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[Runaway_char]

On an unrelated note, this thread's title is super creepy - like something a villain would monologue about, haha

[GoblinCookie]

Not sure why this is a controversial topic. 'Prejudice' in some form is kinda necessary to keep the drama ball rolling (most wars happen right now because most people are intolerant fucks prejudiced against stealing babies), especially when in-civ/fortress politics become a thing. That doesn't mean you have to or should bring awkward real life stuff into it. Like maybe the Society of Pears really hate the Oar of Slapping for killing their holy dude in a time before time, or maybe everyone knows people from Boulderholes are untrustworthy because that one titan associated with lies waddled through there once. Maybe Dwarves and Elves really hate each other, or maybe they're besties 4 lyfe, who knows, let worldgen decide!

No, prejudice is not need to keep the drama ball rolling. Conflict is needed, but conflict and prejudice are *not* the same thing.  If two groups or individuals simply hate each other that is not prejudice, prejudice is when we automatically assume something is the case that we do not know based upon some fact that does not in itself imply what we are assuming.

Prejudice is not simply conflict, prejudice is a form of irrational thinking.

[PlumpHelmetMan]

On an unrelated note, this thread's title is super creepy - like something a villain would monologue about, haha

Yeah, taken out of context it admittedly sounds a bit sinister doesn't it?

[Paxiecrunchle]

Not sure why this is a controversial topic. 'Prejudice' in some form is kinda necessary to keep the drama ball rolling (most wars happen right now because most people are intolerant fucks prejudiced against stealing babies), especially when in-civ/fortress politics become a thing. That doesn't mean you have to or should bring awkward real life stuff into it. Like maybe the Society of Pears really hate the Oar of Slapping for killing their holy dude in a time before time, or maybe everyone knows people from Boulderholes are untrustworthy because that one titan associated with lies waddled through there once. Maybe Dwarves and Elves really hate each other, or maybe they're besties 4 life, who knows, let worldgen decide!

.
No, prejudice does not need to keep the drama ball rolling. Conflict is needed, but conflict and prejudice are *not* the same thing.  If two groups or individuals simply hate each other that is not prejudiced, prejudice is when we automatically assume something is the case that we do not know based upon some fact that does not in itself imply what we are assuming.

Prejudice is not simply conflicted, prejudice is a form of irrational thinking.

20 + upvotes for your insightful observation.

[Fleeting Frames]

I'm not sure I'd say it is always irrational, given non-omniscient thinker.

For instance, consider encountering a goblin. Before they could become visitors, in fort mode it'd almost always mean that you're looking at snatcher, ambush, siege, noble or a gosling. A player is likely to be prejudiced against a swarm of "g"s in a way they're not against a swarm of "d"s - may ignore the latter, even, while the first is going to get looked at or viewed when first seen. Maybe their heart will even race when seeing what might be a macegoblin next to fisherdwarf.

"But hey, you don't know these gs are out to kill your fortress, why are you treating them so differently from ds, it's unequal treatment you letterist" is not going to convince any player who has had lost a fort to 100 goblins coming in, and 100% of them engaging in killing their fort to death. In fact, I'm left a little askance for a way to claim it to be irrational prejudice.

As for the visitors, in adventure mode there's also the matter of their native KILL_NEUTRAL:REQUIRED ethics, which leads to some goblins being mandated to stab outsiders to the face. It's perhaps prejudiced for players to engage in information gathering before marching up to a goblin, but after they lost their previous adventurer to a sharp retort they'll be probably bit more suspicious of people who could have current ties to goblin civilization.

(Of course, there's also many adventure mode stories where the adventurer attacks or kills someone they shouldn't have, who wasn't hostile to them, which is letting the prejudice override more normal course of action to the point of irrationality.)



Now, this topic was about NPC-NPC interactions, not player foibles, lucky charms and "just so happens to do the right thing" dances. But for above, NPCs are much less able to gather information without engaging than players are.

[Maximum Spin]

It's not at all irrational. It's perfectly rational under insufficient information.

[VislarRn]

It's not at all irrational. It's perfectly rational under insufficient information.

Exactly, prejudice is actually a form of heuristic thinking.
When we don't have resources to consciously process all information, we try to spot some patterns and generalities.

Heuristic thinking becomes prominent in two types of situations -
1. People have not enough information. (One of the examples is criminal profiling, which is prejudicial technique used in psychology.)
2. People have too much information to process. (Advertising can be used as an example for this)

In both of the cases there is a deviation from optimum that is required for human to be able to form more analytical and well-thought conclusions.

In perspective of social-evolution, heuristics helped people to regulate social trust. Humans seem to have need to identify markings and symbols that resemble your own culture, tribe or brotherhood. This automatically makes you distrust difference.

[Dyret]

No, prejudice is not need to keep the drama ball rolling. Conflict is needed, but conflict and prejudice are *not* the same thing.  If two groups or individuals simply hate each other that is not prejudice, prejudice is when we automatically assume something is the case that we do not know based upon some fact that does not in itself imply what we are assuming.

Two groups of individuals really hating each other does require a degree of prejudice though, especially if it's long term and over something as esoteric as an old religious conflict or a disagreement over ethics.

[gnome]

I don't think prejudice is exclusive to physical appearance but either way it seems to be what the driving point of this thread is. I personally do not see it as necessary.

[Bumber]

On an unrelated note, this thread's title is super creepy - like something a villain would monologue about, haha

Can Prejudice Save the World?
More Prejudice
Prejudice, My Love
Prejudice: The Definitive Guide
Start Your Day with Prejudice

[GoblinCookie]

It's not at all irrational. It's perfectly rational under insufficient information.

Exactly, prejudice is actually a form of heuristic thinking.
When we don't have resources to consciously process all information, we try to spot some patterns and generalities.

Heuristic thinking becomes prominent in two types of situations -
1. People have not enough information. (One of the examples is criminal profiling, which is prejudicial technique used in psychology.)
2. People have too much information to process. (Advertising can be used as an example for this)

In both of the cases there is a deviation from optimum that is required for human to be able to form more analytical and well-thought conclusions.

Prejudice is actually fallacious heuristics in general, not a form of heuristics as such.  The fallacy can be in the nature of the heuristics (making general inferences based upon unsound premises) or it can be the clinging to information gained by heuristics when more solid information exists that contradicts it. 

For instance take an entity of dwarves that tend to get on poorly with an entity of goblins to the west called the Dungeons of Menace.  If a group of goblins from the west turns up the correct heuristic conclusion for them to draw is that they are members of the Dungeons of Menace and be suspicious of them, until they know better.  There is however a second entity of goblins called the Evil of Blinding to the east, which the dwarf entity is aware of and has no history of conflict.  Now a certain goblin called Xuttot Sickchaos from the Evil of Blinding arrives in one of the fortresses of the dwarf entity.

A prejudiced dwarf entity will conclude that because he is a goblin he must be up to no good even though his direction of travel implies he comes from the Evil of Blinding.  The prejudiced group has taken something that symbolizes Dungeons of Menaceness (being a goblin) and have inverted the relationship.  Instead of goblin implying Dungeons of Menace which implies bad, it is Dungeons of Menace which implies goblin which implies bad.  Hence the prejudiced dwarf entity concludes that Xuttot Sickchaos is up to no good, simply because he is a goblin.  A non-prejudiced dwarf entity on the other hand does not assume this because they understand the detail that matters (from the Dungeons of Menace) is not the case in this instance.

A second goblin Kax Torturedscour turns up from the west.  Both a non-prejudiced and prejudiced dwarf entity will come to the exact same conclusion and act identically, but the prejudiced entity is still thinking in a fallacious manner.  The non-prejudiced entity will conclude based upon the fact that Kax Torturedscour comes from the west and is a goblin that he is likely of the Dungeons of Menace; meaning that he is probably up to no good.  The prejudiced entity will conclude based upon the goblinness of the individual that he is up to no good.  The funny thing about prejudice is that the goblinness of the Dungeons of Menace might not be what they care about, they could instead decide that it is the fact their hair is orange that makes them bad; in that case Xuttot Sickchaos would be fine provides the Evil of Binding goblins have different hair colour. 

In perspective of social-evolution, heuristics helped people to regulate social trust. Humans seem to have need to identify markings and symbols that resemble your own culture, tribe or brotherhood. This automatically makes you distrust difference.

You have things backwards.  People are not very conscious of the marking and symbols of their own culture at all, they tend to see these things in neutral terms as just being 'normal stuff'.  They are instead focused entirely upon the differences that implies foreignness, seeing their own culture as some kind of universal norm against which the foreign folks are defined.  The only situation in which a group tends to focus heavily upon the things that makes *them* different is when a group either feels oppressed by outsiders or in a subordinate position compared to them.  The goblins of the Dungeons and Menace do not go around thinking all day about how goblin they are and about everything that symbolizes their goblinness, they think of themselves as normal people and everything they have as normal stuff. 

The prejudiced dwarves on the other hand see the goblinness in everything the Dungeons of Menace do, even though they are probably unaware of this. 

Two groups of individuals really hating each other does require a degree of prejudice though, especially if it's long term and over something as esoteric as an old religious conflict or a disagreement over ethics.

That is a funny thing to say given the game presently has no prejudice in it at all but yet has plenty of long-term conflicts.  Two groups of individuals hating eachother is not prejudice, it is two groups of individuals hating eachother.  Prejudice is when a trait that is associated with another trait takes on a meaning out of context, it is actually quite possible to have a positive prejudice.  This is when a trait that is associated with a good person or group starts to automatically imply goodness to other persons or group.

[dragdeler]

Code: [Select]

focused entirely upon the differences that implies foreignness, seeing their own culture as some kind of universal norm against which the foreign folks are defined
fun fact: when I was a small child I tought it was weird that people who speak another language don't understand me, I mean can't they just listen to the sound the meaning makes in their head, and hear the same thing as me?

[PlumpHelmetMan]

That has more to do with very young children simply not yet having a developed enough sense of empathy to understand that other people think differently than they do than it does with actual prejudice.

[VislarRn]

...

I'll get the point, but I think have to make mine more clear tbh.

I was trying to paint out this kind of basic idea:
Fallacy resembles faulty information processing, specifically in context of psychological reasoning.
Fallacious thinking doesn't have to induce faulty behaviour in biological-survivalism context.

Example - lots of people are prone not to like spiders or snakes. It doesn't matter if they are harmless or not. Keeping them away is part of primal behavior that helps/helped to survive.

Now, when talking about rationality - we have to define the context of rationality.

[Maximum Spin]

...

Apart from misquoting me, your interpretation is pretty faulty. For example, the game as it stands definitely contains prejudices, so your last paragraph is based on a false premise. In general, you seem to imagine that "prejudice" means something other than it actually does. I'm not going to go through this on a point-by-point basis, but, by way of example, your "non-prejudiced dwarf entity" from your description actually is exhibiting prejudice. Essentially, your whole post misses the point.

I suspect that, in general, this disagreement comes from differing definitions of "prejudice"; that would certainly, at least, explain the people who keep coming in and assuming that "prejudice" means eg "racism exactly as exhibited by one particular small group of humans during one particular small span of history".