site banner
non_radical_centrist  8mo ago (astralcodexten.com)   2897 thread views

How Should We Think About Race And "Lived Experience"?

astralcodexten.com

I'm generally a fan of "blurry" definitions where something can qualify as X if it fulfills a few of many criteria. I think trying to create hard rules around blurry areas like race and culture is fool's errand, and Scott does a great job laying out how overly strict definitions can go wrong.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Obviously, when it comes to genetic differences, this can't be true from a smell test alone,

It's more that there are many ways you could interpret it as an incredibly broad claim, and that some of them are technically true but misleading. I think it usually refers to Lewontin's claim in this article.

Lewontin's Fallacy also works here and usually I mention it in such discussions, but I was thinking about "differences" in a more colloquial sense from the perspective of how a layperson might think of it, before switching to variation when it comes to phenotypes (most people have an easier time imagining phenotypical than genetic variation, especially at a locus-level). Hence the smell test using something more readily visualized, especially since most people are already at least cursorily familiar with commercial ancestry kits like 23andMe.

At a given locus there might be more variation within groups than across groups (not true in many cases, for example, the loci associated with lactose tolerance and skin color would likely have more between-group than within-group variation when it comes whites vs. East Asians, and whites vs. blacks, respectively), but once you consider more and more loci you start to get clean separations. Hence the aforementioned exercise Europeans and PCAs when it comes to Europeans, East Asians, and Western Africans. A randomly selected young athletic man might on average be only about 10% taller, 10% faster, 50% stronger, and have a slightly faster reaction time than a randomly selected young athletic women, with both groups having substantial intragroup variation for each of those traits. However, in terms of overall athleticism, almost always the man will be more athletic than the woman.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats