jeneralize

Zak Greant and I wrote an article for Linux Format magazine. (Calling me a “professional open source evangelist” is an unauthorized exaggeration on the part of the magazine editors.)

Probably, if bigotry and sexism are defined as having implicit mental associations between specific behaviours and roles and specific sexes or racial groups.

Find out: http://www.implicit.harvard.edu

The Implicit Association Test measures reactive relationships between human distinctions (male / female, black / white, gay / straight, etc) and characteristics (entrepreneur / homemaker, tragic / happy, humiliate / pleasure, etc). The test measures how quickly you associate distinctions and characteristics: when the word “entrepreneur” flashes on the screen, does it take you longer to associate that word with “female” than with “male”? Do you associate negative words more quickly with pictures of black people than of white people?

Probably yes. Probably yes, even if your negative associations regard your own sex or race.

Malcolm Gladwell says in his book “blink” that fifty percent of black people have stronger positive associations with white people than with people of their own race.

WTF is that all about? It’s about the way our mind - our “subconscious” - does its own thing, sucks in its own information and makes its own judgements, regardless of our sensibilities, our analytical abilities, our choices our freedom our concerted efforts to rise out of ignorance and nastiness.

Frankly, this whole subconscious business just pisses me off.

…to use a rhyming dictionary?

367.1.2: filiate, affiliate, humiliate, conciliate.

516.7.1: agonize, antagonize.

17.203: antler, dismantler.

17.218.1: monomer, gastronomer, astronomer.