Sneaking in Connotations

It is very insensitive to refer to people using the W word the way you do.

Finally someone has come up with a word for those awful people.

If there's one thing I hate about wiggins, it's how they use their military genius to utterly destroy their enemies, be they small children or hive-minded bug-eyed monsters.

Mainly I see categories as useful only as "shorthand", and then only along very particular vectors.

For example, one category that includes people like me (at least along one particular axis) is "female". To me, all this really means is that I'm physiologically configured in a particular way that influences what kinds of bathrooms I can use and what kinds of doctors I need to see. In that respect, "female" is a useful and descriptive category.

But in other respects, it isn't at all useful. As a youngster I went through a phase of "not seeing myself as female" -- not because I hated my physical form (I don't) but because everything that people seemed to associate with "females" didn't fit me. As a female, I was expected (by my surrounding culture) to like pink things, to want to wear dresses, to prefer "domestic" games to construction toys or computers. I was also expected to have certain kinds of social skills I didn't have, as well as certain cognitive tendencies. Etc. So my initial reaction was to wonder whether or not I was a "real girl" in the first place.

Eventually, though, my brain did a sort of flip and I realized that the problem wasn't that I was "inauthentically female", but that people were taking the things about me that were actually female (e.g., aspects of my physiology) and using those things as a basis for assuming a whole bunch of other things. And my reaction was one of indignance at that point: why can't a Real Girl play with the spaceship Lego and wear pants on special occasions (instead of annoying, uncomfortable dresses)?

So, I'm quite familiar with the phenomenon described in this post. It's actually kind of surprising to learn (as I have fairly recently) that many people actually memorize a category definition and then attempt to force-fit reality into it, rather than just gathering a lot of data over time and then (when necessary for the sake of practicality or shorthand) applying category-labels to some members of that data set along particular specified vectors.

In other words, if I'm applying for a job, the fact that I have ovaries shouldn't be a factor (unless the job happens to be something like "egg donor", but that's not something I really see myself getting into). But if I suddenly start experiencing weird abdominal pain, the fact that I have ovaries (and other female internals) becomes pertinent information. The category is context-specific and I think a lot of problems come in when people try to "universalize" categories across all contexts and along all vectors.

AnneC: Mainly I see categories as useful only as "shorthand", and then only along very particular vectors.

All thinking is done in shorthand - the brain can't actually contain a 1:1 map of the universe - but some hands are much shorter than others; and I quite agree that there's no point in trying to make someone match the average (or mere stereotype) of the female-human cluster if you already have access to more detailed information about her than that.

What you're objecting to isn't so much the shortcut, it seems to me, as the way-too-short, much-shorter-than-necessary cut. "Playing with spaceship Lego" isn't an atomically detailed description of you either, but it's more information than "female (human)".

there's no point in trying to make someone match the average (or mere stereotype) of the female-human cluster if you already have access to more detailed information about her than that.

I would say that there's little to no point in trying to make someone match the average/stereotype about someone even if you don't have access to more detailed information about her than that. Or, at the very least, people should be capable of maintaining awareness of the information that someone is female without their connotations of what "female" means blocking their ability to take in new data about that person.

As an engineer, I've come across an unsettling number of assumptions that "engineering needs women because they're so much better at multitasking and working in groups" -- e.g., my presence in engineering is welcomed on the basis of supposed "positives" that I don't actually provide. So while patting themselves on the back for earning Diversity Points, some folks are simultaneously holding female engineers responsible for providing the Wanted Stereotypical Ability. And meanwhile, the real (and useful) abilities that J. Random Engineer Who Happens To Be Female might provide get ignored, or not believed to exist until the engineer in question performs a sufficient number of Extraordinary Superhero Feats to get branded "The Exception".

What you're objecting to isn't so much the shortcut, it seems to me, as the way-too-short, much-shorter-than-necessary cut. "Playing with spaceship Lego" isn't an atomically detailed description of you either, but it's more information than "female (human)".

Yes, exactly. I remember always feeling kind of weird as a kid because I tended to identify more with male characters in stories (because I had more in common with them interest-wise and personality-wise), and yet, I knew I supposedly belonged to a category called "female". Hence, I really liked it when I came across "tomboy" characters or girls who were good at math and science (like Meg Murry from "A Wrinkle In Time"), because reading about those characters gave me a bit of a "cognitive dissonance vacation". I know some people dismiss the impact of fiction on culture, but since fiction is both a thing that culture both produces and is influenced by, I have always appreciated it when authors can successfully manage to realistically portray a character that subverts particular stereotypes -- such works can have the curious effect of reassuring particular segments of the population that yes, they do, in fact, exist.

Also, this post makes me think of this entry in the TV Tropes wiki: "You Know What They Say About X" (a corollary of which could be Positive Discrimination)

I would say that there's little to no point in trying to make someone match the average/stereotype about someone even if you don't have access to more detailed information about her than that.

Oh... sorry for assuming that you're vulnerable to hemlock, then; I shouldn't have assumed that without feeding you some.

Perhaps you mean that, in characteristics where humans are known to vary, one should suspend judgment / assume the default probability distribution, rather than assuming the person is known to be average?

Sorry for what seems like nitpicking, but this kind of quiet background categorization is necessary to human cognition. I'm not trying to say "Don't categorize" but rather, "Since you have no choice but to categorize, do it right." You can just visualize someone saying, "Oh, I have no choice to assume that Anne's a female" and then assuming that you, I don't know, own 20 pairs of shoes, when this is not so much forbidden categorization as bad categorization - if you say "Anne is a member of the 'likes spaceship Lego' class", that's also categorization, but it's more detailed categorization, and it screens off any default (stereotypical?) inferences one might make from the now superseded, higher-level 'female human' category. But I'm still licensed to assume you've got red blood, because that aspect of the 'female human' category hasn't been overridden.

Again, I think it's import to see the kind of categorization you dislike as 'inept categorization', including attempts to infer from the category things that have already been observed and hence ought properly to be screened off; rather than 'forbidden categorization'. As you know, "AnneC" itself is a category, since you are not exactly the same person at different times; and a category on a high level of abstraction, because people change quite a bit.

Perhaps you mean that, in characteristics where humans are known to vary, one should suspend judgment / assume the default probability distribution, rather than assuming the person is known to be average?

Yes. I put notions like "humans are generally vulnerable to Death by Hemlock" in a different class than notions like "Girls don't like science". For one thing, the stakes are a lot higher in the former case: you don't harm a female by not assuming she doesn't like science, but you might kill a human by feeding them hemlock under the assumption that you "need more data". There's plenty of empirical data on the effects of hemlock poisoning in entities you'd likely classify as "human" (for the purpose of this exercise), after all, and it seems pretty clear that hemlock ingestion is much more hazardous than not being subjected to the assumption that you hate science because you have a uterus.

Again, I think it's import to see the kind of categorization you dislike as 'inept categorization', including attempts to infer from the category things that have already been observed and hence ought properly to be screened off; rather than 'forbidden categorization'.

No argument from me there.

So if we have 100 pieces of information about phenomenon A, then we have 100 separate, weaker or stronger, potential categorisations, each with its own set of potential, weaker or stronger, inferences. All legit. and above board, nothing sneaky about it. One could imagine the interactions of these 100 sets of inferences as a multi-dimensional interference pattern, with some nodes glowing brightly as inferences re-inforce, others vanishing completely. The 101st piece of information will bring its own potential categorisation and an additional set of potential inferences. The alternative, I suppose, is just buying a whole truckload of hemlock and going round paying calls on all my friends......

Agree, agree, agree, but the fact that we do it so much tells its own story. Big, clumsy categorisation must be a good strategy for not getting eaten by a tiger or finding the herds of woolly mammoth. [Ponders]

PS - 100% wiggin and proud.

I think a recent XKCD is relevant here.

AnneC, I am russian, but I hate cold weather, I don't play chess well and I cannot hold my liquor nearly as well as I should to fit the stereotype. I am fairly sure though, that statistically speaking, russians are more tolerant to cold and can drink more, simply as a result of natural selection and percentage of people playing reasonable chess is bigger for historical reasons. You have mentioned, how much pressure you felt when child, to fit in with "female" stereotypes, so wouldn't it be reasonable to assume, that due to this pressure, percent of girls who actually like science might be less then percent of boys who like science? Boys, who are frequently even encouraged to like science/engineering activities. Intuitively though, I think, that correlation between "girls" and "don't like science" is smothered into irrelevancy by the "people" and "don't like science" correlation.

Speaking of shortcuts and connotations, it always amazed me, that a single person might "always give money to homeless people" and "hate bums" :)

There's no law against helping people you hate.

I started writing a post called 'smuggling in connotations' and then I remembered that this post existed. :)

It is very easy to forget where the actual difference is located: Imagine for example that in some group, on average, boys are 5% more interested in science, that is a fairly useless piece of information if the spread within both girls and boys is very large. I belive humans (only featherless ones though), on average, are to quick to try to derive answers from to little data: in the example above, knowing that someone is a boy or girl has no practical bearing on whether they are likely to be scientists: One should conclude "not enough data" instead. Saying to ones brain that something "has this effect but only very weakly" very often lends the effect to much weight.

Why am I incapable of seeing green-eyed black-haired people in my mind's eye? Why do I always see black-eyed green-haired people?

I'm not sure how aware dictionary editors are of what they really do.

I can only offer a retelling of a retelling of a course on the subject, but the answer seems to be “somewhat”. They are taught to list hyperonyms and hyponyms of whatever it is they are trying to define, and then isolate the most typical ones. Of course, a perfect implementation of this idea alone is not the OED, it’s WordNet.

Apparently, the authors of the NIST Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures were quite aware of this approach as well.