A rational guide to being a little less of a bigoted asshole

Do you ever find yourself looking down on a particular group of people?

You’re not alone. Most of us are built this way; falling back on an ‘us vs them’ mentality has probably aided humans in surviving this long.

Feelings of condescension are easy. It’s a little tougher to understand how justified such feelings are. That’s what this article discusses.

As with most things, the answer isn’t an easy “yes” or “no”. However, we can create a framework that may with the answer. The final take-away regarding the moral justification of your own bigotry lies entirely with you.

The context behind discrimination

We start this discussion by acknowledging that any discrimination needs differences to exist.

Finding differences among humans has never been (or will be) a problem. Humans are inherently different from each other — even people you consider similar to you will be different in many ways. But there are some important caveats.

Caveat 1: When making comparisons, we don’t look at differences across the entire spectrum of human experience. Rather we focus on a few types of experiences or realities and then compare different groups based on how they react in similar situations (i.e., no one is comparing groups based on how long they take in the bathroom).

In other words comparisons between groups of people only makes sense within certain contexts.

Caveat 2: when discriminating we don’t look at all the possible differences between us and others — doing so would highlight differences between us & people we love as well.

Rather, we tend to focus on specific differences only. These could be skin color, sex, religion — perhaps because you believe that these differences are somehow fundamentally important.

The point is you focus on an ‘us vs them’ mentality through the lens of these specific differences. In other words, you label the other group based on certain specific differences.

Let’s tackle each of these caveats quickly.

When is it appropriate to make comparisons?

To be alive is to encounter specific external stimuli and respond to it in a manner that is determined by a combination of nature (gene expression) and nurture (cultural norms).

When an “external reality” (external stimuli) meets our “internal reality” (genes & cultural norms), we end up with a “personal reality”.

The nature of personal realities is very fluid. Some are exceptionally subjective (e.g., reading and interpreting a poem). There could be so many wildly different ways that one can interpret a poem that comparing groups based on this activity feels odd.

I propose that experiences that fall under the category of subjective personal realities are not appropriate to make group comparisons. The reason is that comparisons are (usually) made when comparing apples to apples. The nature of subjective personal realities is that it will always be an apples to oranges comparison.

In contrast, some realities do feel more ‘objective’ (i.e., each person’s personal reality is probably similar to everyone else’s). A good example could be breathing in air — something that still may feel different to people, but the variety in experiences is not too great.

These realities and the genes dealing with them are more appropriate to make comparisons within groups.

It is only within the scope of this objective personal realities (wherein all humans experience slightly similar realities) that any comparisons hold merit.

Specific differences only: Biology (nature) vs Culture (nurture)

Within these objective personal realities there are two broad ways that one can distinguish two groups of humans from each other — biological differences (nature) or cultural differences (nurture).

Discrimination based on cultural labels, while unfortunate, at least implies that the capacity for “them” to become “us” exists. It may be difficult, but there’s no reason to think that provided similar education/cultural norms these people would not become like us.

The same cannot be said of biological labels.

The biological labels therefore feel more fundamental. They will therefore be the focus of this discussion.

Combining the two caveats

Given this context, let’s look at different categories of objective personal realities that can be compared.

Category 1 — Objective personal reality doesn’t involve sense-detectable genes

When labeling different groups based on biology, we have a tendency to rely heavily on our senses — particularly eyesight. However, a vast majority of objective personal realities do not involve any of the genes we can pick up using our senses (e.g., color, gender etc.).

It makes sense, you can only label something that is obvious. Historically this has been seen in labeling based on color, sex, and other physical characteristics.

Given our current scientific understanding of how genes work, what we’re basically saying is that “There is a group of people who possess a combination of the following gene expressions: abc, xyz, etc. We do not possess these genes/chromosomes expressions, and therefore we are different from them.”

One must realize is that no matter what the bio-labeling (woman, black, handicap, ethnicity etc.) the “other group” has been demarcated based on differences your eyes have picked up on.

Unfortunately, eye-detectable genes form a very very very small percentage of total human-specific gene within each of us.

So the odds that overall one group is superior than another are stacked against us purely because of the numbers.

Category 2 — Objective personal reality involves sense-detectible genes, BUT no observable differences seen

The labelled genes (color, gender etc.) have an impact on the nature of the personal reality generated.

However, if we run tests to determine differences between two groups — we may fail to find any statistically significant differences.

Category 3 — Objective personal reality involves sense-detectable genes, there are observable differences, BUT large standard deviations.

I believe that most bigots tend to thrive in this category.

However, their sense of superiority may not be justified. Under this category, statistically significant differences in ability/reactions between groups may exist — but unfortunately there may also be large standard deviations in these abilities/reactions.

There’s no reason to think that most human abilities do no follow a bell-curve shaped graph.

One of the problems with having 7 billion people in the world is that the scale of numbers involved becomes particularly large.

So that even a moderate standard deviation makes any inferences of superiority almost pointless.

To illustrate with an example — say we identify a particular set of labelled genes that we want to focus on (let’s call it Race). Now we look at a shared set of personal reality — let’s choose taking competitive exams (like SATs, GMAT, GRE etc).

Even if we have found that different permutation of Races gene expressions perform differently in competitive test, you still need to understand the standard deviation. Specifically the standard deviation of different races’ performance will help in determining how secure you should feel that YOU (in particular) are better than any other member of another race.

With a moderate standard deviation, coupled with the large number of people per race (~500m — ~1 billion), you’re going to end up with tens (to hundreds) of millions of people of the “inferior” race that could be considered geniuses.

Think about how many people you personally know in your life, interactions with whom have shaped your life — there’s probably not more than a 1000. Now think of the most intelligent people you know in this group — maybe 10–20 people?

Now put large standard deviations into context. Almost every race will have hundreds of millions of people (full continents of people) that are more intelligent that the 10–20 people you know in your life.

Category 4 — Labeled genes involved, differences observed, small standard deviations

This is the category that the bigot should feel most comfortable in. We see involvement of labelled genes, differences in averages and little-no standard deviations!

If you want to feel superior to someone else, this is the type of stuff that’ll really help you out.

Unfortunately I suspect that the number of personal realities that fit this category are really really really small and narrowly defined.

Women (vs Men) being better at birthing new humans may be an example.

The scopes of difference tend to become so narrow that you end up stating the obvious. In other words, it is almost as if there’s no fun left in being a bigot.

So what does it all mean?

It may not be surprising, but it is actually difficult to be a bigot if you’re also committed to being rational.

If you look at it as an optimization problem, your best bet lies in concocting a label & finding stimuli to maximize the number of personal realities in Category 4. You then have to convince yourself that these specific domains are very important for the survival of a tribe.

I’m sure it can be done, but it’s just seems so complex and time consuming. So much so that I know I’ve given up on it altogether.

At this point I just choose to treat each individual as just that — an individual. And hope to judge them on their individual actions, instead of relying on classifying them according to some labeling.