Don't Stereotype. But it's the NECESSARY evil!

I've always been fascinated by animals (including humans) and their ability to categorize the world around them.

When I was a kid, I'd think about how we were able to figure out what things were without seeing them before. We just knew! There was no way we could have learned so much without being exposed to lots of different things.

All animals naturally categorize the world. They collect information about distinct individuals and use it to generalize when they're exposed to new ones. So when you look at a chair and think "chair," you're making a generalization based on all the chairs you've seen before. And if you ever see one that doesn't fit into this category (like an apple), then you can probably make an educated guess about what it is. You might be wrong!

But for the most part, you can make some pretty good assumptions about what things are like based on how they look, how they sound, and how they act.

Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I shall not be able to find my way across the room, nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life. -William Hazlitt

So, we break the world up into different types of people. Men and women. You break the world up based on age: you're young or old. You break the world up based on ethnicity: you're white or not. You break the world up based on professions: you're a teacher or not. You break the world up based on religion: you're Christian or not. You break the world up based on sexual orientation: you're straight or gay. And then there are nations of birth within a nation where people come from—and so forth.

This is what Stereotyping is. It is a generalized belief about a particular category of people (like "blacks"), and it says something about them that isn't necessarily true but has some truth to it because we all have biases in our heads.

We're all prone to stereotyping. We look at the world, we analyze things, and come to conclusions and make some useful generalizations. If this was all there was to it, there'd be nothing so wrong about stereotyping.

But interestingly, people are typically right! They're not stupid. They look at the world and come to conclusions based on their own experience—and this is what makes them good at their jobs and helps them make good decisions.

Now why the stereotype is considered EVIL? It can be hard to break free of our stereotypes because they're what we've learned through experience and repetition. They're built into us by society, and they can be so ingrained that they seem like an objective reality. It can be hard to break free of our stereotypes because they're what we've learned through experience and repetition. They're built into us by society, and they can be so ingrained that they seem like an objective reality.

But, once you have a stereotype in your head, it's like the confirmation bias, is like the first impression, it's hard to shake. This could lead to getting things wrong.