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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28230 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 23, 2023

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The race is a sort of highly universal prior, and it carries immense amount of residual predictive value even after controlling for more direct predictors.

Of what? If I meet a black pathologist, knowing that they're a pathologist tells me much more about them than knowing that they're black.

Likewise, if I see a white junkie, knowing that they're a junkie tells me much more about them than knowing that they're white.

By “residual value after controlling for other predictors”, I meant something like, if you have two pathologists, one of them being black tells you something additional on top of the fact of him being a pathologist, eg. that they are likely to be less competent at their job than their white counterpart.

Sure, it tells you something "extra", but it's something both immoral and, while perhaps it might in a very localized way be a net benefit in terms of information gain, it's long-term super unhealthy and harmful. I mean, if we're leaving the immoral part to the side and talking about pure utility, making a habit of utilizing those residual values (even assuming they are reliable) is problematic both for you and for society both in the medium to long term. Why? I don't think I need to explain the societal part, as societally accepted racism even when used as a background process rather than a primary process is a significant evil and limits overall prosperity and tends to hinder interpersonal and economic interactions in disproportionate ways - but personally there's harm too. Racism has such a virulent and problematic history that I don't think we can rely on ourselves to "limit" racism to merely residual value only. It's a pipe dream. Our brains simply don't work that way.

There is little substance in your comment other than repeatedly claiming that racism is bad because it’s immoral, and it’s immoral because it’s evil, and it’s evil, because it’s problematic. If taking race into account when making consequential decisions about reality is considered racist, even if we only do it to the statistically justified extent, then I simply don’t agree about it being gravely immoral, because we do the exact same thing with hundreds of other characteristics all the time without an ounce of queasiness, eg. cultural origin, or education history, or density of facial tattoos, or clothing worn.

Your best argument here is where you claim that it’s too easy to assign more weight to this piece of evidence than it is actually warranted. This is true, but this is also true about other characteristics, discriminating based on such does not get such a privileged treatment, so why should I care much?

This sort of stuff makes me feel bad for all the competent black pathologists, they have to pay the price for their affirmative action'd racial bretheren (who if they are a different type of African than the pathologist may well be just as genetically different from the pathologist than your average white pathologist).

Essentially: it's the asterisk on the Harvard degree.

"White and Asian medical school applicants discriminated against; black doctors most affected."

I don't feel bad, especially since most competent black pathologists were likely able to attend a more desirable medical school than they would have in the absence of affirmative action. I feel bad for the Asian and white applicants who had to attend a less desirable school as a result of affirmative action, or didn't get into one altogether. I feel bad for patients roped into getting treated by affirmative action doctors, except those patients with in- or out-group preferences for groups that are affirmative action-beneficiaries.

I think you're not reading the parent's comment correctly.

Race carries an immense amount of residual predicting power. Example: Compared to a white pathologist, a black pathologist is less likely to enjoy country music.

The parent never said anything about whether race or profession has more predictive power, only that race continues to have predictive power even after we've corrected for everything else.

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