4 ms·

My contention is that you are confusing yourself, and they don't really provide P(default|black, 620) and P(default|white,620) in the paper. The only number I c

My contention is that you are confusing yourself, and they don't really provide P(default|black, 620) and P(default|white,620) in the paper. The only number I could find is P(default|620)=82% which is not enough for my calculation. I choose not to couch my facts in language meant to obscure the point, or avoid choosing factually correct examples that again hide the unpleasant bits of reality. We won't figure out the right way to deal with reality if we pretend the ugly bits aren't really there. I don't think you're a racist, by the way. I think something else is going on with you. It's very simple. On values I'm mainly an old school left wing individualist - I view ethnicity as holding no moral weight and groups as having no inherent rights that they don't inherit from their individual members. Unfortunately, on racial issues, the white supremacists seem to be factually correct (mostly). The current left wing approach to this is to shame and ostracize anyone who dares to point out the emperor has no clothes. I originally interpreted your comments to be an attempt in that direction. Meanwhile, UKIP/scary Hungarians/etc are pointing out the lies and people are following them. I.e. I favor intellectualism and analytical philosophy over dogma and (secularized) religion.

tptacek 10y ago
Well, I guess I was wrong.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  Now back to the regularly scheduled program of demonization, highbrow dismissal and flagging disagreement. I hope the old tptacek who discussed ideas comes back some day. I miss him.
  - naturenurture 10y ago
    Perhaps HN isn't the best place to persistently litigate the validity, merits and implications of The Bell Curve, which is the direction that many of your arguments (this thread among them) seem to take. Of course, The Bell Curve, and the arguments contained within are a best assumption as to what "on racial issues, the white supremacists seem to be factually correct (mostly)" is referring to. Also, you tend to fall back on claiming to be a harbinger of unadulterated knowledge ("I choose not to couch my facts in language meant to obscure the point") while ignoring the implicit (or explicit, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170988 ) invective contained in your language. I see no loss of descriptive accuracy w.r.t. the article between "deadbeat blacks" and "African-American defaulters", yet using the latter avoids the minefield of historical connotations that the former has.
YuriNiyazov 10y ago
You are either missing, or deliberately ignoring the part where the word choice for your arguments matter. Surely you know that, in current discourse, individually the word "deadbeat" means something, and the word "blacks" means something, but the combined "deadbeat blacks" means something much greater than the sum of its parts, because of the societal context in which it is uttered. To claim that you are just using that combination as just the exact sum of its parts is disingenuous, especially from someone who claims to favor analytical philosophy. Go read Paul Grice.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  I realize that people often choose to read more into their words than should be read. I'm explicitly arguing against this. The "social context" means that there are ideas we can't discuss without being socially lumped in with deplorable people - for instance the fact that blacks don't pay back their loans as much as whites, that they are more likely to be deadbeats/defaulters/etc. (As tptacek noted, there is no similar stigma about observing that whites are deadbeats relative to Asians.) This creates a significant level of friction on one side of a discussion, and makes it harder for us to come to truth. This also means that the only people who do discuss these issues are the deplorable folks. I explicitly want to reclaim the unpleasant facts so that the deplorable folks don't have a monopoly on truth. I want to say "we should import hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, a few hundred white girls will be raped as a result, and tens of thousands of lives will be saved. Good tradeoff." I want to say "black on white crime is the most common form of interracial violence, but we should still treat black people as equal citizens with civil rights. However our expectations of equal levels of police violence against blacks and whites might be unreasonable." Lying/shaming/attacking the people speaking the truth isn't sustainable. When you lie to people and they notice the truth, they start to turn to turn to UKIP/Jobbik/other such folks. As a globalist and a universalist I don't want to live in that world.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I know you realize that every street corner preacher, PizzaGate activist, and Zero Hedge writer uses the same line about how they're being punished for speaking the truth. Why is your special pleading so much more interesting than theirs?

tptacek 10y ago

Well, I guess I was wrong.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
Now back to the regularly scheduled program of demonization, highbrow dismissal and flagging disagreement. I hope the old tptacek who discussed ideas comes back some day. I miss him.
- naturenurture 10y ago
  Perhaps HN isn't the best place to persistently litigate the validity, merits and implications of The Bell Curve, which is the direction that many of your arguments (this thread among them) seem to take. Of course, The Bell Curve, and the arguments contained within are a best assumption as to what "on racial issues, the white supremacists seem to be factually correct (mostly)" is referring to. Also, you tend to fall back on claiming to be a harbinger of unadulterated knowledge ("I choose not to couch my facts in language meant to obscure the point") while ignoring the implicit (or explicit, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170988 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13170988 ) invective contained in your language. I see no loss of descriptive accuracy w.r.t. the article between "deadbeat blacks" and "African-American defaulters", yet using the latter avoids the minefield of historical connotations that the former has.

YuriNiyazov 10y ago

You are either missing, or deliberately ignoring the part where the word choice for your arguments matter. Surely you know that, in current discourse, individually the word "deadbeat" means something, and the word "blacks" means something, but the combined "deadbeat blacks" means something much greater than the sum of its parts, because of the societal context in which it is uttered. To claim that you are just using that combination as just the exact sum of its parts is disingenuous, especially from someone who claims to favor analytical philosophy. Go read Paul Grice.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
I realize that people often choose to read more into their words than should be read. I'm explicitly arguing against this. The "social context" means that there are ideas we can't discuss without being socially lumped in with deplorable people - for instance the fact that blacks don't pay back their loans as much as whites, that they are more likely to be deadbeats/defaulters/etc. (As tptacek noted, there is no similar stigma about observing that whites are deadbeats relative to Asians.) This creates a significant level of friction on one side of a discussion, and makes it harder for us to come to truth. This also means that the only people who do discuss these issues are the deplorable folks. I explicitly want to reclaim the unpleasant facts so that the deplorable folks don't have a monopoly on truth. I want to say "we should import hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, a few hundred white girls will be raped as a result, and tens of thousands of lives will be saved. Good tradeoff." I want to say "black on white crime is the most common form of interracial violence, but we should still treat black people as equal citizens with civil rights. However our expectations of equal levels of police violence against blacks and whites might be unreasonable." Lying/shaming/attacking the people speaking the truth isn't sustainable. When you lie to people and they notice the truth, they start to turn to turn to UKIP/Jobbik/other such folks. As a globalist and a universalist I don't want to live in that world.
- tptacek 10y ago
  I know you realize that every street corner preacher, PizzaGate activist, and Zero Hedge writer uses the same line about how they're being punished for speaking the truth. Why is your special pleading so much more interesting than theirs?