In addition to the wonderful piece, I enjoyed the fact that he appears to be wearing a bad-assed, black leather jacket in the photo.
Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
111–120 of 308 posts
Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great point, even considering that Einstein seems to be taking Aristotle and ancient Greek dogma totally out of context. Perhaps, as was and is a tradition in academic circles, he was advocating that contemporary scientists were in fact better and more enlightened than the Greeks. Or, maybe it was a reaction against Hitler's fascination with the ancient Greeks. Yet, Aristotle did not present a clear belief system on…
Plato wrote Meno and Aristotle presented a very clear belief system on slavery in Book I, Chapters 3 through 7 of The Politics and in Book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics. "But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?" "There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of…
Yes, Plato is the author of the Dialogues of Socrates. My bad if my last sentence was written unclearly to seems as if Aristotle was a student of Socrates.
Yet, I suggest going back to that same link you posted and read all of Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle defines courage and what is the only real justification for war. After reading Book II, by the time you get to Book VII, you may not think Aristotle believed people deserved to be slaves.
Also, if Aristotle is bonkers, I'd be glad to know who you think the real man/woman of science is. And I hope the answer isn't Einstein.
Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
The maths does not favour a "side" here. The maths demonstrates the consequences of different distribution of attitudes. Dependent on your views, different parameters will lead to good or bad results. What the model does demonstrate is that the set and distribution of viewpoints that will lead to desegrated neighbourhoods is far smaller than people tend to think. It is much easier to end up with segregation than most…
>The maths demonstrates the consequences of different distribution of attitudes. It demonstrates the consequences of a modeling different distributions of attitudes in a particular way. >What the model does demonstrate is that the set and distribution of viewpoints that will lead to desegrated neighbourhoods is far smaller than people tend to think. It is much easier to end up with segregation than most people would…
> It demonstrates the consequences of a modeling different distributions of attitudes in a particular way.
The model is defined in terms of the attitudes.
If the model does not match the stated definition of the attitudes, then that is a bug in the code, not being creative about how to model those attitudes.
> It does not demonstrate this, because the parameters and details of the model have no relation to reality.
You say that, yet you go on to contradict yourself:
> All this model demonstrates is that for some parameters, individual preference for similarity of neighbors dominates over preference for diversity of the community. Which is (to me) obvious anyway.
The model shows that you can assemble a wide range of attitudes that most people wouldn't dream of considering racist, yet that still contributes to make segregation worse.
That's certainly not been the prevailing attitude. A lot of people that are strongly in favour of desegregation have been assuming that relatively small steps (e.g. getting people to be fina about moving into mixed areas) would be sufficient to over time lead to desegregation.
Yet the model blows that idea out of the water.
That there are other factors is largely irrelevant to addressing this attitude.
Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
#114This is really fascinating. This part particularly struck me: "[Americans'] sense of equality and human dignity is mainly limited to men of white skins. Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious" As a non-black person of color, this has been my access point to issues of race and oppression. Thinking about the (relatively) minor prejudices and indignities I've experienced made me a…
Couldn't agree more that the opposition is real. I have witnessed much of it living in a divided city like Chicago. The most difficult question about it is what we can do to shift government attention and resources? Not in the form of police cameras, squad cars, or militarization, but in the form of education and infrastructure projects. This is only a small part of the question, however. A bigger issue is not where the government spends money, but zoning laws, tax incentives to move to certain areas, and other laws that have been built up and influenced over time to create the situation we have today.
People have been noticing this and pointing it out for a long, long time. Surely Einstein would observe similar treatments as well, particularly because of his fresh perspective.
Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
What evidence leads you to believe that it will, in fact, die on its own?
Racism's trajectory is such that it is quickly disappearing. That is the case even in the deep south where I'm from (this is fairly profound considering our civil war defeat is still a big deal in the minds of many), but rather the racism you do encounter is in response to perceived injustices such as those I listed. Thus the hyper-vigilance perpetuated by the media does more to harm racism's disappearance than to ha…
I don't believe you are giving nearly enough credit to the civil rights movement or its ongoing efforts. Racism existed in various forms for hundreds (thousands, if we go back to Aristotle) of years. It is a human institution, like slavery or marriage, both of which have taken concerted effort and time to end or change.
The "free market of ideas" only works if you assume everyone is a rational actor judging ideas on their direct merits. That simply is not the case.
Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, the point was not the model, but the story.
If the point is the story, what purpose does the model/simulation serve? In this case, the best that the model does is prove that the story is internally consistent. It doesn't prove that the story has any relationship to reality, because there are hundreds of other stories about segregation that you could tell, each with their own model.
It serves the point of illustrating that a common belief about how segregation and level of racism in the population does not hold together: More segregation can occur even with beliefs we would not consider racist; all else being equal, reducing, or even preventing the increase of, segregation takes far more than absence of racism.
Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
#117Many a sincere person will answer: "Our attitude towards Negroes is the result of unfavorable experiences which we have had by living side by side with Negroes in this country. They are not our equals in intelligence, sense of responsibility, reliability." I am firmly convinced that whoever believes this suffers from a fatal misconception. Although it has clear political implications, the last part of the quote-withi…
It was ever a political fight.
That's what happens when you end up neighbors with the great great grandson of the bloke your great great granddaddy paid to have kidnapped and shipped to the country as a piece of equipment.
Sure you can argue over the details about what their family have been like to be around in the intervening time, but don't be surprised if the conversation gets back around to the question of who exactly kidnapped who in the first place.
Is pretty pointless to winge about it being political.
Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
#118I highly recommend Jane Elliott's "Blue Eyes Brown Eyes" lesson for anyone who have not seen it yet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=uQ...
In any discussion about racism, the stratified-by-race-IQ-chart invariably gets brought up (crtl-f for "itjustdontwork" for its latest rendition in this thread). Jane Elliott's video helped me to find a new perspective on the IQ chart data.
Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/1995-SAT... Plus page 41 and 44 of this PDF: http://nyulawreview.org/sites/default/files/pdf/NYULawReview... Plus the first few sentences here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#United_S... As well as many more. By the way guys, downvoting and flagkilling comments to silence opinions (that are backed up by facts and statistics) that hurt your feeli…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism http://www.quora.com/What-scientific-evidence-is-there-to-di... http://www.hirhome.com/rr/rrintro.htm http://science-beta.slashdot.org/story/14/08/11/122229/genet...
Ahh, the ol' "racist" technique. Someone cites facts that puts a minority in a bad light? Someone says something mean to a black person? Just yell "racist" and you'll surely silence them and "win" the argument!
I am not claiming whites are superior or that blacks are inferior. All I am doing is citing facts. It is a fact that the poorest of white people outscore the richest of blacks in intelligence testing. It is also a fact that black males make up 6% of the population in the US, yet are responsible for a full half of our murders. It is also a fact that men are different from women, blacks are different from whites, and so on. This "everyone is exactly the same!!!1" stuff is baloney. The facts are indisputable. Your links don't change that fact. And shouting "RACIST!!!" does nothing but make you look silly and unintelligent.
Re: Einstein: The Negro Question (1946)
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plato wrote Meno and Aristotle presented a very clear belief system on slavery in Book I, Chapters 3 through 7 of The Politics and in Book 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics. "But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?" "There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason and of…
Yes, Plato is the author of the Dialogues of Socrates. My bad if my last sentence was written unclearly to seems as if Aristotle was a student of Socrates. Yet, I suggest going back to that same link you posted and read all of Book II of the Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle defines courage and what is the only real justification for war. After reading Book II, by the time you get to Book VII, you may not think Aris…
The real man/woman of science is obviously the hermaphroditic god-head at the center of creation. Any fool knows that.