I took the survey.
I think most of my answers were the same as last year, although I think my estimates have improved a little, and my hours of internet have gone down, both of which I like.
Many of the questions are considerably cleaned up—much thanks to Yvain and everyone else who helped. It’s very good it has sensible responses for gender. And IIRC, the “family’s religious background” was tidied up a bit. I wonder if anyone can answer “atheist” as religious background? I hesitated over the response, since the last religious observance I know of for sure was G being brought up catholic, but I honestly think living in a protestant (or at least, anglican) culture is a bigger influence on my parents cultural background, so I answered like that.
I have no idea what’s going to happen in the raffle. I answered “cooperate” because I want to encourage cooperating in as many situations as possible, and don’t really care about a slightly-increased chance of < $60.
Let me try to summarise the obvious parts of the situation as I understand it. I contend that:
(A) There are some measureable differences between ethnicities that are most plausibly attributed to biological differences. (There are some famous examples, such as greater susceptibility of some people to skin cancer, or sickle cell anemia. I assume there are smaller differences elsewhere. If anyone seriously disagrees, say so.)
(B) These are massively dwarfed by the correlation of ethnicity with cultural differences in almost all cases.
(C) There is a social taboo against admitting (A)
(D) There is a large correlation between ethnicity and various cultural factors, and between cultural factors.
(E) It is sometimes possible to draw probabalistic inferences based on (D). Eg. With no other information, you may guess that someone on the street in London is more likely to be a British citizen if they are Indian than East Asian (or vice versa, whichever is true).
(F) The human brain deals very badly with probabalistic inferences. If you guess someone’s culture based on their ethnicity or dress, you are likely to maintain that view as long as possible even in the face of new information, until you suddenly flip to the opposite view. Because of this, there is (rightly IMHO) a social taboo against doing (E) even when it might make sense.
(G) People who are and/or think they are good at drawing logicial inferences a la (E) but don’t have as much personal experience fo the pitfalls described in (F) are likely to resent the social taboo described in (F) because it seems fussy and nonsensical to them. I am somewhat prone to this error (not so much with race, but with other things)
(H) The word “racist” is horrendously undefined. It is used both to mean “someone or something which treats people differently based on ‘race’, rightly or wrongly” (including examples where treating people differently is the only possible thing to do, such as preventative advice for medical conditions, or advice on how to avoid bad racism from other people) and to mean “someone or something which is morally wrong to discriminate based on race.” Thus a description of whether something is “racist” is typically counterproductive.
I admit I only skimmed the OP’s transcript, but my impression is that he fairly describes why he is frustrated that it is difficult to talk about these issues, but I am extremely leery of a lot of the examples he uses.
I was going to write more, but am not sure how to push it. How am I doing so far...? :)