Twitter Suspends Prominent Alt-Right Accounts

> why not just use the full mathematical set of people (ie everyone). you can't get anything more powerful in order to change society, and no other group is as blameworthy for current status quo.

First you need to explain whether by "use" you mean in social science (as an explanation) or in politics (as a strategy). I think that either case doesn't work well. Obviously, all sorts of trivial sets are the causes of everything, but a useful model must be more refined to provide insight on the mechanics of the process (and as a strategy, that's just hard).

> So where should the effort go to cause social change in the EU, and whose citizens deserve being blamed for faults?

I don't know. I'm not a political strategist (I'm not a social scientist, either, but I studied some).

> it also widely criticized for lacking the ability to make predicts from a theory and thus verified the validity of said theory. The lack of verification is where science normally leaves and cultural, religious or political believes begin.

That's not quite true. Social science, as well as biology and computer science to some degree, deal with intractable dynamical systems. On a large scale, it is a mathematical impossibility to make predictions about biological systems, computer programs and social dynamics. Biologists can't predict evolution -- only explain it retroactively -- but that doesn't mean they don't understand the mechanics. Likewise, social science can only make predictions in very constrained conditions, like those studied in social psychology. If science were restricted to studying only tractable processes, we wouldn't get very far. Also, the word "science" may not be the best word to describe social research, anyway, but that doesn't mean that the knowledge gathered there is religious or political.

> Do you have data that shows that homeless people with black skin have less power than homeless people with white skin?

I wasn't quite talking about homeless people. Unless a homeless person denies access to food and shelter to people of other races, I won't call them racist. But as to data, how about this[1]. In the US, blacks are more likely to be incarcerated than whites of even much higher economic status:

What's more, even young black people who follow the rules and are never incarcerated are less likely than similar white people to accumulate wealth as they get older. As of 2012, the median household wealth of black participants in the study who had never been incarcerated at some point in their lives was $16,200. Those who had been incarcerated had zero wealth at the median.

Among white participants who had never been incarcerated, however, median household wealth was $192,000 by 2012. The median white participant who had been incarcerated reported wealth of $5,000.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/03/23/poor-...

> To take a few examples

If you're talking about political strategy, then there's not much I can say, as I have no idea what is the best strategy to dismantle a caste system. But if you're talking about a descriptive model, then I don't think cooperation is the same thing as support. The definition of power is exactly the ability to get others to serve your interests. The fact that a group with less power (the influenced) cooperates with a power structure that serves the powerful (or the influencers) is no indication that the interests originate there, too.

> If we tried to predict this result using perceived power of each group, we would get something like W/M I think that you're assuming that power (or lack thereof) manifests itself in precisely the same way in every situation (male/female or while/black). It is, I believe, an incorrect assumption. Because men are dependent on women in many ways, it is not in their best interests to have women incarcerated more. My expectation would be that in every scenario, the outcome would be the one that best serves the interests of the group with power, regardless if they happen to coincide with the interests of the less powerful group in that particular scenario. Also, social dynamics that shape social perception are, of course, statistical and work globally. Locally we can get behavior that doesn't tell the whole picture. For example, if you only considered how men and women behave on dates, you may wrongly conclude that women have more power because men pay for them and open the door for them.

> it does make sense that not all groups have the same power in all situations

That may be true, but on the scale any researcher who studies social structures who isn't a psychologist is interested in, the more powerful group gets its way in almost every case. It's just that social dynamics that perpetuate such large-scale power are usually not visible on a small scale.

It actually says that if a person really is more harmed then they should get a bigger box. The ethical discussion behind that logic is rich and nuanced. As to "being allowed to be more racist", then that's not about that at all. It's about the racial discrimination on their part causing less actual harm. The two views here are 1. the conservative one, in which ethics is best decided from a personal perspective, which depends on the person's feelings and intent, and 2. the liberal one, in which ethics is decided on the amount of harm or good actually done, regardless of the person's personal intentions or feelings (of course, it's always a spectrum rather than two extremes).

What I always find amusing is how conservatives get mad that liberals are so sensitive to "taking offense", when the exact opposite is true. It's just that conservatives apply their own ethical perspective (where intent and feeling matter a lot) on the liberal view, and then think that the conclusion does not follow or is unfair. But the conclusions are a consequence of a completely different ethical framework, where they do make sense precisely because to liberals, the intent to harm and the feeling of being hurt don't matter as much as they do to conservatives, and what matters is the global effect actions have.

To a conservative, being racist means feeling negatively about other races or intending to harm them. To a liberal, being racist means taking any action that increases or perpetuates the actual harm done to certain races regardless of feelings or intentions.

Social scientists use the definition I attributed to liberals, because those of them who study racism are not ethicists and don't attempt to determine which ethical perspective is more "correct"; instead, they care about actual changes in society, and the truth is that the social effect of white people (we're always talking statistics -- again this is social science, not ethics -- so it's white people one average or as a group) discriminating against blacks is far more detrimental than the other way around (because whites possess more power), and therefore more racist. It is more "wrong" if your ethical perspective is not subjective but objective, and judges not intent but outcome.

What benefit is it for a group to have themselves incarcerated? I could see how one group could grant protection to themselves and their interdependent group, but it seems strange, even contradicting, that the group with power would grant protection to someone else but then not do so to themselves.

And if we allowed such concept to enter the calculations, every other power indication must be put into questioning. Social science commonly make a point of gender distribution in the work environment. We naturally conclude that since more men are in CEO/higher pay position, that must be a result of power. However, a Chinese study showed that >80% of women won't consider dating a man if he doesn't own his own apartment and earn above a cultural set amount. 50% even consider it wrong for man to be outside if not earning that amount, as he should stay inside and work until he has increase his earning. Does this mean that women in such culture are the one in power, and that they just happen to give up power in the work force since its in their best interest to have men with high income?

If we are to include such relations, and from my perspective, results that are not Nash equilibrium, we end up with an impossible high burden of proof on social science. The researcher would basically have to prove the non-existence of such relationships.

> if you only considered how men and women behave on dates, you may wrongly conclude that women have more power

Its not easy comparing two asymmetrical reproductive strategies and asking which one are in more control, but a general consensus seems to be that whoever invest most are the party that are more discriminative and more selective. Where humans end up depend generally on the one studying it, and the methodology used, and local extremes.

> the more powerful group gets its way in almost every case

Depend on the time scale. If we look at an elected party, they will by definition get their way in almost every case until next election. At that point, their power, which was given by society as a whole, can be removed. The question is then, where that power ever part of the group or was it just granted?

Going back to cultural values, it doesn't change as rapidly. By allowing groups to have different power in different situation, it is also less rigid in its predictions. If the same cultural values are kept over time, you also get the effect that groups gets their way consistently over time as per the culture. The thing that would disprove culture as the culprit of power, is if a group had power to change such culture. Do you know of any such case?

> I don't understand what you're referring to.

The swirling mustached man who in western culture symbolize evil and criminality. If men as a group has all the power, why would men as a group allow men to be incarcerated in higher rate than women? We have similar situation with the phrase "women and children first". Why would the group with power sacrifice their life for members of a less powerful group?

> I think it is fairly obvious that men have more power in most cultures.

In the context of dating? Social science looks at outcomes, and women are more discriminative and have more decision of the outcome. Outside of some extreme local situation where some elderly religious male leader decides whom a woman will form a religious bond with, which in my country is highly illegal and carry prison sentence, I can't say there is much signs that men decide the outcome of dating. Looking at proxies for dating culture (ie romantic movies), that impression is further reinforced that women decide the out come of dates and men only have the option to try date enough women until one will accept him.

But any conclusion must come with the consideration that men and women has asymmetrical strategies when it comes to dating.

> Power shapes social norms.

Or social norms shapes power. If men must be bread earners in order to be successful in reproduction rituals, those who are more inclined to do so will reproduce at an evolutionary higher rate than others. Such incentives should, through not guarantied, impact the power balance in the work force. In cultures that do not have such culture should as a result have a distinct different power distribution in the work force. I would guess (since I don't have the data) that Chinese society has a more extreme gender segregation in the work force than countries where income has a lower impact on dating.

> Government is a mechanism that interacts with power

One could easily think that it is the citizens that control the government that votes a party into power. The common phrase, S/He who pays the piper calls the tune, implies a power relation. Naturally, a political party has power, but revolutions general happens to parties that travels too far from the cultural structure. Somewhat ironically, cultural changes often happen in the turmoil.

> Plenty. The French revolution has dramatically changed cultural perception of aristocracy and hereditary power.

I might be mistaken, but it wasn't aristocracy and hereditary power that was in control of the French revolution. It seems that the group in power did not get their way, and the cultural changes came from the less powerful groups working together.

Old style feminism did change cultural norms, and most what I have read and seen was caused by the goal to create change by targeting cultural values. They were not the group with power, and the change was not cause by getting the most powerful group to change culture. Instead culture was changed from within by changing gender norms and expectations. There is plenty of old Swedish movies that illustrated 1980s parents that attempted to eliminate gender identity as a concept, switching or removing gendered clothing and toys.

New feminism, which is a style of feminism I strongly oppose, is the idea that men and women have different strengths, perspectives, and roles in society. Difference feminism success seem to mostly be about pinning groups against groups and causing what people call the gender war. Old feminism advocated that everyone are human and differences in society is caused by a harmful culture, one that they had a good track record in fixing. Since everyone are human, they even managed to make the word feminism to be a synonym to the word equal, which seems quite hijacked by new feminism.

The Civilizing Process sounds interesting and valuable read, but not sure how it links back to the concept that a powerful group shapes society and culture. Going back to racism, the initial proposition was that the group with most power deciding what the culture is. My view is that the culture decide the power balance of groups and culture is formed by everyone in society. In order to fix a bad culture, one need to change society norms and expectations, and you can't do so by only addressing the most powerful group.