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I think this is a very well reasoned argument that makes sense within your logical and philosophical framework. What it doesn't take into account is different

I think this is a very well reasoned argument that makes sense within your logical and philosophical framework. What it doesn't take into account is different meanings to the term "fair" or the morality of a system based on staunch individualism. > Ostensibly, this is "fair", since you use the same rule to fund everyone, but clearly it isn't actually. I actually find the situation you outlined extremely fair and would find it quite unfair to apply different funding principals to different schools based on demographics. I suppose one of the problems I have with the concept of privilege is that I find it promotes a very dangerous mindset. Having grown up poor and non-white and achieved success through hard work, more often than not I saw people being held back by their own sense of victimization than any sort of systematic oppression. The concept of privilege exacerbates that and thus is counter productive.

joshuamorton 9y ago
>I actually find the situation you outlined extremely fair and would find it quite unfair to apply different funding principals to different schools based on demographics. But that "fair" method isn't independent of demographic. And that's what privilege tries to highlight. It's almost always possible to dress up policies that are de-facto prejudicial as independent of the thing that they're supposedly prejudiced against. If you want to discriminate against women without making it obvious, you can add an unnecessary height requirement. It's only when you take a look at the correlations between those variables, when you realize that women are inches shorter than men that something seems off. (and to be clear I'm talking about an abstract situation where height doesn't matter for whatever it is we're doing). When you take into account the correlations, the non-discriminatory rules suddenly feel a lot less non-discriminatory. If you really supported a funding principle that was independent of demographics, you should support a system that grants funding solely based on headcount. Otherwise you're implicitly admitting that rich people deserve better education solely because they are rich, which seems discriminatory to me. Granted, there are flaws to that system too, but what it doesn't do is further disadvantage the already disadvantaged. Your "fair" system leads to the poorest areas (and the least-white areas, and a few other similar things) getting the worst education. The result of this is that I, as an individual, receive a worse education do to things that are totally out of my control. That doesn't seem particularly fair to me. (And that's ignoring other arguments that there are probably very compelling reasons to fund the least well off schools more, much like a progressive tax system favors those at the bottom. And as an extension of this, I'm curious if you favor a progressive tax system, or something else). Another user mentioned this study[1], which unfortunately I can't find the paper for, but the video is still worth watching. I'll quote an important bit: >As a person's levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, and their feelings of entitlement and deservingness...increases. The crux of this is that while you may disagree, its possible, and even perhaps likely, that your success is less "yours" than you believe, and that your mind is rewriting history, so to speak, to make you feel more in control of your outcomes than you actually were. This is by no means your fault or anything, and there are probably good evolutionary reasons for our brains doing this (I say probably only because I'm not an evolutionary psychologist, I can make some pretty good arguments for why this would be evolutionarily good). And there are times when it's probably a good idea to ignore that fact and feel like you're to blame for your outcomes, but there are also times where it isn't. In any case, I hope you understand that there's more to it than just fake-victimhood and an attempt to make successful people feel bad. And that while you may disagree with the theory, its at least not total SJW nonsense :P [1]:https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean
- malvosenior 9y ago
  > I'm curious if you favor a progressive tax system I favor a flat tax if we must pay tax at all. > The crux of this is that while you may disagree, its possible, and even perhaps likely, that your success is less "yours" than you believe, and that your mind is rewriting history, so to speak, to make you feel more in control of your outcomes than you actually were. This is by no means your fault or anything, and there are probably good evolutionary reasons for our brains doing this (I say probably only because I'm not an evolutionary psychologist, I can make some pretty good arguments for why this would be evolutionarily good). And there are times when it's probably a good idea to ignore that fact and feel like you're to blame for your outcomes, but there are also times where it isn't. This is the crux of why I think the concept of privilege is extremely dangerous. You have no idea who I am and I've already stated that I fit some of the demographics that you deem underprivileged. Yet instead of listening to what I had to say (which is a quite simple explanation -- work smart/hard == do good) you fit a very elaborate psychological explanation over my experiences (of which you know nothing about). Do you believe that poor people cannot succeed without help? If the answer is yes, then why would you question someone telling you that's what happened? If the answer is no, then I think you need to reexamine your philosophy as it's fairly dehumanizing to be told that you're not capable of success. I also find it somewhat amusing that I've seen this pattern repeated over and over. Poor people claim to know what's hold them back. Rich people claim to know what's holding poor people back. Poor people who became wealthy are told they're experience is invalid, an outlier, not useful. Really shouldn't they (we) be the ones that have the most valuable opinion since we've proven it can work? I'm not just talking about this exchange or my own experiences. You'll see this conversation happen over and over when someone who is self-made tries to discuss how they did it.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    >This is the crux of why I think the concept of privilege is extremely dangerous. You have no idea who I am and I've already stated that I fit some of the demographics that you deem underprivileged. Yet instead of listening to what I had to say (which is a quite simple explanation -- work smart/hard == do good) you fit a very elaborate psychological explanation over my experiences (of which you know nothing about). It doesn't really matter who you are, it's unlikely that you're immune to bias. I absolutely listened to what you said, it's just orthogonal to the point I made, which is that no matter your experience, how your brain works is probably not unique. You're almost certainly subject to the psychological quirks as everyone else. Do you want me to give your experiences special deference because you come from an underprivileged background? I thought that's explicitly what you were arguing against. >Do you believe that poor people cannot succeed without help? If the answer is yes, then why would you question someone telling you that's what happened? If the answer is no, then I think you need to reexamine your philosophy as it's fairly dehumanizing to be told that you're not capable of success. No. And I don't think I've ever said that poor people cannot succeed without help. I've said it's more difficult for poor people to achieve the same success as rich people, all else equal, but I don't see anything dehumanizing about that. I'd ask that you take another look at what I'm actually saying, because you're turning my words into something that they very much aren't. >Poor people who became wealthy are told they're experience is invalid, an outlier, not useful. Really shouldn't they (we) be the ones that have the most valuable opinion since we've proven it can work? No. Not at all! For the same reason that I wouldn't ask Jeff Bezos for life advice. Its survivorship bias, plain and simple. For every person with your story, there's someone else who had a similar background, worked just as hard, and isn't successful. The common explanation for this is that a lot of successful people say that a good things is to take risks. They all have this in common. They took risks. But so did tons of other people who ended up broke or bankrupt or otherwise unsuccessful. Only listening to successful people will result in exactly what you're doing now: thinking that [hard work/risk taking/keeping a strict schedule/buddhist minimalism] is enough to do succeed, ignoring the fact that there are many people who did exactly the same thing who have failed. Just to be clear, are you arguing that you worked harder/smarter than every person from your hometown who has seen less success than you? Because I'd find that highly unlikely. It certainly wasn't true for me.

joshuamorton 9y ago

>I actually find the situation you outlined extremely fair and would find it quite unfair to apply different funding principals to different schools based on demographics. But that "fair" method isn't independent of demographic. And that's what privilege tries to highlight. It's almost always possible to dress up policies that are de-facto prejudicial as independent of the thing that they're supposedly prejudiced against. If you want to discriminate against women without making it obvious, you can add an unnecessary height requirement. It's only when you take a look at the correlations between those variables, when you realize that women are inches shorter than men that something seems off. (and to be clear I'm talking about an abstract situation where height doesn't matter for whatever it is we're doing). When you take into account the correlations, the non-discriminatory rules suddenly feel a lot less non-discriminatory. If you really supported a funding principle that was independent of demographics, you should support a system that grants funding solely based on headcount. Otherwise you're implicitly admitting that rich people deserve better education solely because they are rich, which seems discriminatory to me. Granted, there are flaws to that system too, but what it doesn't do is further disadvantage the already disadvantaged. Your "fair" system leads to the poorest areas (and the least-white areas, and a few other similar things) getting the worst education. The result of this is that I, as an individual, receive a worse education do to things that are totally out of my control. That doesn't seem particularly fair to me. (And that's ignoring other arguments that there are probably very compelling reasons to fund the least well off schools more, much like a progressive tax system favors those at the bottom. And as an extension of this, I'm curious if you favor a progressive tax system, or something else). Another user mentioned this study[1], which unfortunately I can't find the paper for, but the video is still worth watching. I'll quote an important bit: >As a person's levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, and their feelings of entitlement and deservingness...increases. The crux of this is that while you may disagree, its possible, and even perhaps likely, that your success is less "yours" than you believe, and that your mind is rewriting history, so to speak, to make you feel more in control of your outcomes than you actually were. This is by no means your fault or anything, and there are probably good evolutionary reasons for our brains doing this (I say probably only because I'm not an evolutionary psychologist, I can make some pretty good arguments for why this would be evolutionarily good). And there are times when it's probably a good idea to ignore that fact and feel like you're to blame for your outcomes, but there are also times where it isn't. In any case, I hope you understand that there's more to it than just fake-victimhood and an attempt to make successful people feel bad. And that while you may disagree with the theory, its at least not total SJW nonsense :P [1]:https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_piff_does_money_make_you_mean

malvosenior 9y ago
> I'm curious if you favor a progressive tax system I favor a flat tax if we must pay tax at all. > The crux of this is that while you may disagree, its possible, and even perhaps likely, that your success is less "yours" than you believe, and that your mind is rewriting history, so to speak, to make you feel more in control of your outcomes than you actually were. This is by no means your fault or anything, and there are probably good evolutionary reasons for our brains doing this (I say probably only because I'm not an evolutionary psychologist, I can make some pretty good arguments for why this would be evolutionarily good). And there are times when it's probably a good idea to ignore that fact and feel like you're to blame for your outcomes, but there are also times where it isn't. This is the crux of why I think the concept of privilege is extremely dangerous. You have no idea who I am and I've already stated that I fit some of the demographics that you deem underprivileged. Yet instead of listening to what I had to say (which is a quite simple explanation -- work smart/hard == do good) you fit a very elaborate psychological explanation over my experiences (of which you know nothing about). Do you believe that poor people cannot succeed without help? If the answer is yes, then why would you question someone telling you that's what happened? If the answer is no, then I think you need to reexamine your philosophy as it's fairly dehumanizing to be told that you're not capable of success. I also find it somewhat amusing that I've seen this pattern repeated over and over. Poor people claim to know what's hold them back. Rich people claim to know what's holding poor people back. Poor people who became wealthy are told they're experience is invalid, an outlier, not useful. Really shouldn't they (we) be the ones that have the most valuable opinion since we've proven it can work? I'm not just talking about this exchange or my own experiences. You'll see this conversation happen over and over when someone who is self-made tries to discuss how they did it.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  >This is the crux of why I think the concept of privilege is extremely dangerous. You have no idea who I am and I've already stated that I fit some of the demographics that you deem underprivileged. Yet instead of listening to what I had to say (which is a quite simple explanation -- work smart/hard == do good) you fit a very elaborate psychological explanation over my experiences (of which you know nothing about). It doesn't really matter who you are, it's unlikely that you're immune to bias. I absolutely listened to what you said, it's just orthogonal to the point I made, which is that no matter your experience, how your brain works is probably not unique. You're almost certainly subject to the psychological quirks as everyone else. Do you want me to give your experiences special deference because you come from an underprivileged background? I thought that's explicitly what you were arguing against. >Do you believe that poor people cannot succeed without help? If the answer is yes, then why would you question someone telling you that's what happened? If the answer is no, then I think you need to reexamine your philosophy as it's fairly dehumanizing to be told that you're not capable of success. No. And I don't think I've ever said that poor people cannot succeed without help. I've said it's more difficult for poor people to achieve the same success as rich people, all else equal, but I don't see anything dehumanizing about that. I'd ask that you take another look at what I'm actually saying, because you're turning my words into something that they very much aren't. >Poor people who became wealthy are told they're experience is invalid, an outlier, not useful. Really shouldn't they (we) be the ones that have the most valuable opinion since we've proven it can work? No. Not at all! For the same reason that I wouldn't ask Jeff Bezos for life advice. Its survivorship bias, plain and simple. For every person with your story, there's someone else who had a similar background, worked just as hard, and isn't successful. The common explanation for this is that a lot of successful people say that a good things is to take risks. They all have this in common. They took risks. But so did tons of other people who ended up broke or bankrupt or otherwise unsuccessful. Only listening to successful people will result in exactly what you're doing now: thinking that [hard work/risk taking/keeping a strict schedule/buddhist minimalism] is enough to do succeed, ignoring the fact that there are many people who did exactly the same thing who have failed. Just to be clear, are you arguing that you worked harder/smarter than every person from your hometown who has seen less success than you? Because I'd find that highly unlikely. It certainly wasn't true for me.