I suspect that the idea that stereotypes are inaccurate might be a noble lie to counteract how bad we are at statistics.<p>Let&#x27;s say we have a stereotype &quot;blue people are quick to anger.&quot; Even if there is truth in it, what it really says is that the median for the phenotypic trait &quot;quick to anger&quot; is somewhat higher for blue people.<p>That does not mean that a given blue person is quick to anger since the whole population is not the median. It also doesn&#x27;t mean that white or black or red people are not quick to anger, etc.<p>People tend to take statistical generalizations about wholes and apply them like facts to the parts. In the case of people it results in great injustice. Given the above imaginary stereotype, does it follow that blue people should be barred from becoming police or caring for children?<p>So I wonder if we haven&#x27;t made the whole thing taboo and constructed a kind of elaborate ruse to pretend group differences don&#x27;t exist to correct for this.<p>We have lots of hacks to correct for irrationality. Inflationary currency for instance is a hack to correct for our psychological association of bigger nominal prices with actual progress. Religion is full of hacks to short circuit undesirable social behaviors too. I have also suspected for years that God might be a hack to create a &quot;virtual alpha&quot; to placate our need for an alpha male and allow the emergence of the rule of law.