Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jchw | Hacker News Reader

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The operative word is "day laborers". These are people who work on a day-to-day basis. In America at least, there is a large contingent of people who are informal day laborers, especially Hispanic immigrants apparently, although I'm not sure if that's really true or just a stereotype, and a lot of them hang out or around at home improvement stores, waiting to be hired for various handyman-type jobs.

It is frequently referenced in American media, like South Park (in "D-Yikes") and Mike Judge's Beavis and Butthead (in "The Day Butt-Head Went Too Far"). And well, probably some other media that isn't adult cartoons, but for some reason that was what first immediately came to mind.

I was aware of the stereotype of Hispanic day laborers hanging out in Home Depot parking lots for a long time, but it was interesting to see the degree to which it seems to be true in California, where I often saw fairly large groups of people that I believed to be day laborers in the parking lot. I'm sure there are also day laborers at home improvement stores in the Midwest too, but I don't really pay that much attention, so I haven't noticed it much.

edit: I see I took too long to reply and now am the sixth or so person to point this out, sorry. Race condition.

Japan too has a lot of day laborers too -single men usually without a family support structure or they left their families for reasons. In Japan the day laborers are almost exclusively Japanese as they don't tolerate illegal immigration much.

> as they don't tolerate illegal immigration much

They don't really tolerate legal immigration, or legal immigrants, either.

> I'm not sure if that's really true or just a stereotype

Stereotype Accuracy is One of the Largest and Most Replicable Effects in All of Social Psychology - https://spsp.org/news-center/character-context-blog/stereoty...

In fact, quite shockingly to many, that prevailing twofold sentiment, which sees stereotypical thinking as faulty cognition and stereotypes themselves as patently inaccurate, is itself wrong on both counts. - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/insight-therapy/2018...

Most stereotypes that have been studied have been shown to be approximately correct. Usually, stereotype accuracy correlations exceed .50, making them some of the largest relationships ever found in social psychology. - https://www.cspicenter.com/p/the-accuracy-of-stereotypes-dat...

It's not that I don't believe it is likely, it's more like I don't like spreading an unqualified stereotype that I haven't actually validated in any way other than personal anecdotes. It's not like it's a terribly harmful stereotype (at least, I don't have anything against day laborers at all) but just as a matter of good hygiene I believe it's good to hedge a bit when you're spreading information that is essentially folklore. (In this case the point was to spread the folklore part, so I didn't feel it necessary to go and try to validate it with data myself.)

There is a far cry between "Stereotypes are generally accurate" and "being able to make a specific measured claim on the basis of a stereotype."

You also don't actively prove this claim, which means that we may know that it's "more likely to be true than not" based on your shared information, but could still absolutely be false.

Which leads me to my question, "Why would you make a comment about the correctness of stereotypes, rather than just finding actual data about the stereotype in question?"

Because the phrasing "true OR a stereotype" implied the concepts are opposed, when they are anything but.

You have not disproved that the concepts are opposed in this instance. Which matters much more than whether or not "stereotypes might generally be true." Like, at best stereotypes are a distraction for the actual data we'd like to have discussions about.

> You have not disproved that the concepts are opposed in this instance.

Nor did I aim to. I only wanted to dispel the mistaken belief that stereotypes are mostly false in general. That you think I should have instead addressed some other point that in your opinion matter more is irrelevant - you are free to address it yourself.

The wider claim doesn't actually change anything about the discourse. You have not contributed to the discussion, because you've provided no additional information about whether or not the underlying claim is true. We are no closer to truth because of your comment. So you have not "dispelled the mistaken belief that stereotypes are mostly false in general" because we can't make an active assumption about this stereotype without directly proving it.

So... Their original point stands without direct evidence against it. As you have not provided direct evidence, your point is moot.

Very interesting papers. However, the last link:

> Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology

> some stereotypes are malevolent and destructive:

> ...

> Jews as grasping hook-nosed Nazis perpetrating genocide on innocent Palestinian babies.

Very underhanded way to paint the widely held accusations of genocide in Gaza as antisemitic...

Looking into it further: the CSPI is a right wing think-tank headed by Richard Hanania (from the website's bio, a thinker on the Right interested in culture wars, who has published vile stuff on Palestine, and has the infantile authoritarian viewpoints on politics that have unfortunately become synonymous with the "new right"). So take some salt with you if you're visiting that website...

See season 7, episode 4 (“Sex Ed”) of The Office for a non-cartoon media reference :)

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