Politics Discussion Thread (Heated Arguing Warning)

[darrelljs]

I know, but it annoys me when people just scream "ISIS" every time someone says "maybe we shouldn't be so quick to judge other people". Humans are in fact capable of understanding nuance, although it seems that the majority have forgotten that for some reason.

I'll try not to be insulted .

Darrell

[greenline]

Has he checked out hpmor? I would actually say it is better than the real deal.

i wouldn't

[Commodore]

I think your approach is more practical and Gavagai's more idealistic.

I can see why a thoughtful man who grew up in the ruins of the Soviet Union would be less than favorably inclined to Noble Lies.

[Bobchillingworth]

Bob, you're really avoiding addressing Gavagai's point directly.

Suppose that, over the next few years, we amass a huge amount of scientific evidence that people of Korean heritage tend to have genes that make them worse at math. Do we:

a) Pretend that the evidence doesn't exist.
b) Accept the evidence, and start treating people with Korean genes as inferiors.
c) Accept the evidence, but treat them just the same anyway.

You are claiming that both b and c are "racist", so I'm guessing you would choose a. Gavagai says that c isn't racist, and says, why are we not just agreeing to c as a general rule so that we never even have to care about whether we can statistically predict people's talents based on their ancestry.

To which I believe you are replying that c won't work for two reasons:
1) There are a lot of jerks in existence who aren't going to treat people the same anyway.
2) People tend towards fulfilling society's expectations of them. So part of having a level playing field is having equal societal expectations for everyone, even if that's throwing some information away.

and so a is the best answer.

Meanwhile I think Gavagai is saying that a is a scary answer from a practical perspective because, by denying that there is even a problem to solve at all, it fails to solve the underlying problem of people treating their perceived inferiors poorly.

I think your approach is more practical and Gavagai's more idealistic.

I am genuinely confused as to how you are deriving any of that from our discussion. Gavagai's argument is that different races currently have inherent advantages and disadvantages over each other, with representation in sports given as a key example.

My rebuttal is the following:
* There is in fact no evidence of that to substantiate his belief.
* His examples are the product of circumstance and socioeconomic factors rather than inborn racial qualities
* In the absence of any compelling evidence in its favor, the idea that certain races are innately physically and/or mentally inferior or superior to others is racist. Indeed, this is the literal definition of racism.
* The very concept of "race" is a social construct anyway, making racist theory scientifically indefensible and borderline absurd. This is because it lumps disparate and highly diverse ethnic groups together into categories based on superficial and/or arbitrary similarities, and then assigns them as a unit shared advantages and disadvantages, as though some deity were min-maxing classes of human beings.


I have not engaged with anything resembling your hypothetical because I reject the very premise it is based on, whereas Gavagai posits that situations akin to your scenario are in fact an immutable part of reality. That is where our disagreement lies.

The rest, about how society should manage expectations of racial performance following the discovery of inborn flaws, is just noise, because the evidence does not exist, and the premise is fundamentally flawed.

[SevenSpirits]

OK... when you say that science supports your claim that there is no inherent difference to different races, that's inconsistent with also saying "I have not engaged with anything resembling your hypothetical because I reject the very premise it is based on". Science is about coming up with a hypothesis, thinking about what the world looks like if it's false and if it's true, and then checking the evidence to see what the world looks like. If you're not willing the think about what the world would look like if you are wrong, you're being unscientific. From where I stand, it looks like you're super committed to having this belief regardless of what the evidence is. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that - maybe it makes the world a better place if people do that. But that's what I'm talking about when I am guessing that you hold position a.

And no, I don't think that's Gavagai's argument. I think his argument is that your position is scary, and you keep pushing back at him that it's not scary in practice because the conditions for its scariness can never be met because everyone is equal, and then he's pushing back with examples against your claim that that could never happen. Whether or not he has real-world examples of racial differences is completely irrelevant to the (IMO) main argument, which is about morality and racism, abstract concepts.

[Commodore]

OK... when you say that science supports your claim that there is no inherent difference to different races, that's inconsistent with also saying "I have not engaged with anything resembling your hypothetical because I reject the very premise it is based on". Science is about coming up with a hypothesis, thinking about what the world looks like if it's false and if it's true, and then checking the evidence to see what the world looks like. If you're not willing the think about what the world would look like if you are wrong, you're being unscientific. From where I stand, it looks like you're super committed to having this belief regardless of what the evidence is. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that - maybe it makes the world a better place if people do that. But that's what I'm talking about when I am guessing that you hold position a.

And no, I don't think that's Gavagai's argument. I think his argument is that your position is scary, and you keep pushing back at him that it's not scary in practice because the conditions for its scariness can never be met because everyone is equal, and then he's pushing back with examples against your claim that that could never happen. Whether or not he has real-world examples of racial differences is completely irrelevant to the (IMO) main argument, which is about morality and racism, abstract concepts.

This is the other issue with the noble lie option. It's too much cognitive dissonance for most people.

[Mr. Cairo]

I think that what underscores Bobs argument, and appears to be completely overlooked, is that what we as individuals and as a society call "race" is entirely artificial and is not related to actual ethnic groupings.
One can argue that yes, black people all have in common the genes for dark skin pigmentation; but that is basically it. There is significant genetic difference between someone from Nigeria and someone from Botswana, despite the fact that they both have dark skin. Once you leave Africa, the genetic diversity in human populations decrease, but it is still there. Chinese and Korean people are lumped into the "Asian" race, yet are different genetically. In North America the Iroquois people are different from the Navajo but they too are lumped into the "native American" race.

Take Gavagai's example of black athletes in the NBA. To say that their dominance in the sport is a result of genetic factors, is to say that having dark skin makes one better at basketball. Because the only thing that one can say for certain about the shared genetic traits among black basketball players is that they have the genes for dark skin. Genes for skin colour don't effect height, metabolism, hand-eye coordination, muscle density, or any of the other myriad things that makes a good basketball player. So no, one can't say that simply being of African descent makes one predisposed to being a good basketball player; there must be other, non-genetic factors at work that result in basketball being a sport dominated by black people, and hockey being dominated by white people (dominated in terms of numbers, not skill).

[Bobchillingworth]

OK... when you say that science supports your claim that there is no inherent difference to different races, that's inconsistent with also saying "I have not engaged with anything resembling your hypothetical because I reject the very premise it is based on". Science is about coming up with a hypothesis, thinking about what the world looks like if it's false and if it's true, and then checking the evidence to see what the world looks like. If you're not willing the think about what the world would look like if you are wrong, you're being unscientific. From where I stand, it looks like you're super committed to having this belief regardless of what the evidence is. Not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that - maybe it makes the world a better place if people do that. But that's what I'm talking about when I am guessing that you hold position a.

And no, I don't think that's Gavagai's argument. I think his argument is that your position is scary, and you keep pushing back at him that it's not scary in practice because the conditions for its scariness can never be met because everyone is equal, and then he's pushing back with examples against your claim that that could never happen. Whether or not he has real-world examples of racial differences is completely irrelevant to the (IMO) main argument, which is about morality and racism, abstract concepts.

You appear to assume I reject the proposition of certain races having advantages over others solely on the basis of wishful thinking and/or liberal idealism. This is not the case. I'm not sure how many sources you'd prefer to prove a negative, but when I argue that race is a social construct and supposed innate differences lack evidence, it is not as an article of faith. Perhaps I did myself a disservice by not citing some sources for my contentions from the beginning. I would appreciate seeing Gavagai's evidence to the contrary which I am apparently ignoring.

IF there are in fact inherent differences in ability between races then I would favor proposition "c" from your hypothetical. Even engaging in the discussion strikes me as absurd however, like discussing the best charms to protect oneself from vampires. Gavagai's initial indictment of liberal mentality criticizes them for not working within a frame where different racial capabilities are a reality. But why should that assumption, which I argue is both racist and incorrect, be taken for a given? Why should we accept prima facie the "problem" of races having varying mental and/or physical abilities in order to solve an "underlying problem of people treating their perceived inferiors poorly"? Why are we working from a basis where races are anything other than social constructs?

It's too much cognitive dissonance for most people.

You keep using those words...

[MJW (ya that one)]

However, I may get permabanned from this forum if I make my political views fully known. So, I better stop right here and now.

We've never had to do anything of the sort. Any opinion if argued reasonably and civilly belongs here.

   

[SevenSpirits]

Perhaps I did myself a disservice by not citing some sources for my contentions from the beginning.

I actually have no problem with you not providing citations. I do think you were doing yourself a disservice by not being willing to consider hypotheticals.