One needs labels to process the world. Stereotyping and judging, damaging as they may be, exist because they are fundamentally necessary and beneficial.
When programming, you make the program in such a way that it has pre-determined ways of dealing with any type of input. In order to do this, you have to categorize input. If the input doesn't fall into a pre-defined category, you either force it into one or give an error message.
Is it really so surprising that we're different from programs? We like to think we're more subtle and complex, sure. But fundamentally, we process input and respond to it. If we didn't have categorization, we'd get so caught up in the time it took to fully process each individual piece of input that we'd never be able to effectively respond to the input in our environment.
So, yeah. I judge. I'm human. I'm also willing to redefine inputs or group definitions based on new definitions. Does that make me a good person, or just flexibly programmed?
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So go ahead, push your luck, say what it is you gotta say to me. We will push on into that mystery, and it'll push right back- and there are worse things than that.
-Dar Williams
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