Telika: This is not really true. Changes are deeper than purely behavioural. It's not the fear of some state-enforced law that makes people critical or racism and sexism, it's the current beliefs they hold, their very perceptions of the world. [...] Education and vulgarisation is about understanding.
I didn't mean state-enforced laws - sorry if that was unclear - I meant the things we believe the people around us expects of us. That is, anything from saying "thank you" if given something, to feeling like a bad parent if you serve too many frozen dinners. Basically all of our prejudices, both "good" and "bad" ones.
So, given that I've understood you correctly, I think we're pretty much in agreement on this - maybe apart from the understanding (at the end of your paragraph). Simplification/vulgarisation is necessary, but the understanding this results in is flawed, and over-simplifying (media does this a lot to target a lower common denominator) often leads to pretty ugly flaws in understanding that are used to uphold irrational views. This, I belive, is likely the biggest reason these things take so long to change.
Telika: Public ridicule works with consensus, and with collective legtimation. When an elite imposes an arbitrary judgement that the masses refuse, its authority is rejected. That is what happens both with some too progressist, avant-guardist, readings of society, and with some actual out-of-touch political dogmas. In France, the political elite had tried to impose on the population a european constitution and the idea that it would benefit everybody. Most media, many voices of authority, were insisting on that. The population didn't buy it, and rejected it on vote. Of course, the government then just ignored the vote results, and adpoted that constitution, but that's another issue. An opposite exemple is how intellectuas, in Switzerland, try to fight the populist ideas of the main, extreme-right and extremely well financed, political party. Quite often, the intelligentsia pushes people to vote one way, but the majority still votes in accordance with xenophobic demagogues. In both exemples, the elitist attempts at (resp. illegitimately and legitimately) ridiculing mainstream beliefs failed. What shames people into global behaviours (a very relative notion) is a more global, popular, sense of ridicule. This comes from widely incorporated beliefs, not from the caprices of some (political, scientifical, or even economical) elite.
I didn't say it will always work, but it has been shown to work quite a few times during history - from the really bad ones like how the attitude towards jews, gays etc were changed during the '30s in Germany (all over Europe, really) to the point where people started to behave like animals, to much friendlier ones where people buy FairTrade products, recycle etc. It has to be gradual, so as not to trigger the inate restiance to change that most people have, but it's neither impossible or unlikely. Then you have the way France dealt with the popular vote being rejected - they did it anyway. Fastforward a few years/decades and most people are accepting it, assimilating it.
Granting the power (governmental blessings and all, which essentially mean having a monopoly) of mass-brainwashing is something I'd be against regardless of elite being given it, regardless of intentions and also regardless of me agreeing with their goals. It's not something I trust with anyone.
Telika: But then, you raise another issue. [...]
I'm not sure I follow you. Is this about the hypothetical scenario serving as a setting for the "what then?" question - a response to the answer given by scientists today being different from that of tomorow? If so, I'd preferred it if you'd just replied with a "silly notion re science" and then replied to the "[what if something needs to be retracted,] what then?" question. (If it's of any interest, I did pass my ex.phil. exam back when at the uni.)
Another problematic part is what groups are deemed "worthy" of the protection granted. Stupid people for instance are not "worthy" it seems.
Telika: It's not a matter of being worthy of protection. It's much more broadly, the fact that every human category is worthy of being comprehended through informations more valid than dated myths and prejudices, and through thought processes more refined than generalisations, lumping, projections, etc. The former is a matter of information (relevant on a subject-by-subject basis), the latter is a matter of critical sense (which also has to be taught, when it comes to some under-evaluated misleading cognitive processes). It is merely a question of how people teach themelves mutually to grasp the world.
I'm all for debunking myths and improving the quality of information/knowledge. To me it's one of the most important tasks for humanity. Prejudice (not just in the negative sense) should become more accurate as quality of information improves, but will obviously never be as accurate as factual information. Making people aware of the limitations - and also validity - of prejudices would be a huge improvement.
I do see some problems, though. Categories, sharing a set of common attributes, have little to no practical value for most people unless there's a set of generalisations associated with them. This is tied to what most people use them for, namely as a basis for making assumptions regarding what they don't already know (you can only place someone successfully in a category if you already know said attributes, hence no new information is gained from that step). These generalisations (prejudices) are essential to our ability to interact with the unknown - or, more often, not fully known.
Telika: THEN, you can discuss of deriving pragmatic decisions, policies, solutions, good or bad, from a more precise and more demanding reading of the world. But at least, discussions and disagreement will be founded on more acurately established representations of the situation, that's all. Which will still be far enough, always, from some utopian collective omniscience. But which is also progressively getting more and more far from the most lazy, naive, self-serving and arbitrary representations of other human groups. My point is merely that standards slowly evolve the right way, and will continue to, even if we don't always percieve this evolution.
I can't say I share your optimism, but I'd welcome a better informed - and more able to use that information - type of world any day.
At this point I'd like to ask for a clarification of (one side of) your stated goal: Remove/reduce discrimination, or remove/reduce unfounded discrimination - or a third alernative?
