Observations about the world, part seven

Photograph of the Atlas globe

How do you profile people?
Tuesday – October 28, 2025

If you work in security or as a police officer maybe, then you'll know all about profiling and the sometimes awkward and emotionally loaded situations that this practice can evoke, but there's really nothing wrong with the concept that certain individuals constitute a bigger potential threat, but there's also a huge difference between profiling an individual and stereotyping an individual: to profile means to assess the overall risk score of a given individual based on his outwardly social characteristics and based on how they relate to the social baseline of that particular context; but to stereotype an individual on the other hand means to assume all sorts of things about this individual based on stereotypes about his political object, a topic I've covered in more detail in my "Collectivism & Individualism series". I am not in favor of stereotyping and that's primarily not because I fear offending other men but because I fear for my own safety and that means that I need to be circumspect when out and about, and if I'm going to allow the hysterical noise of the populist horde to overwhelm my senses, then there would be no way for me to assess the overall risk in the particular context and milieu that I happen to exist in. There are many risk factors that you should take into account when profiling other people, such as age, sex, overall behavior, clothing, how tall they are, etc. I believe that the biggest threats that you will likely face when out and about in the world, are almost always going to come from behind and since you likely don't have a mirror with you, you are essentially functionally blind. In other words: you are blind to the world behind you; you lack essential information about everyone and everything behind you. So, when you riskassess you need to rule out every and all threat that could come from behind, such as an would-be assailant with a gun or a knife, or perhaps a man attempting to drug you. I also believe that men are—generally speaking, and this is a form of mild stereotyping but a form of stereotyping that will be beneficial to you in the long run—more dangerous than women and that means than on any given day you will face a bigger potential threat load from persons who appear to be male, but don't let this fool you, for there are many women who can and will constitute a major threat to your material and physical well being, and sometimes certain men will also pretend to be women before they attack you. But overall yes, men will in most situations constitute a bigger potential threat to you than women, but again don't allow this to give you a false sense of security when around women only and if in doubt assume that the person is a man pretending to be a woman. On a quick side note: men pretending to be women is a more common feature of society these days than in the past, so here's a post about that issue. Younger people will, generally as well, pose a bigger threat to your physical and material well being than older people, but as I stated with men and women, do not allow this stereotype to fool you into a false sense of security around old people only. Indeed, I believe that the concept of intersectionality is helpful here: at the intersections of women and old people stands perhaps the people in society that, on average, will pose the smallest threat to you, but among these persons, old women, there still exists a portion of people that will pose a real danger to you, and again there are also plenty of men and younger women that will pretend to be old women in order to fool you. I like to call my version of intersectionality, the risk load factor and yes, it's impossible for me to not rely on certain stereotypes here, but again as I stated previously, some stereotypes provide beneficial information about certain individuals. Of course, by this logic the persons that pose the biggest physical threat to you will be the persons at the intersections of youth and masculinity: i.e. young men, especially certain young men with a good physique. But indeed an even bigger threat, an even bigger risk load factor, is if a person has a weapon such as a gun or a knife. Really, risk assessment is all about putting together information.

    Allow me to provide a couple of examples: a young man that is behaving like a crazy person and that is walking around with a phone in his hand, is he dangerous? Well, the first thing I notice about this young man is of course that he is young and a man, and only secondarily do I notice his phone. The question then becomes is this person, this young man who is clearly insane, a threat to me and can his phone or whatever ha holds in his hand be used against me to hurt me and if he can hurt me can I run away from him or do I need to engage with the threat and neutralize him? I don't approve of any kind of violence, but in desperate situations such as this it quickly becomes unreasonable to expect anything else but violence and that means that you're gonna need to learn how to fight, or else you will die. A situation where I was under a major physical threat was once when I was walking home from a meeting and a person was driving around a snowplow truck in a very erratic way and this person that was driving around the snowplow looked conspicuously hip and modern in a way that made me feel some unease. I quickly came to the conclusion that this person likely was a mental patient that had been released on some kind of condition that he needed to find a cheap job, and now I was facing this person and he was very much a threat to both me but all of his surroundings. Since I stood powerless against this crazy person and his snowplow I made the wise decision to quickly remove myself from that situation, and I also alerted other people nearby that this person is crazy. Again, did I know that the man driving the snowplow was crazy? No, I didn't know this, but the information that I quickly gathered about this man and putting that information into the overall context made me realize that something was up. Basically, the smart thing to do in this situation was to assume that the man was insane. Here's another example, though less subtle: an old woman just fell down after her visit to the bank. Would you help her up? I believe I am alright in assuming that most upstanding men would help her up, but it turns out that this old woman actually is a man that has pretended to be an old woman this entire time and now he is threatening you with a gun. See, that could happen and it actually happens more often than not. So how do you help an old woman without fearing for your safety? Well, either you take the risk or you quickly assess the situation before helping her. See, most men tend to be bigger than most women, which means that if you see an unusually large elderly woman fall down, then there's some likelihood that the so-called old woman actually is a man trying to rob you blind. If however, you see an old woman and her feet, her hand, and her overall posture is small and maybe petite, then you're less likely to be robbed, but again it could still be a robber, you just never know.

    I think part of learning how to profile people is really about how you interact with the world, and doing so really makes you, it forces you to contend with these very real dilemmas. If you're young, hip, and "progressive", I can understand that you don't want to offend people, but at the end of the day your physical well being should be more important than the possibility that you could offend someone. I am not in favor of offending people, but I am also not in favor of being physically attacked, and that means that I just have to prioritize and if you choose to prioritize not hurting other people's feelings, then don't be surprised when you get attacked, because the world is a very dangerous and more terrifying place than you can even imagine.

Reginald Drax – October 28, 2025.