Vaniver comments on The Boundaries of Biases - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Vaniver 01 December 2010 12:43AM

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Comment author: Vaniver 01 December 2010 11:12:16AM 2 points [-]

I'm curious what definition of racism/sexism you're using here?

That's a very good question, because those are very stretchy words. In those sentences, the definition I had in mind was "making a decision based on race/sex," with the intention of pointing out that sometimes making decisions based on race or sex is the optimal/correct thing to do. As you point out, those examples don't fit into either "bias" or "bigotry" because it involves correct judging (and, with the exception of the mate example, perhaps) no terminal value preferences.

I appreciate the suggestion, but I prefer to keep my posts as mind-friendly as possible.