{
  "format": "arthurs-review-publication-proof/v1",
  "createdAt": "2026-07-13T15:49:53.207Z",
  "publicUrl": "https://blog.leesaitool.com/society/what-about-stereotypes",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-04T05:06:36.793Z",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-11T10:29:48.608Z",
  "article": {
    "titleZh": "关于Stereotypes的一些思考",
    "titleEn": "Some Thoughts on Stereotypes",
    "slug": "what-about-stereotypes",
    "category": "society",
    "excerptZh": "根据学校的知识，你真的能够避免刻板印象吗？或者说你知道刻板印象是什么吗？  ",
    "excerptEn": "Based on what school teaches you, can you really avoid stereotypes? Or do you even know what stereotypes are?",
    "seoDescription": "",
    "bodyZh": "我今天要讲的是我关于我们现在学习的 stereotypes 和批判性思考的一些反思。当然，我并不是要批评批判性思考和 stereotypes，我当然觉得有比没有好。但是我觉得在几点上，我们现在学习的这些东西，偏离了这两样重要的思想方法的本质。\n\n我先讲刻板印象，那么刻板印象创造出来不是没有原因的。不是从天上掉下来的，也不是人凭空想象出来的，肯定是基于某一些对于事实的观察，无论这个观察是不是片面。这些 stereotypes 总是存在的。有些时候，对于一些特定人群的鄙视性的 stereotype 当然需要去除，但是有些时候在不适当的场景过度强调去除 stereotypes 反而会导致没法看清一些真相。\n\n就拿我们读的 Outsiders 来举例，比如说一直要强调，把里面的人物当人看，完整的看待，然后把坏的一面拎出来，都聚焦好的一面。这种思维方式我觉得在这种书里面是很有毒的。那比如说 Socs在我们的作业里面被要求，让我们看看这些有哪些好的地方，跟 stereotypes 有什么区别的地方。那么某一个例子里面就说，他们被 Greasers 认为是 white trash，而实际上不是。那么这里其实就是一种特殊的 stereotypes，我将其称为片面型 stereotypes，也就是这一种刻板印象反映了一部分真相。虽然确实还有别的真相，但是对于 Greasers 来说，他们看到的和感受到的 Socs 就是他们的刻板印象，没有任何区别。\n\n所以在这时候，让 Greasers 来包容这些人，那就是道德要求过于高了。从车上跳下来，骚扰和殴打落单的 Greasers 成员，做出暴力性举动，进行压迫。这些并不是两方心里和解就可以解决的问题。很多时候 stereotypes 是强者压迫弱者的工具，或者忽视弱者的工具。要是拿这个工具来去原谅强者的压迫行为，就太过于无耻了。这样说吧，一个人有好的一面，不阻碍他有坏的一面。并不是说看到这个人好的一面，就可以原谅坏的一面了。\n\n随便举个例子，托马斯·杰斐逊是美国的开国元勋，《独立宣言》的主要起草人，写下了\"人人生而平等\"这句话，对于美国的建立和近现代民主思想的传播做出了很大的贡献。但是这样好的贡献，不阻碍杰斐逊终其一生持有超过六百名奴隶，对他们施以强迫劳动，剥夺他们的自由和人身权利。那对于这些在他庄园里失去自由、失去家人、世代为奴的人来说，你要求他们看到杰斐逊写了多么漂亮的自由宣言，于是原谅，这是很糟糕的一种行为。所以总结来说，stereotypes主要是强者压迫弱者的工具，不能用它来原谅强者的压迫行为。第二，stereotypes很有可能是half true，但是half true的东西不是假的，是实际有的。第三，心理谅解改变不了物理上实际发生的压迫和暴力。\n\n那么再说批判性思维，我会说的稍微少一些。从古代以来，从来没有出现过批判性思维有标准答案的情况，要是你能拿一套方法来进行批判性思考，或者具体的说，拿一套可执行、非常方便的方法来进行批判性思考，那肯定就不是批判性思考了，那是正常的逻辑推理。批判性思考的对象非常重要。批判的应该是系统，批判的应该是某一套逻辑、某一套思维方法，而不是一个具体发生的事实。\n一个非常典型的例子：两方辩论\n\n具体形式大概是这样：老师给学生一个争议性话题，比如”转基因食品是否应该被禁止”，“是否应该跑到火星上？”，这类的问题，然后让学生分成两组，一组支持，一组反对，各自搜集论据、进行辩论。有时辩论完了以后再互换一下，或者说让学生从两边都思考思考。\n\n辩论结束后，老师通常会说：你看，这个问题很复杂，两边都有道理，重要的是你学会了独立思考、去除了你的 bias，能够50/50地看问题。那么问题在哪？问题在于说，把有证据等同于这个论点有效。那学生学到的并不是怎么样得到一个结论，怎么样接近真理，不一定是达到，不过接近，而是说学到了修辞技巧。学到的是任何结论，你只要找到支撑的论点，就可以成立。这种练习完全绕开了我们称为认识论的核心问题，也就是说我怎么判断一个东西是真的，一个东西是假的。反正我是不相信这世界上所有东西都是半真半假，要去除 bias，总是有很多东西是有一个明确结论的。那么反正通过这样培养出来的，就是一种伪批判性思维，只能质疑，不能判断，尤其是很多教程让你找权威材料，\n\n让你找 reliable source，这种根本就是摒弃了批判性思考。批判性思考从历史上的目的是为了判断。比如说我见到了一件事情，我不知道对不对。通过批判性思考，我可以知道这件事情对我来说是对的还是不对的。但是通过现在的这种学校里的练习，你只能知道怎么样说服别人，这是对的或者不对的。你不能说服自己，因为你没有学到怎么样判断证据的有效性。",
    "bodyEn": "What I want to talk about today is some reflections on stereotypes and critical thinking that we're currently studying in school. Of course, I'm not here to trash critical thinking or stereotypes—I think having them is better than not having them. But I do think on several points, what we're learning in school right now drifts away from the essence of these two important ways of thinking.\n\nLet me start with stereotypes. Stereotypes don't come out of nowhere. They don't fall from the sky, and they aren't conjured up out of thin air—they're always based on some observation of reality, whether that observation is one-sided or not. These stereotypes always exist. Sometimes, derogatory stereotypes about certain groups absolutely need to be removed. But sometimes, overemphasizing the removal of stereotypes in the wrong context actually ends up preventing you from seeing the truth.\n\nTake the Outsiders we read for example. There's always this push to treat the characters as full human beings, to see them whole, and then to pull out the bad parts and focus on the good. I think that way of thinking is genuinely toxic in the context of a book like that. For instance, in our assignments on the Outsiders, we're asked to look at what good qualities the Socs have and how they differ from stereotypes. One example says that the Greasers see the Socs as \"white trash,\" but in reality, they're not. So right there, that's a special kind of stereotype—what I'd call a one-sided stereotype. It's a stereotype that reflects part of the truth. Sure, there are other truths too, but to the Greasers, what they see and feel about the Socs is their stereotype, and there's no meaningful difference between the two.\n\nSo at that point, asking the Greasers to be tolerant of these people? That's setting the moral bar way too high. Jumping out of cars, harassing and beating up lone Greasers, acting violent, exercising oppression. These aren't problems you can solve by having both sides make peace in their hearts. A lot of the time, stereotypes are tools the powerful use to oppress the weak, or tools to simply ignore the weak. If you take that tool and use it to excuse the oppression of the powerful, that's just shameless. Let me put it this way: a person having good qualities doesn't stop them from having bad ones. Seeing someone's good side doesn't mean you get to forgive their bad side.\n\nHere's a random example. Thomas Jefferson was a founding father of the United States, the principal drafter of the Declaration of Independence, the man who wrote \"all men are created equal.\" He made enormous contributions to the founding of America and to the spread of modern democratic thought. But those contributions don't erase the fact that Jefferson owned over six hundred slaves over the course of his life, forcing them into labor, stripping them of their freedom and their human rights. For the people who lost their freedom, lost their families, and were enslaved for generations on his plantation—you want them to read Jefferson's beautiful words about liberty and then just forgive him? That's a terrible thing to do. So to sum it up: stereotypes are mainly tools the powerful use to oppress the weak, and you can't use them to excuse the powerful's oppression. Second, stereotypes are often half-true, but half-true isn't the same as false—it's still real. Third, psychological forgiveness doesn't change the actual oppression and violence that happened in physical reality.\n\nNow, about critical thinking—I'll say a bit less on this. Since ancient times, there has never been a case where critical thinking had a standard answer. If you can take a set method to think critically—or more concretely, if you can follow a convenient, executable procedure to think critically—then that definitely isn't critical thinking. That's just normal logical reasoning. What you subject to critical scrutiny matters enormously. You should be critiquing systems, critiquing a certain logic or a certain way of thinking—not a specific fact that happened.\n\nA very typical example: the two-sided debate. Roughly, it works like this: the teacher gives the students a controversial topic—like \"should GMO foods be banned\" or \"should we go to Mars?\"—and then splits the class into two groups, one for, one against. Each side gathers evidence and debates. Sometimes after the debate they switch sides, or the teacher asks students to think from both perspectives.\n\nAfter the debate, the teacher usually says something like: see, this issue is complex, both sides make sense, what matters is that you learned to think independently, removed your bias, and can look at the issue 50/50. So where's the problem? The problem is equating having evidence with having a valid argument. What students actually learn isn't how to arrive at a conclusion, how to get closer to the truth—not necessarily reaching it, but getting closer. What they learn is rhetorical technique. They learn that any conclusion can stand as long as you find arguments to support it. This kind of exercise completely sidesteps what we call the core question of epistemology—how do I judge whether something is true or false? I don't believe everything in this world is half-true and half-false, and removing bias doesn't mean everything becomes ambiguous. There are always things with clear conclusions. And what this kind of training produces is a pseudo-critical thinking—one that can only question but never judge. Especially since so many guides tell you to find authoritative materials, to find \"reliable sources,\" which is basically the opposite of critical thinking. The historical purpose of critical thinking was to judge. Like, I encounter something and I don't know if it's right or wrong. Through critical thinking, I can figure out whether it's right or wrong for me. But through the kind of exercises schools run now, all you learn is how to convince other people whether something is right or wrong. You can't convince yourself, because you never learned how to evaluate whether evidence is actually valid.",
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    "tags": []
  }
}