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Comment by carbocation | Hacker News Reader

Stereotype is probably the correct word, but it's overloaded here.

Stereotyping someone by something that they did not choose is a gateway to prejudice: skin color, eye color, place of birth.

Stereotyping someone by something that they did choose may be very useful for making inference about them, because it is a revealed preference: clothing tastes, food preferences, etc.

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It's just pattern recognition, we have it because it's good for survival.

Maybe that grizzly bear is nice but I'm not going to try and pet it to find out because the stereotype is that it will rip me to shreds

Stereotyping someone by something that you assume they chose is also a gateway to prejudice. @NeedMoreTea said it right by mentioning cases where someone might not have chosen their particular attire.

It works on a macro level though. You have to be ok with idea that the stereotype isn’t 100% perfect, it’s just used to get a majority of your target market.

Over the last two years, I have witnessed many demonstrations of normal people totally failing to understand “group x tends to be more y” — “but”, I have seen many retort, “I’m x and not y!”, as if the statement had instead been “all x are y”.

Yeah, you have to be OK with the idea that you are part of system that has systemic discriminatory effects. It still stinks.

It also begs the question of whether we have any more free will in fashion choices than we do skin color.

I can see an argument for that but I don't think it's a valid assertion. People can change opinions. They can't so easily change their skin color.

You can change opinions, but it is unclear whether you have free will over the change.

Looks to me like both are prejudice (even if applied to things usually not called such), and both may be useful.

Why is one prejudice and the other inference?

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