Is generalization unconditionally evil?

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I'm a liberal I would say, if you were to categorize my beliefs (at least in a social sense), but one thing that really irritates me about liberals in general is their blind prejudice towards making generalizations.

Sometimes, generalizations are useful, or so often correct that they are perfectly reasonable. For example, it's a fair generalization to make the sweeping claim that members of the Ku Klux Klan are racist. Sure they might be a couple members who just wanted to fit in, or wear funny hats and capes, but actually have nothing against black people, but on the whole, nearly all members of the KKK are racist, because it is a racist organization.

What really annoys me though is that some people are so against generalization that they will tell white lies in order to avoid generalization, or they will commit 'fuzzy math'. For example, if I said 'Nevada is so ugly, most of it is just barren desert' they would say 'no it's not, it has forests too, don't generalize'. Of course Nevada has a little bit of forest, but at least 90% of the state IS barren desert, but in order to not offend people who get butthurt about statements of majority, I would have to pretend NOT most, ie less than 50% of Nevada is desert to make people happy. Even though it is not true.

I guess what annoys me most though is people just being anal due to the adjectives I use. If I make a broad statement, more often than not I mean 'most' cases, not every single case. I don't think I should have obliged to clarify with a 'most' or an inaccurate 'sometimes', or even if I should, it's just kind of rude to tear people apart based on minor semantic mistakes.

Another thing I notice is most people who hate all labels/generalizations tend to be moral relativists but make an exception with people who label and generalize and see it as being indisputably immoral. Which I find inconsistent.

Generalizing frequencies and relations are the only way of dealing with large amounts of data or large numbers of instances.

Few generalizations are completely true, but as long as they are close enough to true they can be used.

Generalization is an operational necessity.,

ruveyn

Generalizations are fine so long as they are reasonably accurate, they get a bad name from inaccurate generalization along the lines of "The American people wants" which is usually followed by something which is supported by at max 51% or so of the American people.

i think that generalizations are necessary when one approaches the macrocosm of a reality.
as one focuses into the microcosm of that reality, the exceptions to the generalizations become more distinct.

if i liken it to being in a spaceship heading toward a planet (people who will argue with me at this point about space travel etc are not welcome to do so), then it is a generalization to see the earth as a healthily oxygenated planet suitable for life, and it is a generalization to consider that the earth is completely colonized by vegetation from a distant viewpoint.

generalizations are the simplest resolutions of understanding of a considered reality, and further investigation will resolve the original simple appraisal that led to the attraction of attention in the first place.

if one was an interstellar voyager and saw mars from a distance, and if they were not able to generalize, then they would have to land and analyze every part of mars before they realized it was not suitable for their habitation. then if they took off again and saw earth, they would likewise land and inspect it without any overarching compulsion to do so, and if they landed in the caulderon of a volcano (for example), they would be off again to look elsewhere (being unable to dismiss the exceptions to a greater rule that they failed to see).


if one could not generalize, then they would be placed immediately in the deepest microcosm of their local environment, and they could not relate it referentially to any other approximate aspect of reality.

i suspect you are talking about social stereotypes however, and i am not interested to engage in discussion about social stereotypes.

i do not think i explained what i wanted to say in this post very well, but whatever. i will hit submit anyway.

All generalizations are false.

Including that one.

But they are no less useful as means of communication, provided that they are used critically.

My apologies, b9. I intended the first two sentences to contradict each other, so as to demonstrate the failure of relying on generalizations.

The third sentence is the important one. It is often useful to speak in generalizations, but when we do so, we should acknowledge that generalizations are not universal truths. The use of modifiers like, "most," "usually," and the ever popular, "in general," can go a long way to putting our generalized statements into a context that allows for exceptions.

The world would be too mind numbing if we didn't generalize anything.

"I don't like to make generalizations, generally."

I agree, it's annoying when people get their politically correct panties in a bunch about generalizing as if I meant to set it in stone rather than just use it as a rule of thumb. Face it, none of us have the mental capacity to split every little hair so generalizations are necessary to make clear distinctions. And isn't it ironic to assume all generalizations are intended to be set in stone?

I think the biggest problem lies in generalities made not in the context of known or reasonably-asserted facts (IE, 90-10% desert-forest ratio in Nevada, or something similar) but wherein someone's personal experiences are involved, and they genuinely assert that, say, encountering a buncha people of group X with Y quality means most or all of group X has Y quality. Had a conversation t'other day wherein someone genuinely thought that was a reasonable basis on which to not only form personal generalizations but to assert them as "evidence" of something in discourse about something. It's not so much "political correctness", but for goodness sake, if you're going to make a generalization, have better evidence for it's veracity than "me and a buncha people I know think so!!1"

No generalization can be evil. Plenty of them are stupid though (aka based on poor/inexistant evidence or prejudice). We use generalization to learn, for example, it is a rather good idea to assume that all house owners would have a problem if you took a crayon and drew stick people in their walls.

When a generalization is based not on actual experiences but on prejudice or in skewed experiences or in third hand experiences that were misrepresented. It becomes a stupid generalization. Still, there is nothing evil with that generalization.

What would be evil is to base something evil on a stupid generalization.