From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Mon May 21 2001 - 10:39:57 MDT
michael.bast@convergys.com wrote:
>
> However, I've got some cousins who are 18 or 19, and they don't even
> seem to really notice color, except when they confront it as racism, which
> at least one actively works against. (He's involved in some anti-racist
> organizations)
> Since (I think he mentioned this once) Elizier seems to be closer in
> age to them than me, he seems to think it's a non-issue which will go away
> if left alone.
I don't think it's a non-issue. On at least one occasion, I quickly
rattled off a distorted version of a joke, making it about managers and
programmers, in order to spoil the punchline of a racist joke that an
older relative had been recently telling and that I was afraid he was
about to tell several children. It's a small blow, but I'm proud of it.
But, given that ninety percent of the problem has been solved, especially
in the younger generations, the best way to finally damp the problem out
of nonexistence is to avoid saying or doing anything that gives the
impression that you are mentally keeping track of what race a person is.
That's why I object to this subject line. A physicist inventing time
travel is a triumph for physicists.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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