Generalizations

[Taoist Texts]

There is no catch-all answer. "When can we generalize and when can we not?"

 

Well... we always can, but often we are incorrect in doing so.

 

Are you looking for something in particular?

Oh it was mostly a political question from a specific  context of  different thread. Why and when we are not allowed to generalize?

 

 

On some topics, generalization is useful, maybe even 99% descriptive. On other topics, generalization is useless, often even harmful.

 

Cows have legs. That's a generalization based on my experience. I'd imagine that not 100% of cows are born with legs. But it's true most of the time. It's descriptive of most cows, more than 99%.

 

Dogs bite people. That's a generalization I've heard, based on some people's experience. And it's not true most of the time. Most dogs never bite people. One would be better saying "Dogs have the capacity to bite people." And the thing is, people believing that all dogs are biters will only lead people to treat dogs poorly, which in turn will make dogs more likely to bite people.

My answer would be that generalization is accurately predictive when A. the generalized category is not expected to change from a specimen to specimen and B. when the cost of not generalizing is forbiddingly high.

Your cows example would be A.

In your dogs example substituting dogs with snakes results in B.

[thelerner]

The more generalizations a person has, the more black and white they see the world.  Too often it leads to short hand thinking.  Which may be fine when you're under the gun, but given time, spend it getting a little deeper into history, motivations and outcomes.  Avoid when you can, falling into Them is bad, Me's is good thought patterns.

 

Let me make a generalization here: Man is more rationalizing then rational and the internet is an awesome (&awful) tool for meeting like minds to find evidence that you are exactly right.  Even when one is full of shit.  

[leth]

The more generalizations a person has, the more black and white they see the world.  Too often it leads to short hand thinking.  Which may be fine when you're under the gun, but given time, spend it getting a little deeper into history, motivations and outcomes.  Avoid when you can, falling into Them is bad, Me's is good thought patterns.

 

I have to disagree, i think this is a misconception. Generalisations are not really the problem, the problem is the misunderstanding of how generalisations work, and the faulty induction of properties to generalisations. I would even dare to say that the more generalisations a person has the less the person is likely to make such false inducitons.

 

 

Let me make a generalization here: Man is more rationalizing then rational and the internet is an awesome (&awful) tool for meeting like minds to find evidence that you are exactly right.  Even when one is full of shit.  

 

That is not really a generalisation You're ascribing qualities to a generalisation which are not part of the generalisation, thus commiting to a faulty generalisation, which is indeed not truly a generalisation.

 

The way we see generalisations and recognise faulty generalisations is important, and people making faulty generalisations are indeed the kind of people that see things in black or white, but to say that these people have many gneeralisations is not really correct, we should say that they make many faulty generalisations instead.

[Marblehead]

My generalization for the day:

 

All dualities are matters of illusion and delusion.

[Wu Ming Jen]

There are no absolutes When a rural farmer in his hundreds is smoking a cigar with a glass of whiskey and eats bacon, toast and 3 eggs every morning and a health nut who never ever smoked dies young then the OP question is true and false.

 

Not only is generalizing neither true or false but words themselves are caught in duality so when intentions are understood words do not matter as much. 

[Marblehead]

Not only is generalizing neither true or false but words themselves are caught in duality so when intentions are understood words do not matter as much. 

Interesting that this links to where we are in the Father and Son thread.

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

-----

"'All smokers are damaging their health by smoking cigarettes'. True or false?"

-----

 

There are case histories of many people who developed lung cancer despite never smoking at all.

 

And there are many cases where people have smoked for decades and never developed cancer.

 

China had very many smokers, but very low lung cancer rates.

 

One thing missing from generalizations about this is "dairy".

 

People in China are now eating it.

 

Casien is very hard for human to process.

 

Producing mucus and inflammation in the upper respiratory tract.

 

This is why kids get ear infections.

 

And why both smokers and non-smokers alike develop the same cancers.

 

The western attempt to make citizens into bovine infants does have side effects.

 

But even these are profitable.

 

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Marblehead]

And not finding a cure for cancer is very profitable also.