We already hold discussions of politics to a higher standard—I see the reproof ‘politics is the mind-killer’ relatively often. And this without any particular post arguing that we’re so hideously biased about politics that we need to hold ourselves to a much higher standard than on just about any other topic. And given that the long and very well-documented history of sexism and discrimination against women suggests that enormous masses can be completely wrong for long periods of time (both us and the ancients can’t be right about women), we already have arguments that we specifically are massively biased about gender issues and should hold ourselves to unusually high standards.
Or, if the relevant comments Alicorn cited were about blacks, I don’t think anyone here would even question the need for a higher standard. We all understand intuitively the appeal of racism, its long, hateful, and entrenched history, and that if we’re going to make arguments like blacks are stupider, we’d better have damn good evidence—and merely anecdotal evidence like we see in the cited comments, which boil down to ‘in my experience’ and ‘according to my armchair theorizing’, will cut absolutely no mustard.
Indeed. I, for one, found myself genuinely surprised by the last word of RobinZ’s introduction and had a reaction similar to that of Hofstadter upon finding the answer to the surgeon riddle.
RobinZ illustrates a good point about race-consciousness, though. I was in the Boy Scouts myself, worked at 2 camps, and have seen some demographic data, and the simple fact is: the Boy Scouts are as white as sour cream. It’s not just that there are/were more white Americans than blacks, it’s that whites participate at a vastly higher rate. From a Bayesian perspective, shouldn’t we be surprised to learn that RobinZ is both black and a Boy Scout?
(The Hofstadter example isn’t good for this point; Bayesianly, I think there are many more female surgeons than there are reincarnated-train-wreck-victim-surgeons, so thinking about the latter before the former is just biased and stupid.)
I hate to confess this, but I got stuck on a similar problem, in which the solution was “The secretary is the boy’s father.” (I kept thinking of divorces and such.)
I would question imposing a much higher standard of evidence, e.g. overwhelming hard evidence, for discussions about blacks; that would also basically prohibit discussing such topics.
We already hold discussions of politics to a higher standard—I see the reproof ‘politics is the mind-killer’ relatively often. And this without any particular post arguing that we’re so hideously biased about politics that we need to hold ourselves to a much higher standard than on just about any other topic. And given that the long and very well-documented history of sexism and discrimination against women suggests that enormous masses can be completely wrong for long periods of time (both us and the ancients can’t be right about women), we already have arguments that we specifically are massively biased about gender issues and should hold ourselves to unusually high standards.
Or, if the relevant comments Alicorn cited were about blacks, I don’t think anyone here would even question the need for a higher standard. We all understand intuitively the appeal of racism, its long, hateful, and entrenched history, and that if we’re going to make arguments like blacks are stupider, we’d better have damn good evidence—and merely anecdotal evidence like we see in the cited comments, which boil down to ‘in my experience’ and ‘according to my armchair theorizing’, will cut absolutely no mustard.
Indeed. I, for one, found myself genuinely surprised by the last word of RobinZ’s introduction and had a reaction similar to that of Hofstadter upon finding the answer to the surgeon riddle.
Hah! I almost didn’t include that word—now I’m glad I did.
RobinZ illustrates a good point about race-consciousness, though. I was in the Boy Scouts myself, worked at 2 camps, and have seen some demographic data, and the simple fact is: the Boy Scouts are as white as sour cream. It’s not just that there are/were more white Americans than blacks, it’s that whites participate at a vastly higher rate. From a Bayesian perspective, shouldn’t we be surprised to learn that RobinZ is both black and a Boy Scout?
(The Hofstadter example isn’t good for this point; Bayesianly, I think there are many more female surgeons than there are reincarnated-train-wreck-victim-surgeons, so thinking about the latter before the former is just biased and stupid.)
I hate to confess this, but I got stuck on a similar problem, in which the solution was “The secretary is the boy’s father.” (I kept thinking of divorces and such.)
So yeah.
I would question imposing a much higher standard of evidence, e.g. overwhelming hard evidence, for discussions about blacks; that would also basically prohibit discussing such topics.
But arguments that aren’t merely about, but which run down the well-worn grooves of racist quack science, those would need overwhelming hard evidence.