A few days ago, during one of the long physics calculations on the room 408 whiteboard, the following equation was written down:
women ≥ a sack of potatoes
This was not new to me; I’ve known for quite some time that women are indeed greater than or equal to a sack of potatoes. But it was brought to my attention that some people may find this statement offensive; particularly some women.
But why should anyone be offended? All that is being said is that women are at least as good as a sack of potatoes and yet some people still manage to draw some sort of offensive vibe (and I’m not talking about potatophiliacs). I feel that we’ve struck up against a deeply rooted misunderstanding of logic. Some people choose to interpret the statement as meaning that I believe women are sometimes only equal to a sack of potatoes. This is not what is being said. ‘Greater than or equal to’ does not mean ’sometimes equal to’, or anything else like that. It’s analogous to the general tendency to affirm the consequent in logic. (eg. When Zac has nothing better to do, he posts on the blog. Zac is posting on the blog, therefore he has nothing better to do.) It’s a very common mistake.
Anyway, I just find it kind of interesting that logical statements like this can be easily misconstrued, even by the 31337 physicists in room 408.
(NOTE: there are not thirty thousand physicists in room 408. I meant something else.)
April 13, 2007 at 6:08 pm |
I don’t think that the statement could be considered offensive because of a misinterpretation of logic. I think it is to do with the introduction of political correctness into our society. Nowadays, we feel that we can’t say anything without checking ourselves first. It is no longer comfortable to say “that Jewish guy” or “you know, Kelly, the Asian chick” or “she’s totally a lesbian” on a crowded bus, even if that guy is Jewish, Kelly is Asian and she is a lesbian (and despite the fact that you personally have no prejudice towards Jews, Asians or lesbians) because of the fear that someone who overhears you might think that you mean it in a racist/homophobic way. Even as I write this, I find myself habitually checking what I write to make sure I don’t phrase this in an offensive way and then have to remind myself that I know that I don’t mean anything in an offensive way, so if it is taken that way by someone, it is their problem. But I still have to go through this process.
In the same way, we habitually ask ourselves whether writing women ≥ a sack of potatoes (or anything about women in general) could offend someone. Writing men ≥ a sack of potatoes would not offend anyone – except possibly some feminists who would get upset that women weren’t included in the equation.
My question is this. Did anyone actually get offended by the statement or is it just that someone questioned whether someone could get offended by the statement? I don’t think anyone would get offended. I think we have just been conditioned to fear what we say.
April 15, 2007 at 9:21 am |
I think both are missing a point here: that even comparing woman to an inanimate object to claim they are greater, equal or whatever is plainly grotesque.
April 15, 2007 at 9:46 am |
No, I don’t think so at all. You find it grotesque because you know that a woman is obviously greater (or in a different class, or whatever) than a sack of potatoes. But you know that because at some point in your life, you made the comparison and decided that one does not even compare to the other – then during your life, this has been reaffirmed by your experience and the social teachings that human life is valuable etc. (which I, btw, agree with).
But then take a 4 year old child (maybe 3 year old, I don’t know, a child of an age that would fit the scenario) and present him with a sack of chocolate (an inanimate object) and a woman and tell the child that you are going to throw one of these off a cliff and that the child could chose which one he would like to “save”. It is not inconceivable that the child might consider the sack of chocolate worthier of being saved from such a horrible fate than a woman. Then, an adult would need to explain to the child that no, a sack of chocolate is not greater than a woman. In time (even though this child may not agree to begin with) will realise that this is the case and may even, at one point in their life, find the comparison completely offensive.
But I don’t think it should be offensive. At some point, the comparison must be made. Now, I am sure that it wasn’t written on the Room 408 board for the purposes of educating a 4 year old – but to condemn such a comparison is illogical.
April 15, 2007 at 3:41 pm |
Aggie, I think you are right about most of what you have said here. But I still feel that there is some misinterpretation of logic going on, and that the misinterpretation could be coming from our strange social ideals.
Your examples of the Jewish guy and the Asian chick remind me of a something that happened to my brother once. I don’t really remember the details, but it was something (vaguely) like this:
My brother was looking for his friend in a Nightclub. He asked one of the bouncers if he’d seen him…
“What does he look like?”
“He’s a black guy.”
.. and he got kicked out for being racist.
(Tom, if you see this, maybe you can post what _really_ happened.)
I guess it’s ok to describe someone as being tall, or wearing a red t-shirt; but not ok to describe them as being black.
As to whether or not anyone in room 408 was actually offended, I guess not. I don’t think anyone was offended by it, they just thought that other people would be. Actually, I made a deal with Ashley that I would post about this if Mel got offended. But she didn’t; and she kept trying to come up with situations in which one might prefer the sack of potatoes…
I posted it anyway because I had nothing better to do. :p
April 16, 2007 at 9:03 am |
“…she kept trying to come up with situations in which one might prefer the sack of potatoes…”
So that may be your problem. The statement is ambiguous and open to interpretation. It would then make sense that someone with senistivities about women’s issues might interpret the statement a certain way (eg. literatly where “women are greater or equal to a sack of potatoes” would imply that women are worth more than a sack of potatoes) and get offended.
If you put a statement on the board that says “63 ≥ x” with no further information, and I happen to be insecure about my intellect, I could get very upset: “How dare you say that I’m not intelligent! My IQ is clearly above 63. And really, how dare you even compare my IQ to a two digit number. That’s grotesque!”. On the other hand, x could be the number of people who attended your confirmation seminar.
Statements such as these are usually suplemented by further information.
If it was specified that what you were talking about was mass, then I imagine it to be far less potentially offensive because a woman is very likely to have at least as much mass as a sack of potatoes (well, the sacks you get from Coles, anyway)….hmmm…I now wonder whether that is a good example because of the current obesity crisis – but you get my point.
April 16, 2007 at 10:46 am |
You’re right that it is a bit ambiguous, but I don’t think there’s much confusion coming from the ambiguity. It was generally understood that by “greater than” we meant “preferable to”. Mel said something like this: “if I had an army of starving people, then I might prefer a sack of potatoes to a woman”. But she seemed to change her mind when I put a little bit more detail into the picture: you already have the woman and the sack of potatoes, and you have to choose which one to ‘get rid of’. (eg. throw into the fiery pits of hell, or some such waste disposal.) Mel, if you are reading this, you should say something.
I suppose that if we thought hard about it, we could come up with quite a few situations in which it actually is preferable to choose the sack of potatoes. But I think that’s kind of beside the point. The equation was valid in the context for which it was written; and not many people would worry to much about offending sacks of potatoes anyway.
So anyway, I don’t think the ambiguity is the problem.
I think a lot of people would agree with what Osias said about it being ‘bad’ to even compare them. But to those people I would ask “why?”. Is it because it should be obvious that the women are better? Do we have a problem with stating obvious things? And as Aggie pointed out, maybe it isn’t even so obvious for some people.
April 16, 2007 at 2:48 pm |
Aggie, it seems you don’t like having to write and speak in a politically correct way. I know that some people think that PC language is euphemistic and sterile, and that enforcing PC threatens freedom of expression. Is this what you mean when you say that we have to fear what we say? I think that the main problem with PC language is subjectivity. For example, a UK minister was recently criticised by the police for using the phrase “nitty gritty” because it originally referred to (somethinig to do with) the slave trade. I had no idea where the phrase came from. I guess as a society we influence the evolution of language so that unacceptable words are filtered out, but it does seem like there is some strange intervention from somewhere in this process.
Oh, and of course urban dictionary has something to say about potatoes:
April 16, 2007 at 3:11 pm |
If dogs > a sack of potatoes, then,
women = dogs, is included in the expression,
women>sack of potatoes
Of course, that it includes many other expressions such as,
women>rubies and gold
but the fact that expressions such as women=dogs can still be included in the set makes the statement offensive. Unfortunately, there are still men in the world that commonly equate women with dogs, so this much is not so obvious to some.
April 16, 2007 at 4:31 pm |
This is Mel, saying, yes, I am listening, to people saying what I said for me. Most of it is actually correct.
Peace out.
April 17, 2007 at 3:04 am |
“You find it grotesque because you know that a woman is obviously greater ”
I didn’t say *I* find grotesque, but let’s skip that. I (or the people) don’t assume a woman is obviously greater, they consider that “evaluate” the differnce between a human and a non-human is grotesque.
My personal opinion is just that’s just silly.
April 17, 2007 at 9:28 am |
Sinead O’Connor: There does not exist x such that x ≥ U or x ≤ U.
April 17, 2007 at 9:45 am |
Bahaha! Gold.
April 18, 2007 at 11:29 am |
If the value of the statements “women ≥ a sack of potatoes” and “dogs ≥ a sack of potatoes” are both set to true, then the possibility that women = dogs is included in the range of possible values for women and dogs. That is the only inference we can validly draw. We simply are not able to assign a truth value to the claim, women = dogs, based on the available information. Assessing the relative value of two things against a third does not provide us with enough information to assess the value of those things with regards to each other.
I think there is no grounds for offence, then, unless someone actually claims that women = dogs is true. Unless we claim, possibly due to PC paranoia, that certain types of comparisons are inherently offensive.
May 25, 2007 at 12:10 pm |
This blog is dead. Get a mirror ball and spin that sonofabitch!
June 22, 2007 at 9:54 pm |
someone writes on a board: “women ≥ a sack of potatoes”. Thought process of an observer: “Are they asking whether that is true? it’s obvious that it’s true! Don’t they know that? Are they suggesting that it could be false? Are they suggesting it is false?”
Remember that human thought processes involve far more ‘divining’ of others’ thoughts than actual logic.
January 6, 2008 at 10:19 am |
The child analogy doesn’t work for the following reason: children of particular ages lack the ability to perceive certain consequences. Think about Peek-a-Boo; they think you’ve “disappeared,” not just behind your hands/desk/wall/etc.
Also, the whole thing is offensive because there is no other reason to put such an equation in plain view except to rile people or offend them. “Men ≥ a sack of potatoes” means less because there is less sensitivity toward women dominating men. “White slave,” as another example, has a less general connotation – meaning, we don’t generalise or refer to a white “race” of slaves, but tend to think of few, isolated incidents. Irrespective of their interpretations, both equations (men or women ≥ a sack of potatoes), objectively, are prejudiced – in that there is no empirical evidence of that fact.
Additionally, dude with the Jew, Asian, lesbian comment…the mere fact that you have to “check” yourself indicates that you are prejudiced…meaning, you classify otherwise individual entities into generalised stereotypes based on trivial and unrelated characteristics. You may not be discriminatory or outright racist, but you still hold a prejudice (“I’m not a racist, I’ve got black friends”). And I’m sure that the person who lost his friend at the club could think of another distinguishing feature other than skin colour. That’s as bad as “all Asians look alike.”
Really, though…who gives a damn about the value of potatoes versus people? How did you people even get that far? Intro to Logic groupies? Nah, I’m just kidding…I don’t want to start anything…especially against a level 43 dungeon master…your roll, beuf!
January 7, 2008 at 3:20 pm |
Is your name Tom?