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How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

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Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#141

Post by tamana »

DougWebb wrote: post #129
jules wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you object to inflicting more suffering than you have to, how do you justify not being a vegetarian? In the end this is a trade of a bit of pleasure for you and quite a bit of suffering for the animal. Fox hunting, it seems to me, is precisely the same sort of trade. You could argue that the pleasure you get from eating meat is worth the suffering, but the pleasure the hunters get from fox hunting is not worth the…

Easy: I have to eat meat, and I'm not a reductionist. I don't eat meat for pleasure, particularly, and certainly not as recreation. Fox hunting is purely recreation.

I agree. What I want to to is ethical because I need to do it. What other people is unethical because I don't need it.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#142

Post by pron »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #45
pj_mukh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Furthermore this bad luck is not statistically independent of various other characteristics" Right, so that's not bad luck. That's systemic bias.

You can apply the label "systematic bias" to bad luck which is correlated with other characteristics. So what? What makes correlated bad luck somehow something to be eradicated (above and beyond ordinary bad luck)?

So I guess you're against trying to find a cure for cancer.

BTW, it's pretty funny that you call systematic bias a "label", yet bad luck is something that seems sufficiently explanatory to you. It seems to me that "bad luck" is a label that you apply to something that you don't wish to study because you just don't care. It's bad luck that humans can't fly. It's bad luck that people die of the flu. As pretty much everything humans do is try to eradicate things that could be labelled as bad luck, actually using that term is essentially yelling "I don't care about this! I like things as they are!"

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#143

Post by pron »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #35
pj_mukh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, what you described is a pure meritocracy and all things being equal, that would be GREAT, unfortunately, all things are not equal. If all people got equal encouragement, inspiration, and opportunity (from the moment of birth) then we could simply focus at the moment of judgement (which btw, is also currently biased [1]). So that is basically what STEM advocates are working on, making sure women and other disadva…

All you are saying is that due to bad luck during upbringing, some people have less merit than others. Furthermore this bad luck is not statistically independent of various other characteristics. Why does this imply that meritocracy is not great?

You do realize that the term meritocracy is literally a joke, right? I mean, it was actually invented as a joke by a sociologist, who's apparently not very observant because he'd assumed everyone would get it. Obviously, every 'cracy believes that it's a meritocracy; the only defining characteristic of one that actually calls itself meritocracy is a lack of self awareness. The word meritocracy sounds to me exactly the same way "positive energies" sounds to me and you; it makes me laugh because it is a word that expresses absolutely nothing but the cluelessness of those who may use it with a straight face (the only difference is that "positive energies" wasn't originally invented by a physicist as a joke, while meritocracy was).

I mean, a noble family really did have a greater relative contribution to the economy and to society than a common family (or, at least, could have been said to have a greater contribution by the norms of the time) -- until it didn't, and that's when things changed. It's not like previous societies realized that they're not meritocracies; they utterly and truly believed that their system was the best possible one (and they could prove it!) and that there are people who are less represented in positions of power is just bad luck. No society (that lasted long) has ever said, let's put all the people with real talent at the bottom. It's only when resources were allocated differently due to political action (or natural disaster, like the black death) talent "suddenly" grew where everyone had until then known little talent could be found (and they were right: there was little talent because talent requires cultivation to become effective).

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#144

Post by yummyfajitas »

pron wrote: post #142
yummyfajitas wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can apply the label "systematic bias" to bad luck which is correlated with other characteristics. So what? What makes correlated bad luck somehow something to be eradicated (above and beyond ordinary bad luck)?

So I guess you're against trying to find a cure for cancer. BTW, it's pretty funny that you call systematic bias a "label", yet bad luck is something that seems sufficiently explanatory to you. It seems to me that "bad luck" is a label that you apply to something that you don't wish to study because you just don't care. It's bad luck that humans can't fly. It's bad luck that people die of the flu. As pretty much ever…

I made a very specific claim. The parent poster applied a label to that claim as if it somehow refutes the claim - I was merely disagreeing with this.

I can easily provide reasoning for why study of flu (or other disease) is worth studying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369801

Can you do the same (or even provide a coherent definition of) systemic bias? If so, you may convince me it is worth studying. Im unconvinced it is even well defined, since I've never seen a definition that advocates of it consistently apply.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#145

Post by manyxcxi »

tamana wrote: post #139
manyxcxi wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently stumbled on a podcast I found very interesting that relates: The Art of Manliness #189: The Classical Education You Never Had [0] They had an author (Susan Bauer) on discussing topics from her book The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had [1], where they discussed the differences between a classical education and today's modern education (in America). One of the salient poin…

> stopping every few pages/chapters and discussing what you think/feel about it and your interpretation. > students are being taught to come to conclusions and judge things before getting the full picture > I haven't read the book yet [, but I am happy to discuss my impression of it] Beautiful satire!

Not intended, but the first two quotes are directly from the author of the book in the podcast I was referring, not my impression of the book she wrote on the subject. Because of her discussion, I'm now interested in reading in the book.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#146

Post by pron »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #144
pron wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess you're against trying to find a cure for cancer. BTW, it's pretty funny that you call systematic bias a "label", yet bad luck is something that seems sufficiently explanatory to you. It seems to me that "bad luck" is a label that you apply to something that you don't wish to study because you just don't care. It's bad luck that humans can't fly. It's bad luck that people die of the flu. As pretty much ever…

I made a very specific claim. The parent poster applied a label to that claim as if it somehow refutes the claim - I was merely disagreeing with this. I can easily provide reasoning for why study of flu (or other disease) is worth studying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369801 Can you do the same (or even provide a coherent definition of) systemic bias? If so, you may convince me it is worth studying. Im unco…

> Can you do the same (or even provide a coherent definition of) systemic bias?

Easily! But just as your reasoning is completely dependent on an axiomatic value (death is bad), so is mine: That many people's freedom to cultivate, explore and express their talents is hindered by those in power (positive claim) is bad because freedom is good (normative claim), therefore we should study how those restrictions work so we can remove them.

But don't get me wrong: the distribution of power will change (it always does), yet inequality will grow again (it always does; a dynamic system that is not perfectly balanced and that includes positive feedback loops will always go out of balance) and this process will be repeated. I know this because pretty much all of history has been this way: inequality grows; social strife grows; people demand change; others first politely and then less so explain to them that that is scientifically/theologically impossible or that things are best as the are; after a lot of struggle things change and power shifts; inequality grows and so on and so forth.

> Im unconvinced it is even well defined, since I've never seen a definition that advocates of it consistently apply.

You are right in the sense that "systemic bias" is a term invented to explain to laymen what "bias" is. To social researchers, it's clear that all social bias (where "social" means "not exploding volcano in one town and not in another") is "systemic" (whatever that means). It really means nothing more than "a result of social dynamics disproportionately directed by those with power", and even that is a definition for laymen because obviously, that's what power is, so it really means "a result of social dynamics". But even that is redundant because every social phenomenon is a result of social dynamics (that's what a social phenomenon means), so it really just means "bias". Personally, I hate the term "systemic bias" because "systemic" may suggest either a bureaucratic bias or something dictated by law or decree.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#147

Post by Hockenbrizzle »

__bb wrote: post #101
pvaldes wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. You have your point, but is a common and too simplistic interpretation. We need to repeat this more: To have cattle or being able to shoot a rabbit is irrelevant and not a guarantee at all to und…

> Farmers are experts in breeding cattle. Point. Not more, not less. I hope you're going for hyperbole here. If not, you may be surprised at the proportion of farmers who do understand how biology works; who do work with vets and other professionals and follow research into animal health and disease. Your statement does a large number of people a disservice.

If anyone is interested in a such a farmer, I would recommend looking up Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. He really counters the general stereotype that farmers are dumb people, which they certainly are not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#148

Post by yomly »

pessimizer wrote: post #121
hderms wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm white and grew up in a near-western suburb of Chicago and have also noticed that white people were quick to adopt a black dialect. I'm not sure it was necessarily only correlated with the things you mentioned (partying, anger, etc...) but it definitely existed. People adopted a lot of slang words from the black community too, which can sound really unnatural coming from a rich white kid's mouth. However, I don't…

> However, I don't think it was necessarily a result of people viewing black people negatively, in fact, it often seemed to be admiration But see, that's still racist. And the contexts in which it comes out makes it seem like an admiration of looseness, coolness, style, toughness, sexiness, grittiness, authenticity... an escape from just being a plain old person. Really, these are qualities involved in the identities…

It was written by a white person in a country which is still assumed to be predominantly Caucasian. Hence white people were the baseline.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#149

Post by richmarr »

jules wrote: post #125
richmarr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep dodging the fact that this entire comment thread started from you massively overstating the results of a single study, taking it far past the credible scope of the study. Either knowingly or unknowingly you're abusing both the study's findings and the scientific method as a whole. We can talk hypotheticals or debate the relative merit of affirmative action, or discuss the flaws in specific studies (because l…

I did. How did I misrepresent it, and how am I overstating the results of the study I cited? How am I abusing the scientific method as a whole? When you make these grandiose claims it would have been nice to provide at least some form of accompanying argument, rather than just stating it as fact.

>> ... then we could simply focus at the moment of judgement (which btw, is also currently biased [1])

[1] being a link to Steinpreis/Anders/Ritzke (1999)

> You're right that it's biased, but perhaps not in the way you think it is: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract

At risk of repeating myself... You've taken a study that looked specifically at tenure-track faculty hiring within four STEM subjects, i.e. a very specific, limited, scope. You then presented that as "evidence" in a general context (in reply to a point about hiring in general being biased against women) in order to argue that the hiring process is biased against men, without any mention of the limited scope of that study.

The way I see it, one of these things is true;

(a) You made a mistake, fair enough, no big deal

(b) You're unfamiliar interpreting studies, fair enough, no big deal

(c) You're misrepresenting science to further an agenda

Given your vociferous objections to affirmative action I'm guessing (c) but happy to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm

#150

Post by arprocter »

pessimizer wrote: post #33
afarrell wrote: post #2

> like saying the word “fútbol” instead of soccer Hispanic folks: Is this in fact a thing that feels alienating to you? If so, would you be willing to explain why? It is the first time I've heard about it so I'd just like to confirm that Conor Friedersdorf is referring to a real thing.

I'm not Hispanic, and don't care at all about soccer, but I imagine it would be aggravating as hell. I'm black, and when white people call me bro, or start speaking in dialect - I honestly start to hate them. For cultural reasons, when a lot of white Americans are talking about getting fighting and getting angry, or partying and having fun, relaxing and being lazy, flirting or getting laid, or one-upping people or hu…

>Soccer is English, it's called "football" in English, so what's this urge to drop into Spanish dialect all of a sudden?

It's probably just to verbally differentiate it from American football without saying 'soccer'.

Should British people feel offended if Americans call British football 'football' and not 'soccer'? IME they'd more likely be happy an American didn't call it by the Americanized name

Edit: I'd guess that the location of the last World Cup, and the fact that the US team didn't do too badly may also factor into things

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