model to start to explore the quirks and jagged edges they have, and when those edges do appear they are often hard to put into words. That is to say, it's not totally clear what a good benchmark for this would even look like - if I had to guess, it would be assembling a panel of users and following them for ~2 weeks and then getting somewhat subjective feedback converted to a number somehow... but even if you made this work it takes too long and costs too much money to carry out to be feasible. At least in the current environment.
At any rate, it's possible that AGI-like stuff will start to pick up again if the frontier labs start to prioritize it again, but it's hard to say. Personally, I think the big differentiator is that we need some extra technological-mathematical breakthrough (like a more holistic/realistic "memory" function, though potentially some of the so-called 'world model' approaches could bear fruit) to get us over the last little hump. It's anyone's guess when or if that will happen.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
8d ago
In the modern internet, servers are nicely scalable. Get more customers? Spin up a few more virtual AWS boxes, so to speak. However, AI compute is not like this. Claude has only so much, some of which needs to be reserved for new models to keep R&D going (and the AI sector is so rivalrous that you cannot even buy compute from a rival even if the economics would theoretically work out for both parties)... and all of the sudden a few months back they got a giant wave of sign-ups. A perfect storm of "hey Claude's actually pretty good compared to ChatGPT", Claude Code positive PR, OpenAI's ad foray, favorable PR from the Defense Department feud, etc.
So of course limits need to go down, even for paying users. Supply and Demand 101. But most users aren't used to internet-era resources being subject to supply and demand (as I mentioned server compute is usually supremely elastic for the last 15 years or so) so they see Anthropic as acting "nefarious". This is not true. They are definitely not sabotaging models just to sell the next model because they are literally incapable of accepting more customers without hurting existing ones. No company is going to outright say "sorry we don't want your money" so of course they don't, but that's the reality. They've looked at 2-year projections and feel OK about it, so for the moment they will just circle the wagons and deliver 70% of the value most customers expect, just enough not to lose too many and keep people hungry for more in a few months when (I assume) more compute comes online. No conspiracy, and really no intent to harm either I don't think.
You're correct that at least in theory there are ways around this like farming out the inference in a more traditional manner. But 1) I don't think the economics actually work out very well for this and 2) the proprietary sauce of how inference is delivered to end-users at scale is actually very valuable, any outsourcing thus endangers the golden goose there too - on top of the weights issue point you bring up. Also, inference at scale requires certain hardware, and most of the existing flexible-type compute is more CPU-bound (to oversimplify massively). You absolutely can serve inference in a more fragmented (and thus flexible) way on worse hardware but costs spike pretty substantially, from what I understand (various caching optimizations and energy usage and also all sorts of latency issues crop up).
I think reputational damage is overblown for Anthropic; it's really not so bad to have a product so good they can't make enough of it. Compared to OpenAI they are sitting pretty. They can still cannibalize other AI providers too for more headroom, they aren't maxxed out in terms of customer base like OpenAI arguably is. Their relative success at B2B sales and integration only magnifies this.
More to the "evil" point - Dario Amodei is the nerd who left OpenAI because he was the type to whine that a new model hadn't done safety testing yet before being deployed. We even see this crop up in that one Sam Altman article. And he's in charge. Business pressures are strong of course, but Amodei I'm pretty sure is one of the rare diehard true believers in alignment, so while he might be insane in a different way, it won't be an alignment issue, my sense is that it would take another order of magnitude more investor pressure for that to be a notable threat.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9d ago
Totally orthogonal, but FYI it's "in the vein of" - it was originally a mining analogy, since ores show up in "veins", if you're in the same vein it's implied to be a thing of similar type.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9d ago
Realistically it's somewhere in between. You have to understand that the US is literally Hitler to theocratic Iran. Not just morally, but in its "founding legend" and historical sense of self. So America is not just some foreign country, it's emblematic of their very independence. As such, chants of "Death to America" are somewhat patriotically entwined. Of course, now that we have literally been at war, the tone will probably be a bit different for the next decade.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9d ago
Europe definitely agrees, but Trump is such a pain to work with that it's making it hard for them to actually do anything about it, because they know Trump will spin anything they do very loudly. He is simply incapable of graciously accepting quiet assistance, otherwise they would. In other words, Trump turns any action into a potential domestic political disaster, so coupled with the collective action problem Europe always has, of course no one is willing to stick their neck out even if they know that they probably should.
Plus, most of them are still pissed that Trump didn't involve them to begin with (they didn't get any sort of meaningful heads up) and in fact Trump initially bragged about not needing help, and then had the gall to turn around only a week or two later and trash them in public for not helping anyways.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9d ago
> Poster specifically mentions factor analysis
> Blithely replies with yet another topline aggregate statistic
That's a statistical non-sequitur.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9d ago
I don't think it has a strong moral valence either way.
Part of the modern discourse disconnect I didn't really mention is also how we mentally model feelings. I think some progressives believe (and this isn't actually all that unreasonable) that your feelings are so strongly interconnected with each other across scenarios. In that model, it would be bad, because this emotion of "danger" would inevitably bleed over to other innocuous situations (for example, maybe you then innately also feel even a Black coworker in a white collar workplace to be somehow more 'dangerous' than other colleagues, all else equal).
I disagree on two fronts with this progressive logic. First I think context is pretty strong in these situations. Second I think progressives often are very guilty of assuming all emotions are equally valid and real (and thus by implication must be sourced in some internalized attitude). Flatly speaking this is just wrong. Humans do not actually have amazing control over their emotions, and it's not uncommon for emotions to show up that aren't even all that deeply connected to the fabric of our existence and attitudes. They just show up. Rather than judge the emotion, we should judge the reaction to them, and feel free to discard them at times. Obviously we aren't like, ignorant or unaware of emotions - sometimes we do need to process them - but they shouldn't dominate our lives in every single regard, and we can generate emotions too to some extent (not just be dominated by them).
Progressives are correct that emotions can be data worthy of self-reflection (if I see a Black guy and feel uncomfortable, why might that be?), but they've messed up the scale of the matter pretty badly (it's absolutely not something automatically worthy of a moral panic).
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9d ago
Victimhood mentality requires far more than the mere allegation of inequality or oppression or whatever word you want to use (or is in vogue). "True" victimhood (the most problematic kind) is when you've over-corrected into a type of learned helplessness, and when victimhood begins to take shape as a defining and incredibly prominent trait, rather than just something you happen to experience once in a while. Merely claiming that oppression exists is not victimhood. Even claiming that oppression is near-universal is not victimhood. Victimhood is when it infects identity and behavior to an unhealthy degree.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9d ago
I think we also paint things with a pretty broad brush. It's true there's really significant clustering geographically, but the Black community in Texas vs Alabama vs Virginia vs New Jersey seem to have some variations in how the culture presents, at least as far as I can tell. It's also in my actual experience a bit hard to disambiguate racial angles from economic angles - truth be told a lot of white women and white men who are poor also don't really seem to get along all that well. When life is hard, you have more complaints.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
9d ago
I'd say that someone's appearance and attraction is, mostly, uncontrollably subjective (and likely unchanging), so yeah it's a good instinct to be cautious of gatekeeping there. But part of the context of the conversation here is about personality and other stereotypes, so refusing to consider dating someone because you think their personality is probably a certain way is almost certainly discrimination.
Dating is a bit of a side quest though compared to most everyday interactions, since it's also not like people are entitled to a certain level of dating interest, and so I think it's reasonable to think that different aspects and phases of romance might need to be treated separately. Plus we all know opinions about 'checklists' for finding a partner are all over the place. Even with all these caveats, exempting dating entirely (as you seem to suggest?) from conversations about discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping feels fundamentally wrong.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11d ago
Is this the most ToaKraka comment ever?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11d ago
Almost certainly you are seeing this too late, but on the weird chance you do see it on time: many women do in fact believe that there is no such thing as too many wedding day pictures. Bribe your friends, even literally, to take some candid shots that they can share!
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11d ago
Having kids might change that, but I don't think it will.
Famous last words :)
I jest (mostly). Congratulations!
Another race discussion, another of a slight variant on the same, very contrived "dark road at night" scenario. At some point you start to wonder if it's just a lack of originality, or there really aren't any other similar 'gotcha' scenarios out there. I welcome more substantive comments, if you have them. And I know for a fact there was more you could have responded to there.
Obviously a new spot, fine. No one is pretending that tradeoffs don't exist. Even Jesus, the super (mostly) pacifist, didn't advocate for being an idiot:
I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves (Matt 10:16)
Safety tradeoffs are especially significant. Groups of men alone on the street at night is not a normal innocent thing either, that's somewhat race-independent. And it's also a group-level dynamic, at least mostly. The question is really only tangentially related to morality, and is a straw man. As the scripture says, it's possible to be wise, and also maintain an ethical purity that reveals itself in other situations. Also, we often have more than binary choices available to us, and I think people often underestimate the presence of these third-way options that leave everyone happier.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11d ago
I breezed through a rough transcript, but found it pretty interesting. Insofar as an internet dude can pass judgement, I think I'm actually going to declare her very much "not guilty" of the charge of discrimination. That's the opposite of her message. I ended up quoting a bit from it because I think there are some interesting nuggets of discussion inside. (I should also note that this video you linked is not the OP's video about NYC guys)
I'll say first of all, she talks about how Black women used to think about Black-Black relationships as "loyalty" but that's by the wayside - good! There's enough problems trying to find a lifelong marriage partner to have to restrict yourself to an eighth of the population (or less) out of some vague, ill-defined sense of loyalty. I think Black Power and the associated feelings were super important to the Black community for a few decades, but no longer serve their best interests so to speak.
If we want to find love, if we want to find a partner who accepts us and loves us, we can't minimize our dating pool to such a small small percentage of the population. Many black women feel they should marry down before they marry out. I explained in the book why black women should not be pressured to sacrifice their own chances for happiness out of some misplaced loyalty to black men, nor should black women feel beholden to black men under the guise of advancing the race. If the price of racial solidarity is a bad intimate relationship, then the cost is too high. Black women should not be held hostage to the struggles of black men, so like I said only dating black men really minimizes your dating pool by a lot. Let's get into some statistics...
And yes, she gets very frank with the statistics. But that's exactly where statistics should be used, yes? At least when assessing what we might call "dating strategy".
She also talks about how Black men have internalized some of the double standards that hit Black women especially hard, and you know what? That's true. I absolutely, positively cannot stand Jasmine Crockett. But I will say that the notion that, as she says, "we are never enough: we're too dark, or we're too loud, we're too demanding, we're ghetto, we're ratchet, we are all of these things" is probably tough - (especially Black) women DO need to walk a bit of a tightrope without any traits that are too "extreme". (Men actually DO have a parallel to this as well, especially when it comes to sexuality, but that's another conversation for another time). And media representation of Black women is an exercise in true whiplash (and yes, Black creators are partially to blame). The problems of race, both "self" inflicted and otherwise, are real, even if they aren't defining. Then we get I think the heart of the rant (apologies for poor formatting but I don't want to spend forever correcting the auto-generated transcript):
You know these guys have been coming with these very clever lines whining since the end of slavery pretty much 'oh my God, I can't possibly do all the things that all the other men do, it's unreasonable to expect it because slavery and discrimination and shit,' yet they think it's perfectly reasonable to expect black women to fulfill all these feminine requirements. You want submission, you want the house clean, you want all the child rearing and labor done, and you also expect us to go out and work? And now it's gotten even worse - I think this was their plan all along, now they want us to pay to have them in our lives. You were expected to subsidize these men like we do not also face discrimination and whatnot in trying to find and maintain work and getting an education and making money. I think it's interesting, you know, being a "baby mama" is very prevalent within the black community, that's where the phrase come comes from in the first place, and it's a very interesting place to be.
So basically she's saying that Black women in particular are tired of having a victim mindset. Great! I agree that's a very exhausting place to be, at the very least on a permanent basis. Does that come with some judgement for the men? Yes. But to me this is still speaking to group-level dynamics, with a dash of normal sexist-like expectations.
...and it feels like far too many black men who date out make it their entire personality and cannot go five minutes without telling the world how much better white women or Latino women are compared to black women, and this is probably the most prominent point of conflict of interracial relationships for black people
This makes me wonder how much of her rant is itself stereotypes, or media consumption, vs how much might be personal experience. I think that would change a bit about how I feel about what she's saying! But alas, we don't really get any extra information here. Her next complaint is, I'm going to be honest, this is just a man thing. It's not a Black man thing:
Where men think they want something, when really they want something else, they just want the illusion of it you know they want the illusion of natural beauty even if it's not natural, even if you are wearing makeup or you have lash extensions or you have extensions or a wig. They don't really care that much as long as they can't tell, but God forbid that you let that man touch your scalp and it's all over
So yeah. Standard complaints with a racial undertone. She's got this aside that's a theory about the specific pairing of white women and Black men:
I actually think that's why black men and white women go together, because they both have a privilege blind spot, where white women they have the privilege of being white, but the experience, the oppression, of being a woman; black men have the privilege of being men, but they experience, the oppression, of being black... so you know those are just some theories.
Honestly? Interesting theory. Maybe even true? I'm a bit skeptical still. But I think when it comes down to her main message it's pretty clear:
I'm not saying oh I don't believe in Black love; I believe in love in general. That's the thing, that's the point really.
I'm going to say this, white men are not the answer. Okay, I am all for interracial dating, you should date whoever makes you happy, that is the point: date someone who loves and respects you, and treats you the way that you deserve to be treated, someone who cherishes and loves you, and sees you for all of your beauty. I'm a little concerned with the pasta Lobster Trend and how it's gone a little too far - like many Tik Tok Trends tend to go - it's like you know oh fun p and lobster it's cute, and then a lot and then women start to glorify white men and they think "oh, white men are the answer, let me find me a white man, um so I can be happy, how do I find a white guy?" It's really embarrassing as black women to be glorifying white men and to be putting them on a pedestal, that is not the point, please let's not set back the black community centuries by glorifying white men, you don't have to get you a p and lobster... you can get you a kimchi and kebab, you can get you a taco, and burrito whatever it don't matter. As long as he makes you happy and he treats your right girl that's all I care about, okay, cuz at the end of the day a man is a man whether he's black, white, asian, Hispanic, godamn it it don't mean shit to me fuck ethnicity, like a man is a man.
Love it. Treat people like people. Endorsed. With maybe a little note of you know, it takes two to tango and put investment in the relationship, but time and place and all that.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11d ago
See? Again with the "them". (Genuinely not trying to be nitpicky and you didn't mean it that way - a family is a plural noun - but hopefully you'll allow the point.) I'm not talking about "them". I'm talking about specific people. I'm saying that if you see the new black family and then expect them to act per negative stereotypes and then that comes across even when you first meet them and say hi, that's bad. It's true that humans and especially modern Americans aren't super great at "firewalling" the two things, which the whole 'microaggressions' thing was a somewhat deluded and misplaced crusade at affecting, but it does take effort to extend some charity especially at first.
And of course you did list purely and universally negative stereotypes. The family could equally as well bring humor, food, a neighborly sense of watching out for the kids, hospitality, a deep faith, etc. Of course, there are some "culture-clash" values or practices that are a bit more value-neutral than selling drugs/blaring music at 2am/street racing that cause friction, sure. I'm not going to claim that all cultures and practices are of equal value either. But you have to admit starting out with "white = universally good" is not a great building block. I'll still stand by what I said though. It's really not all that bad if that's the true belief you have, but you have to be honest with yourself about whether it might bleed through or not. Only God will judge us by the contents of our heart, for everyone else in society, we have to make do with actual behaviors.
If you get right down to it most of us agree about this, but I think it's really easy to let the politically charged parts distract from it. And it tends to be a more prosperous and mentally healthy mindset to boot, when you default to trust rather than default to suspicion. That's the secret sauce of humanity's success and I don't think tech has changed it too much.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11d ago
No, see, this is exactly what they were talking about, and my comment above as well. You jumped straight to a factual debate about the stereotypes but that’s not the point. The point is, you have these beliefs about Muslims, fine. You think your views are more accurate, fine. Are you following it up by treating individual Muslims as dangerous and potentially violent as a baseline belief?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
11d ago
Internationally speaking there isn’t a such thing as a neutral observer. Well, there are a few, but they don’t have the media and information collection apparatuses to be useful.
Next best thing is media diet. Financial Times is a classic because its clientele usually like realistic, no-bullshit news because they actually use it to make decisions. Personally I find a mix of The Hill and Politico also helpful, because they are matter of fact about the political behind the scenes action. Sure that’s a degree removed, but you can infer quite a lot about the facts on the ground by observing what the political actors are doing and how they are doing it/phrasing it. Frankly most other outlets don’t consistently cover politics this way, but again, why? Think of the consumer. Politico and the Hill are staples of congressional staffers who also have a vested interest in seeing how the winds are blowing without too much bullshit. At least that’s my 10 cents.
The problem of our modern age is that even very smart people are not very good at divorcing the “group dynamics” from the “individual dynamics”. Motte and Baileys specifically also don’t help here.
There are stereotypes, and many of them are rooted in truth. You may justifiably take some actions that reflect these stereotypes and that’s fine. What’s not fine is the small subset of people who seem to have no sense of tradeoffs - they turbocharge stereotypes with seemingly no upper bound to how powerful these stereotypes are.
Then there are your actions on a personal, individualized level. Meaning usually the recipient of these actions and attitudes. This is the crux of the disconnect. It might be fine for me as a salesperson to avoid marketing to, say, Hispanics. But if a specific Hispanic customer comes in, I shouldn’t treat them differently. Why? Well the most powerful piece is that I consider their identity as a human being to trump their identity as a Hispanic by at least an order of magnitude if not more. The second piece is that we want to live in a society that treats people fairly and sometimes it requires locally suboptimal choices to achieve a globally optimal result. This requires a degree of personal ethics.
If my neighbor goes on a rant about how Black people are bringing in all kinds of crime to the area, I might think it’s uncharitable, or maybe factually incorrect, and I might even think a little less of them… these are societal tensions that are understandable though, in the general sense. I’m not going to treat my neighbor way different based only on that. But it’s a degree of magnitude worse (or maybe two) if my neighbor then deliberately gives the cold shoulder to a Black family that moves in on our block.
Do you see what happened? He crossed the boundary line from stereotyping to personal racism. Which has a word: discrimination. This is a serious moral failing. Whereas the act of stereotyping is relatively speaking vastly more neutral. Discrimination is an action. Sure it might be sourced from an attitude, but there’s a big step there.
The waters get muddied because bad actors (and also overly defensive otherwise good people!) often retreat to the Bailey here. Some might assume that a stereotyper will also discriminate based purely on the presence of a stereotypical belief they hold. This is, well, understandable but bad, a lesser form of the same pattern of discrimination. It also provokes hard feelings because words like “racist” or “sexist” are pretty charged. On the other side of the coin sometimes a discriminator will defend their behavior by pointing to the stereotype as truth. I wish to call this out as bullshit. They are different things with different moral stakes.
And then you have a small handful of people who react to approbation with extremism. Not only are all these stereotypes true, they think, they are strong, they are universally applicable, and individualized discrimination is sometimes not even just a necessary evil but somehow good or wise. There are a few of them on this forum. Only IRL experience can pull them back from the brink, so words can’t really reach them. Usually this is a race thing, but you see the same pattern with the most notorious of incels. Think Elliot Rodger. They take some (maybe rooted in truth!) belief about women but then apply it with such a broad brush to individuals in their lives that it creates a cycle of unhappiness (on top of being unethical).
Anyways, your particular case is a classic. I would argue the woman on the street is fundamentally in a group-dynamic, stereotype paradigm. She is not levying an individualized discrimination. She’s being realistic about a mostly-true stereotype. If she were to follow up her statement with “and so as a rule I don’t date Black guys” then we have a problem. That’s discrimination because it ignores the humanity of individuals (and also creates hard feelings that are often counterproductive on a societal level). I realize this is not always cut and dry (what if she says “and so I’m reluctant to date Black guys?”) but I strongly believe we should save the vast majority of the moral approbation for this kind of specific individualized behavior. Kindness is a bit of a skill.
We (as a society, but particularly this is directed at liberals and moderates) need to (relative to current effort) speak up stronger against discrimination and not so strongly against garden variety stereotypes. It may be true that one leads to the other by tendency and in chronological order, but the focus should be on weakening the link. Conservatives by the same token (relative to current effort) need to call out those individuals that cross the line away from “mere” stereotypes and into outright discrimination better and not hide them behind a shield of persecution, victimhood, circling the wagons, or playing the Bailey card.
Why is gender “better” at avoiding discrimination? Because the link between stereotypes and individual behavior is weaker, as it should be. Women who spout off frustration at “men” as a category are one thing (common), women who treat specific men in their life like dirt because of those frustrations are another thing (thankfully less common and less accepted as morally fine). Simple as that. We should learn from this model and apply it to other areas where discrimination is problematic.
Good one. I'm totally capable but if there was something easy and pre-existing it could save me some tokens, you know?
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