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Article Summary

Any statement saying that “members of group X are/do Y” (such as “liberals are crazy”), without specifying how many members of X are/do Y, should never be believed. It can and should be ignored. Either it is meaninglessly vague or it will almost certainly produce false beliefs that are nearly impossible to shake. Such a statement can be interpreted to have basically one of five meanings:

All members of X are/do Y. Most members of X are/do Y. Some member of X is/does Y. Y is more common among members of X than members of some other group(s) comparable in some respect. I associate X with Y; you should too!

Something “is/does Y” either absolutely (e.g. a man is five feet tall) or compared to somehow-comparable things (e.g. a man is as tall as someone else). But if Y is comparative, and no one specifies the thing(s) to which Y is being compared, then no comparison can be made. So unless the comparison is given, if Y is comparative then saying that a group “is Y” gives no information at all. So #4 above is often meaningless. For example, “men are tall” is a meaningless statement because it provides no information.

When most people say “members of X are/do Y,” they can usually only justify meaning #3 or #4. But most people who accept “members of X are/do Y” assume meaning #1 or #2 (in fact, they assume that over 90% of X are/do Y) — until their belief is challenged, when they will switch back to #3 or #4 to defend their belief from evidence. Those people may not all try to lie to themselves, but making someone believe that “members of X are/do Y” will almost always make that person lie to themself unknowingly.

Most people who say “members of X are/do Y” want to say something about X as a whole. However, only meaning #1 or #2 can do that: #3 only describes a minority which may consist only of outliers, and #4 only describes how multiple groups relate instead of describing any group in itself. Associative reasoning is only reliable about stable and predictable subjects in familiar environments, so meaning #5 is unjustified unless it is about such subjects within the speaker’s experience.

“Members of X are/do Y” statements often are infuriatingly common in political memes and zingers, but based on this article’s reasoning, all of them can be dismissed out of hand.

Outline

* Probably the most important sections.

Different Kinds of Generalizations

One of the most common kinds of description that I have encountered is of the form, “members of group X are Y.” Y can be a noun or an adjective. For verbs, “members of group X do Y” is the same kind of description. Either can affirm (X is/does Y) or deny (X is/does not Y).

Consider, for example, a few generalizations about men which I found while browsing the Internet:

Now try a few generalizations about politics:

Each of those generalizations was said unironically to make a point, based usually on a handful of examples which — according to the person who wrote it — justified the statement. But if I am correct, all of those statements are either meaningless or so deceptive that they are worse than outright lying. They should all be rejected out of hand.

I call any “members of X are/do Y” statement an “Un-Quantified Generalization” (UQG), because it lacks a quantifier. By “quantifier” I mean any word(s) that say how many members of X are Y. Quantifiers include words like “all,” “most,” “some,” and any percentage or proportion.

The “Y” phrase of any UQG is a property of, or action done by, an individual instead of a group. For example, “Pandas are an endangered species” is not a UQG because being an endangered species is a group-level property: no individual panda is an endangered species, but the group including all pandas is itself an endangered species.

So to tell the difference between a UQG (“members of X are/do Y”) and a group-level property/action, try to describe one particular member of X as Y. If that description makes sense, like how “men are trash” becomes “that man is trash,” then the original statement was a UQG. Otherwise, like how “pandas are an endangered species” becomes the category error “that panda is an endangered species,” the original statement described a group and was not a UQG.

I will show that any UQG can and should be safely ignored because it is either meaninglessly vague or will probably give those who hear it false beliefs. For any reasonable person to consider any UQG true, that person must first specify how many members of X are/do Y. After hearing or reading a UQG, one must change it to a quantified generalization before one believes that it is true or that it is false.

This post’s title references a funny contradiction attributed to Mark Twain:

One may wonder, then, how I can criticize generalizations in general. Isn’t that a generalization too? But Twain’s quote is a quantified generalization: its quantifier is “all.” Similarly, I use a quantified generalization to say that all un-quantified generalizations can and should be ignored.

How to Interpret Any Generalization

Before discussing some serious problems with all UQGs, let’s map out the many ways that one can interpret each kind of UQG. Since the possible meanings all vary by part of speech, the interpretations of a noun-UQG, an adjective-UQG, and a verb-UQG will be shown in that order. In the following lists of meanings, #1 will usually be “every,” #2 “most,” #3 “some,” and #4 “more than.” Remember that for later sections.

A UQG can be interpreted to have one of four meanings when Y is a noun:

Every member of X is a Y. Most members of X are Ys, so the average member of X is a Y. Some member(s) of X is a Y. The proportion of Ys is higher in X than in other groups comparable to X in some respect.

An adjective is relative if it is defined by comparison, like “P is taller than Q.” Otherwise it is absolute, such as “P is 2 meters tall.” A special case of this distinction will play a crucial role in my argument later.

A UQG has eight possible meanings when Y is an adjective — one absolute and one relative for each of the four noun-UQG meanings. First, consider the meanings of a UQG when Y is an absolute adjective:

Every members of X is Y. Most members of X are Y. Some member(s) of X is Y. The average member of X is Y.

Next, consider the meanings of a UQG when Y is a relative adjective:

Every member of X is more Y than any member of some other groups comparable to X in some respect. Most members of X are more Y than most members of some other groups comparable to X in some respect. Some member(s) of X is more Y than some member(s) of some other groups comparable to X in some respect. The average member of X is more Y than the average member of some other groups comparable to X in some respect.

Finally, consider verbs. The meanings of a verb-UQG are, as a group, even more complicated than those of an adjective-UQG. There are two variables in a verb-UQG: how many members of X do action Y, and how often they do action Y. Each of those variables can have one of four values, one for each of the four meanings. Multiplying the variables gives us a full sixteen interpretations of a verb-UQG.

So, the interpretation of a verb-UQG can start four ways…

All members of X… Most members of X… Some members of X… A higher proportion of members of X than members of other groups comparable to X in some respect…

…and end four ways:

…always do Y. …do Y more often than not. …sometimes do Y. …do Y more frequently than other groups comparable to X in some respect.

To make those deny instead of affirm, replace “do” with “don’t do.”

Problems with All Unstated Comparisons

Many relative adjectives can be deceptively phrased as absolute. Consider that “P is tall” implicitly compares P to some other things which are comparable to P in height. If not for this implicit comparison, then “P is tall” would be meaningless: if P is “tall” by no given measure and compared to nothing, then one learns nothing about how tall P is. Unless P is the tallest or shortest thing imaginable, it is tall relative to some things and short relative to others. Therefore, if one is told that “P is tall” but does not know the measure, the comparison, or that P is most or least, then one learns nothing.

For any thing and any relative adjective, either the thing exemplifies the adjective more than anything else imaginable, less than anything else imaginable, or more than some but less than others. In the first or second case, the comparison is irrelevant because the thing will exemplify the adjective most compared to anything. If there are more than four possible ways to be that adjective, however — as there almost always are — then the thing is unlikely to exemplify the adjective most or least.

In any other case, if the context fails to specify the (implicit or explicit) comparison of the adjective, then the adjective is meaningless. I will call it an empty adjective because it conveys no information about the thing. Any empty adjective can be ignored, because ignoring it does not make one lose any information. It should be ignored because it is a waste of words, and deceptively appear to convey information when it does not.

Even then, I am being too generous. If a thing exemplifies a relative adjective more than anything else, one can remove any confusion by saying “most” or adding the “-est” suffix. For example, calling P the tallest is much more informative than calling P tall without specifying a comparison. The same applies for exemplifying an adjective less than anything else: one can simply say “least.” Therefore, I will call any relative adjective without a comparison an empty adjective, because it could be so easily rephrased and because it is so unlikely to exemplify that adjective the most or least as previously described.

Problems with All Unjustified Generalizations

A dangerously misleading use of a UQG is when someone only justifies one meaning, but switches to another in their conclusion. Specifically, it is an equivocation or ambiguity fallacy — switching the meaning of a phrase between different parts of an argument.

Consider the generalizations about men and political groups listed earlier. For all of them, the evidence given only justifies meaning #3 (“some”) or #4 (“more than”), but was implicitly used for meaning #1 (“all”) or #2 (“most”) anyway. Most people who use a UQG usually want to say something about group X as a whole. But if they can only justify meaning #3 or #4, then they can say approximately nothing about X as a group.

First, consider that meaning #3 only describes a tiny minority. Since #3 only means that at least one member of X is Y, #3 says nothing at all about the other member(s) of X. The member(s) described in #3 may be total outliers, so #3 will probably represent the group X very inaccurately. In other words, #3 is a bad generalization.

Next, consider that meaning #4 (“more than”) only describes the relation between groups instead of a group in itself. So it does not describe group X at all, only how X relates to some other unnamed group(s). And in the exact same way that a relative adjective is empty if its comparison is not given, meaning #4 is empty if the comparison is not given. Meaning #4 of a UQG, without a given comparison, is then not even good enough to be meaningfully accurate or inaccurate. It is literally meaningless. Calling it a “bad generalization” would be too much of a compliment. It should not even be called a generalization, because it is merely useless noise.

Most Generalizations are Unjustified

So far I have only described conceptual problems with UQGs, but if those problems are rare, then my criticisms are unneeded. Unfortunately, Bian & Cimpian (2017) found that that unjustified and deceptive UQGs are rampant in everyday conversation (they call UQGs “generic beliefs” and quantified generalizations “statistical beliefs”):

“Even though generic beliefs are often adopted on the basis of little statistical evidence, they nevertheless suggest – for example, when expressed in conversation – that the relevant attributes are almost always present (Brandone et al. 2015; Cimpian et al. 2010) … [And] most participants assume prevalence levels of greater than 90% when exposed to unfamiliar generic beliefs (Cimpian et al. 2010)” (emphasis added).

Whenever you consider saying a UQG, consider that people who hear you will assume that you meant over 90%. So most people interpret a UQG as meaning #1 or #2 — even though the justification of UQGs usually only suffices to justify meaning #3 or #4:

“Although [UQGs] are largely independent of the underlying statistics at the stage when they are initially formulated, they immediately take on the appearance of being rooted in strong statistical uniformities. For anyone who has little firsthand familiarity with the actual facts, this asymmetry can lead to largely mistaken impressions about the state of the world” (Bian & Cimpian, 2017).

As I described before, most people unfortunately and irrationally prefer UQGs:

“People prefer to reason using generic rather than statistical beliefs, especially about stereotypical group traits, since generic beliefs are simpler and more intuitive … Note that ‘generic beliefs … are often endorsed on the basis of scant statistical evidence … are resistant to counterevidence … give the impression of strong statistical support … [and] are accompanied by misleading explanatory intuitions.’ The preference for generic over statistical beliefs underlies many of the hundreds of cognitive biases which make us horrifyingly irrational.”

Embarrassingly, this passage makes me a hypocrite: I meant that most people usually prefer to reason using generic beliefs, and that any generic belief is simpler and more intuitive than a quantified statement of the same belief. Without those quantifiers, someone could easily have assumed my first sentence to mean that all people prefer to reason using generic beliefs, which would have been false.

Even worse than how easily most people believe any given unjustified UQG is how hard it is to make most people stop believing one:

“The fact that generic claims – and the beliefs they express – are not about numbers or quantities has a crucial consequence: It severs their truth conditions from the sort of statistical data that one could objectively measure in the world … [and] once a generic belief is adopted, it is not easily falsified by exposure to evidence that contradicts it. The generic belief that MOSQUITOES carry the West Nile virus is not discarded as soon as a mosquito bite–or tens, or hundreds–fails to infect us. (The same goes for law-abiding Muslims and Asian people who aren’t good at math.) … 4-year-olds who first heard that PAGONS (an unfamiliar category) are friendly and were then shown a counterexample ended up generalizing this trait to novel pagons as frequently as children who did not see the counterexample (Chambers et al. 2008), which suggests that the counterexample had no effect on their endorsement of the generic belief” (Bian & Cimpian, 2017).

So in many ways, telling someone a UQG is worse than lying to them. At least when someone is told a false statement, that person usually knows what it would mean for the statement to be false, and how to learn if it is false. Telling someone a UQG makes it nearly impossible for a person to ever discover whether and how the UQG is false.

All Other Interpretations are Unjustified

A more realistic, but perhaps more cynical, fifth interpretation of a UQG is associative instead of categorical — based on System 1 instead of 2, to use dual-process terminology: “Members of X are/do Y” means “I associate X with Y; you should too!”

Whenever a UQG is used as an insult, this is usually what is actually meant. Associating a group with something bad, and then (often loudly and obnoxiously) proclaiming that the two should be associated, uses a UQG not to share information but as a bludgeon to “verbally hit” the insulted group. Every offensive UQG is nothing more than angry noise.

Unlike the others, this interpretation of a UQG has two parts: descriptive and prescriptive. Also unlike the others, it merely describes minds instead of external reality, since associations between meanings (ideas) exist only in minds. The descriptive part describes one’s intuition, which stores knowledge only as mental associations between ideas and/or percepts.

While useful for making predictions about stable subjects in familiar environments, intuition is notoriously epistemically unreliable otherwise. Therefore, a UQG under this fifth interpretation can only be justified when all of the subjects are stable, predictable, and within the speaker’s experience. Otherwise, any UQG under this fifth interpretation is unjustified. So whenever the normative part tells the listener to associate ideas outside of the speaker’s experience, it should be ignored.

One may think that I ignored a possible sixth interpretation: a UQG means that members of X naturally tend to be Y. A natural tendency would be part of a thing’s “essential nature.” But no universal essence exists. So the sixth interpretation must collapse into one of the previously-described interpretations. “Members of X naturally tend to be/do Y” must mean either that all, most, some, or the average member(s) of X are/do Y — either absolutely or relative to similar groups, and at some point(s) in time. Even if a universal essence of existed, then it would collapse into “all members of X are/do Y” because every universal essence is just that—universal, applying to all things in which it exists.

Similarly, one may think that “under normal conditions, any member of X will be/do Y” is a legitimate sixth interpretation. But any way that one defines these so-called “normal conditions” will again collapse into one of the four previously-described interpretations. For example, if “normal conditions” means conditions which happen most of the time, then “members of X are/do Y under normal conditions” means “most members of X are/do Y.”

Apply This Principle to Eliminate Political Stupidity

Based on this reasoning, everyone should always reject any statement phrased as a UQG unless and until the statement is rephrased as a quantified generalization. If someone tells you “members of X are/do Y,” do not believe them until they indicate how many.

Of all the kinds of statements I have seen which fall into the trap of using UQGs, political memes and zingers have usually been the worst offenders. Recall the examples of political generalizations that I listed above. They should all be rejected out of hand:

Either meaningless or deceptive, so it can be safely ignored. Next?

Also either meaningless or deceptive, so it too can be safely ignored. Maybe you are starting to understand why the seemingly abstruse semantic point made by this article can be very useful: it gives a very, very sharp razor to shave away many — perhaps even most — of the stupid things that some people say. Next?

Also either meaningless or deceptive. This one is particularly disgusting, because the author of that article said that “[f]or the first side of this equation, I need no sources.” I call bull. He must not only have sources but rephrase his stupid zinger to actually say anything meaningfully accurate. Finally, consider the most ridiculous generalization in this post:

This one is meaningless and deceptive because of its infuriatingly vague term “The Left.” What the heck is The Left? Presumably it is some kind of group, but I do not have the faintest clue who or what its members are. Are its members people? If so, are they anyone who believes in leftist ideals? Are they leftist activists? Leftist politicians? Some arbitrary combination thereof? Or are its members leftist institutions? If so, are they political activism groups? Corporations? Unions? Could the members instead be leftist ideas? If so, are those ideas that leftists created, or ideas supporting leftism? And what even is leftism?! What the heck is The Left?!

Normally I try to avoid rhetorical questions unless I intend to answer them. However, I really want someone to answer those questions and tell what the heck “The Left” or “The Right” is.

I apologize for going on a tangent there. Anyway, much of this post was based on a 3-page article about why stereotypes are usually generic beliefs and therefore inaccurate. I highly recommend reading it:

Bian, L., & Cimpian, A. (2017). Are stereotypes accurate? A perspective from the cognitive science of concepts (PDF). Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 40. doi:10.1017/S0140525X15002307

Bonus points to anyone who realized that the Macchiavelli quote in this article’s header image is a UQG and therefore hypocritical. Double bonus points to anyone who found a UQG that I unknowingly and uncritically used in this article myself, although I think that I managed to avoid using any. I admit that I have often returned to this article, caught another UQG in it that I previously missed, and fixed my phrasing accordingly.