wu :: forums - Print Page


    
      
        wu :: forums
        (http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi)
      

        general >> truth >> Mean Thinking
        
(Message started by: checker on Jan 12^th, 2007, 9:50pm)

Title: Mean Thinking
Post by checker on Jan 12^th, 2007, 9:50pm

People still in this world of technology talk about discremination....religion...caste....creed....and position.....petty really.
We are talking so much about it but still track down the same norrow senario of thinking????Why.......

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by THUDandBLUNDER on Jan 13^th, 2007, 5:54am

Things never seem to get better to some people because
a) more bad news is reported than good news
b) improved communications technology allows this bad news to be reported more quickly and effectively than before

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by Sameer on Jan 13^th, 2007, 9:41pm

hmmm and what if you have experienced some of these personally?

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by Three Hands on Jan 14^th, 2007, 12:14am

What is supposed to be done about this? Legal enforcement of non-discrimination cannot work effectively, and gives people who firmly believe they are right to discriminate additional reasons to believe they must act to make other people see they are right, or to protect those who are "falling for their tricks" or similar.

The solution people generally think is better is to educate people to question whether it is right to judge people based on their religion/caste/creed/position/gender/colour, etc., since they will then hopefully self-correct their views towards others, and so remove discrimination. Granted it's not a perfect solution - people can still claim they're right to discriminate for whatever reason - but forcing change on people generally creates resentment to the changes, and so doesn't gain the results wanted.

Also, many people believe that it is natural for humans to discriminate, or have certain prejudices, since it allows for a quick assessment of new situations (appealing to past experience or beliefs to work out how certain people are likely to act) and so act accordingly. Not all discrimination is bad, since people are different and so will react differently towards certain actions - telling a dirty joke will tend to get different results at a pub than at an old people's home - but some less appropriate judgements (all women should act like good housewives, or all black men will slit your throat, rape white women and steal everything you have given half a chance) can be fairly easily shown to be false.

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by rmsgrey on Jan 14^th, 2007, 3:51am

There's also the issue that some people are so convinced that everyone does discriminate against them, if someone acts like a jerk towards them, they'll instantly assume that that person is directly prejudiced against their particular group, and never even consider the possibility that that person just is a jerk generally.

The problem with people like that, who aggressively accuse you of harassment if you look at them twice (while they're kitted out in their full regalia, so as visually out of place as a man wearing white tie on a California beach...) is that their attitude makes them instantly unlikeable, meaning, unless people go out of their way to avoid it, they're going to be treated worse than someone who doesn't automatically assume you're a racist jerk. So they blame their poor treatment on other people's prejudices rather than their own behaviour (which is a common human failing) and end up worse than they were before...

And then, of course, there's the problem that not all discrimination is wrong - if you're calling a plumber, say, you'd much rather call the firm that discriminates solely based on plumbing ability than the one that hires according to an affirmative action policy and is going to send round a half-black half-aisian one-legged female midget that spends 5 minutes hitting the leaky joint with a wrench, and floods the house as soon as the water's turned back on...

As for bad things happening to people, well, it happens. But lots of bad things also fail to happen. Every time I cross a road, I fail to get run over. Sooner or later, assuming nothing else gets me first, there will come that one in however-many million chance, and I'll get hit by a car while crossing the road. Our whole lives are a continuous sequence of bad things not happening and we only notice them when they do...

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by Icarus on Jan 14^th, 2007, 5:38pm

Everyone discriminates, and as Three Hands indicates, this is usually a good thing. Any time you treat two people differently, you are discriminating. If you are married, then you had better discriminate in favor of your spouse over other men/women, or else you won't be married for long!

The problem is not discrimination, but unjust association: You define a group by a certain set of characteristics, then associate with that group other unrelated characteristics, and judge its members based on that association. For example, "Jews" are defined by ethnic background, or religious choice for converts. The only thing that can be properly said to apply to all Jews is that they all fall into one of those two categories. Yet many also associate characteristics of being "conniving, dishonest", and treat all Jews accordingly. Of course, some are conniving and dishonest (as with any group of people not chosen to avoid these characteristics), but others are straight-forward and honest.

Why does this occur? Because usually such association is advantageous. Being able to judge how people will respond to situations before those situations occur allows you to modify your own behavior for maximum advantage - as Three Hands' example of where to tell the off-color joke illustrates. There may be people in the pub who will not appreciate your joke, and there are certainly those in the nursing home who would, but the odds run the other way.

So when does this association become a problem? Well, that is the problem. It is obvious that some associations (such as the the one I mentioned about Jews, and so many more that we all know) are obviously detrimental. But others are helpful guides. How can you know which is which? This is why the problem we label "discrimination" will never go away. There is no blanket means of determing good associations from bad. Some rules are obvious: "an association of a characteristic to a group which in fact applies to less than half the group is a bad association". But even this rule is difficult to use, as you need to know the group well enough to determine how much of the group matches the associated characteristic.

Generally, these associations have to be judged good or bad individually. And where one person judges a rule to be bad, another may judge it good, as they have different priorities, and different evidence. This is why the best bet for battling "discrimination" is education. Education evens out - to some extent - both the evidence and the priorities.

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by JiNbOtAk on Feb 9^th, 2007, 2:08am

on 01/14/07 at 03:51:31, rmsgrey wrote:

As for bad things happening to people, well, it happens. But lots of bad things also fail to happen. Every time I cross a road, I fail to get run over. Sooner or later, assuming nothing else gets me first, there will come that one in however-many million chance, and I'll get hit by a car while crossing the road. Our whole lives are a continuous sequence of bad things not happening and we only notice them when they do...

Time is a measure of increase of entropy, which means that as time moves forward, there are more disorder in our world. Of course, we should try our very best to minimize the bad things, from our own petty point of view, race, religion, caste..after all, being sad is the other half of being happy, how can you appreciate the good things in life, if you haven't experienced the bad ones ?

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by towr on Feb 9^th, 2007, 2:45am

on 02/09/07 at 02:08:01, JiNbOtAk wrote:

Time is a measure of increase of entropy

If that were true, would you say time is reverse in places where entropy increases? Or that time goes faster when entropy decreases faster?
I don't think this makes much sense from a physics viewpoint. Just the concept of 'increase' already presupposes that there is time, because otherwise there is no before and after.

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by Icarus on Feb 9^th, 2007, 7:23pm

A more accurate statement is that the increase of entropy in the universe is a measure of time.

But another problem with this is that you are equating entropy with disorder. In fact, the sort of disorder rmsgrey is referring to has little if any relation to entropy at all. Even "physical" disorder is not really the same as entropy. The relationship we see between the two now is only because we are in fairly low entropy levels. As entropy increases, eventually the opposite will be true: higher entropic states will tend to be more orderly than lesser ones.

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by JiNbOtAk on Feb 17^th, 2007, 8:17am

on 02/09/07 at 19:23:17, Icarus wrote:

As entropy increases, eventually the opposite will be true: higher entropic states will tend to be more orderly than lesser ones.

Care to explain in more detail ?

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by Icarus on Feb 17^th, 2007, 8:44am

Entropy is really a measure of how evenly energy is distributed. Where you have concentrations of energy in some locations while other locations are low energy, you have low entropy overall. (I really wish Caratheodory had chosen the opposite sign - it would make this so much easier to talk about!) Where energy is evenly distributed throughout space, entropy is maximized.

Because the universe is in a fairly low entropic state now, disorder tends to break up high energy concentrations and spread that energy out - raising entropy. In a high entropic state, chaos instead causes ripples to emerge in a previously smooth energy distribution. This actually lowers the entropy of the system (of course, this is only possible with outside interference).

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by towr on Feb 18^th, 2007, 9:24am

In how far is thermodynamics meant to be applied on a cosmological scale? Because gravity seems to have somewhat of an entropy decreasing effect.
While chaos at the molecular level has an entropy encreasing effect.
They seem to opposites, with each stronger on it's own end of the scale.

Title: Re: Mean Thinking
Post by Icarus on Feb 18^th, 2007, 11:37am

My wording in the previous post is misleading in a couple of ways. I was aware of this, but chose the wording anyway to avoid complications that would obscure my point.

First, by "evenly distributed", I did not mean "equally distributed". Instead of everything being at the same energy, a maximal entropy state has the energy distributed by a normal distribution.
Second, when I said "throughout space", this is not technically correct. "Throughout the system" might have been better. Basically, maximum entropy occurs when all parts of the system are equally likely to be in every energy state - there are not particles that can be separated out that are likely to be more (or less) energetic than the rest.

The action of gravity is not really anti-entropic. At best, it can be entropy-neutral (a point particle in free-fall does not experience any entropy change, no matter how accelerated by gravity). More realistically, tidal effects from gravity cause entropy to increase, as it reshapes the objects it affects.

In all of physics, the only anti-entropic thing I have ever heard of is the big bang. There, that effect is called "symmetry breaking".