First with one of your examples; my impression has been that Larry Summers probably does not actually believe "women suck at math and science" - I think he was intending to make a much subtler statement aboutaverages and outliers. However, it seems clear that a lot of people relying on sound bites *believed* that he believed you example statement, which may actually be what's relevant to the discussion of social consequences.
Next up, I've known many instances of people choosing to overlook certain beliefs of a person and invite them to social functions anyway, even to the point of outright racists being invited by social progressives. In most cases, this is because the invitee was family. Now, I realize that that's an important and socially distinct extenuating circumstance, but it remains interesting that often in such cases positive interaction can be had as long as certain topics are avoided. Other people, of course, *wouldn't* put up with such things even in family, but where it does occur it's certainly a data point for active person/belief separation.
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Date: 2005-11-30 07:06 pm (UTC)First with one of your examples; my impression has been that Larry Summers probably does not actually believe "women suck at math and science" - I think he was intending to make a much subtler statement aboutaverages and outliers. However, it seems clear that a lot of people relying on sound bites *believed* that he believed you example statement, which may actually be what's relevant to the discussion of social consequences.
Next up, I've known many instances of people choosing to overlook certain beliefs of a person and invite them to social functions anyway, even to the point of outright racists being invited by social progressives. In most cases, this is because the invitee was family. Now, I realize that that's an important and socially distinct extenuating circumstance, but it remains interesting that often in such cases positive interaction can be had as long as certain topics are avoided. Other people, of course, *wouldn't* put up with such things even in family, but where it does occur it's certainly a data point for active person/belief separation.