Comment by commandar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by commandar | Hacker News Reader

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At the same time, I can kind of understand the point he's getting at.

Similar issue: I worked with someone via email for several months thinking they were female because their name is Kim before a coworker mentioned "uh, pretty sure Kim's a dude." You run into similar issues with e.g., women named Chris. I don't think being thrown by situations like that makes anyone look like an idiot.

Looking at it from an ethnic perspective, I'd be similarly thrown by finding out a guy named Santosh was a European white male.

Ideal world, sure, we wouldn't make assumptions about identity based on names. But it happens. I'm not sure that there is an answer that'd make everyone happy, to be honest.

> Ideal world, sure, we wouldn't make assumptions about identity based on names. But it happens. I'm not sure that there is an answer that'd make everyone happy, to be honest.

Of course we would, unless in the ideal world names would be uniformly distributed among population in a completely random way. But they're not.

The only problem here is seeing reasonable inference from a known probability distribution as ethically dubious.

Wasn't meaning ethics, just the risk of looking silly over time.

If you tend to make a lot of assumptions about someone just from their name before encountering them, then you are pretty much guaranteeing that you are going to get burnt a lot over time, unless you don't meet many people, as it simply isn't that good a guide.

I agree. Names just ain't that good of a heuristic.

I guess the point I disagree on is that I don't see it as getting burned. If you treat people differently based solely on their name, sure, that can cause problems.

For me when I'm mistaken, it's just a matter of making note of it and moving on. Not a big deal.

>Of course we would, unless in the ideal world names would be uniformly distributed among population in a completely random way. But they're not.

That's essentially the same point I was getting at.

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