A prejudice literally means a pre-judgment. We inevitably make generalisations in order to guide action when we have little to go on, or little time to weigh up all the factors in a deliberative fashion, which is almost all the time. We couldn’t survive if we did not, since having time to deliberate all the aspects of a situation is rare. Nor would we survive if the generalisations were not reasonably reliable, even though they are primarily of practical value, and cannot be other than highly fallible guides to the truth of particular instances. The knowledge that tigers are dangerous has
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