Random Bitching About the Nature of Thinking

I have another rant to make: I hate rankings. In particular, ranking things that can't be qualitatively measured.

Before I sound like a hypocrite: I make evaluative judgments and privilege certain qualities that are ineffable, like the rest of us. But I'm flexible with my listing. I know that sometimes I find vanilla bland, and other times I relish it's smooth complexities. I don't hold my ranking to firm.

But what I really hate is when people rank people.

It's necessary at times to measures people against one another for qualitative traits. Tests scores (although I have huge issues with some of the methodologies and applications for intelligence and scholastic aptitude tests), athletic prowess, physical attributes, and financial assets. For example, it's reasonable and logical to say player X is better the player Y when you have batting averages or yardage to measure them by. You can say John is richer then George. We may imply a superiority of a trait, but not the whole person.

I get pissed when people are ranked and allotted value for things like: Cultural capital, assessments of subjective skills , and a general "academic aptitude." Here, I feel we do judge people on whim.

When people judge it shuts off thinking. A judgment;"He's a fine boy," or "She is an awful bore," is a conclusion, an evaluation of a number of personally observed facts. When we reach a conclusion or brain shuts off, its job is done. We now start organizing our "facts."
But when one mulls over observations and doesn't reach a conclusion (yet,) the mind revisits, synthesizes and analyzes information before it reaches evaluation. The mind will also look for more information to help. It looks to sensory perceptions, knowledge parallels, past schema, and extrapolations to make evaluations.
Evaluations, however, create blindness. "He's a hippy," "He stinks," or even "They're poor" make the speaker and listener manipulate all new information fit into this new paradigm. We keep this previous vision in our head and build all new information around it, ignoring challenging or contradictory information. Our mind processes what it wants too.

Granted not everyone operates this way, good science being a notable expecting, at some time or another, we all do, or are regulated to.