[jfc]

Speaking of irony...

Doesn't Blink posit that a person's extensive experience in an area can lead them to a quick, gut reaction that is, in fact, correct, even before they are able to verify it?

It seems that Andrew's friend probably has had a fair amount of experience with being mistreated due to his skin color. His reaction to being denied a room 3 out of 3 times was perhaps hyperbolic, but certainly applicable to his experience with the service. (Andrew noted his friend's interactions with the driver, so it wasn't all his friend's imagination).

You could use the ideas noted in Blink to look at this scenario from a variety of perspectives, not just confirmation bias.

[Jun8]

Actually I meant Thinking Fast and Slow but somehow typed Blink, sorry about that.

There are two different kinds of generalization here, I think:

As you state, "Brandon" probably has had to endure many other forms of racist behavior, e.g. taxis not wanting to pick up black clients, so his generalization to the new domain Uber was perhaps justifiable, but how about generalizing to AirBnb. AirBnB host population may be very different than the general population "Brandon was used to deal with" (I don't have data to back this up, hence the "may be", but I think that is a very high probability hypothesis, esp. in SF) yet he was quick to generalize, although the refusals may have been due to other factors. In other words "Brandon" has reliable data from a different population that he is now attaching to a new population.

The OP and greendata, OTOH, are generalizing to various beliefs based on a single data point of "Brandon".

[zorpner]

Exactly correct. Additionally, his friend had previously stated that AirBnB didn't work for him, so this "small sample" we're looking at is just Andrew's experience with the issue at this point in time.

It's always disturbing to me how much commentary in threads of this type on HN is devoted to asserting that the individual who's actually experiencing the problem is misinterpreting it. I love data, but demands for data/citations in situations where the problem is experiential are too often used to dismiss people's real, upsetting experiences with privilege and prejudice.

[Jun8]

"... asserting that the individual who's actually experiencing the problem is misinterpreting it"

Note that may main point was about the generalization of the top level comment in this thread, based on this post only, this doesn't mean that the statement in that comment was not correct.