Good Generalisations
I often hear people say ‘you shouldn’t generalise’. It’s become a sign of being a decent, liberal person.
The problem is that its nowhere near as useful a way of thinking as people seem to assume. Clearly very crude statements based on cliches and stereotypes such as ‘all French people are good lovers’ or weak inferences like ‘I’ve met two people from Brazil and they both had big ears, therefore most people from Brazil have big ears’ are inaccurate and silly and sometimes racist.
But surely any kind of cultural or sociological and even psychological analysis involves some aspect of generalisation, in the sense of ‘to draw a general conclusion from’ specific cases. We couldn’t do any of that type of work or thinking if we considered there are no general norms of behaviour or ethics in common or economic characteristics often seen in X group of people.
If a specific study on, say, the voting habits of 5,000 participants over 60 could not be generalised to the voting habits of the over 60 years population in the country as a whole then why bother doing it? There would be no point doing any such studies if info gained while looking at a smaller group could not be generalised to apply, moderately well at least, to what the wider group does.
For example, advertisers would not spend huge amounts of money if they thought that their generalisations about how customers will react was completely unfounded. They engage in market research, with a section of people, in order to become moderately sure that there is X general trends and Y behaviour, and come up with campaigns to exploit that. Their whole business is based on the idea that generalisations are often - generally - quite accurate.
The point is to base the theories we make about such general or common tendencies on well conducted research, sound reasoning, empirical evidence, and further research…always being willing to adjust our thinking if new info comes along.
In a wider physical sense, beyond ideas about a certain peoples behaviour, generalisation are absolutely necessary, positive and useful. When we go to a restaurant we generalise from past experience and learning that food will be available in that type of place. When we cross the road we generalise from past experience, from inductive and deductive reasoning about how much time it will take for that bus to come dangerously close to us. Or we generalise, based on evolutionary programming or sometimes also personal experience of being bitten before, that the yellow banded snake that has suddenly appeared in front us may be poisonous, lets be careful and avoid it.
So, let’s here it for generalisations!
I often hear people say ‘you shouldn’t generalise’. It’s become a sign of being a decent, liberal person.
The problem is that its nowhere near as useful a way of thinking as people seem to assume. Clearly very crude statements based on cliches and stereotypes such as ‘all French people are good lovers’ or weak inferences like ‘I’ve met two people from Brazil and they both had big ears, therefore most people from Brazil have big ears’ are inaccurate and silly and sometimes racist.
But surely any kind of cultural or sociological and even psychological analysis involves some aspect of generalisation, in the sense of ‘to draw a general conclusion from’ specific cases. We couldn’t do any of that type of work or thinking if we considered there are no general norms of behaviour or ethics in common or economic characteristics often seen in X group of people.
If a specific study on, say, the voting habits of 5,000 participants over 60 could not be generalised to the voting habits of the over 60 years population in the country as a whole then why bother doing it? There would be no point doing any such studies if info gained while looking at a smaller group could not be generalised to apply, moderately well at least, to what the wider group does.
For example, advertisers would not spend huge amounts of money if they thought that their generalisations about how customers will react was completely unfounded. They engage in market research, with a section of people, in order to become moderately sure that there is X general trends and Y behaviour, and come up with campaigns to exploit that. Their whole business is based on the idea that generalisations are often - generally - quite accurate.
The point is to base the theories we make about such general or common tendencies on well conducted research, sound reasoning, empirical evidence, and further research…always being willing to adjust our thinking if new info comes along.
In a wider physical sense, beyond ideas about a certain peoples behaviour, generalisation are absolutely necessary, positive and useful. When we go to a restaurant we generalise from past experience and learning that food will be available in that type of place. When we cross the road we generalise from past experience, from inductive and deductive reasoning about how much time it will take for that bus to come dangerously close to us. Or we generalise, based on evolutionary programming or sometimes also personal experience of being bitten before, that the yellow banded snake that has suddenly appeared in front us may be poisonous, lets be careful and avoid it.
So, let’s here it for generalisations!