3 ms·

It doesn’t seem you’re very familiar with either this area of ethics or with statistics, so I don’t think this can be a productive discussion. I’ll just note

It doesn’t seem you’re very familiar with either this area of ethics or with statistics, so I don’t think this can be a productive discussion. I’ll just note that you’re seriously comparing someone posting “go to Asia because it’s easier to have sex there” with a black person walking into a store. It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. On top of that you’re equating harassing a shopper to not even accusing someone of being a sex tourist, just pointing out that sex tourism is a thing. You need to step back and look at this in perspective. That’s it from me.

tripletao 8y ago
"Have sex" is pretty clearly a proxy for "form some kind of intimate relationship with a woman" here. If it were just about the sex, a local prostitute would be more cost-effective than relocation to Thailand. I'm not sure what here makes you think I don't know math, and that's not something I'm often accused of. The point at which sex tourism is a serious problem that deserves attention comes well before the point where any foreign man there can reasonably be accused of it. You could have raised the issue in a way that made it clear you meant no suggestion of that against anyone here. Most people still take "you might not have deserved [to be suspected of being a pedo]" as an accusation--"might" implies "might not". If he'd said "New York City" instead of "Thailand", then would his comment have been fine? Must good honorable foreign men write off a country entirely once enough other foreign men do something bad? What's the tipping point? Is there some prostitution rate and GDP per capita at which Bangkok will be okay again? Do the thresholds vary with the man's race and income? Race only? > It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. This was my first post in response to this story. So I'm not sure why I'd feel like I was being profiled, unless this is some kind of implication that I am (oops, "might be") a sex tourist too. I don't and have never lived in SE Asia, or had sex with anyone there. I get that you think I'm wrong. You've expressed this clearly, but you've made no attempt to explain why. I'd venture that if you stepped back and looked at this in perspective, you'd find a more difficult moral landscape than you currently perceive. ETA: Seriously, you're dancing around the idea that a poster here is a child sex tourist--an active pedophile, a man who rapes children, a criminal rightly considered among the worst imaginable. If there's no reason to suspect that he's a child sex tourist, then why was your (accurate) statement that that's disproportionately common in Thailand relevant? Given the opportunity, the closest you got to retracting the implication was to say he "might not have deserved" it. And you think I'm wrong to compare this to a false accusation of shoplifting? A foreign man living in Bangkok really is more likely to be a sex tourist than average, just as a black shopper is more likely to be a shoplifter. (Yes, disparate enforcement against black vs. white shoplifters skews the raw statistics against black people. No, this doesn't explain the full difference. Controlling for income and other factors removes a lot of the difference; but store security doesn't have that information, so that's not relevant.) I think that's the "Bayesian statistics" you're talking about. The point is that these real, nonzero correlations do not justify making the lives of entire classes of people worse. I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill".
- jonathanyc 8y ago
  You really haven’t engaged with my last comment, you’re just continuing your previous comment. Your doubling down on your attempt to compare harassing a black shoplifter and people’s initial replies to the GP is quite telling. I think you’re purposely looking for something to disagree with on this issue so that you can count some sort of moral victory. I said I wouldn’t respond, but you wrote this: > I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill". So for the record, no, I absolutely and without qualification* do not apologize, and yes, you and the GP need to step back as I have said and reevaluate objectively. The GP’s post clarifies that he is not a sex tourist. But as others have pointed out, his original post makes that suspicion entirely reasonable. Please don’t expect further replies from me, I haven’t gained anything from this conversation and I don’t think you have either. EDIT: I will allow the qualification that this is obviously a painful subject to discuss, and ideally we could avoid pain like this altogether. But whatever bizarre viewpoint you are arguing is not one that will lead to less pain for those in loving relationships involving people from those countries, and it is not one which will help with the very real problem of sex tourism. If I see a post like the GP’s again, I will reply the same way (note I was not even replying to him, but rather explaining why people replied they way they did).
  - tripletao 8y ago
    What have I failed to engage with? I am looking at this from the perspective of ordinary people who live, visit, or do business in that region. While sex tourism is a problem, I believe those ordinary people outnumber the sex tourists. I understand that the context in which you encounter SE Asia may be mostly reports of sex tourism. For me, it is not--it's just another place I've had meetings. I think sex tourism there is around the same level as something like the opiate epidemic in the USA--something most people are aware of, but not something that directly touches most people's lives. There are many poor people, and there's also an educated professional class. There's little "tech" by the standards of California venture capitalists, but lots of manufacturing. This exchange began when you posted a comment that I suspect caused some pain to a guy who (we have no good reason to doubt) was engaged in a loving relationship with someone from that region. Now, you've just said that your viewpoint is better than mine, by that specific standard. How do you make that consistent? If I said that it was "entirely reasonable" to suspect that the black shoppers were thieves, on the basis of your Bayesian statistics, then I suspect you would call me a racist. I think you would be right. Where does the analogy fail here? It's wrong even though they really are more likely to be shoplifters, if we do statistics considering nothing but the color of their skin. That correlation by itself is not a reason to act, before considering the size of the correlation, and the social consequences to the group that you're about to harm. If you see a post like his again, then you could reply "They are probably thinking of sex tourism. That's a bad problem in the region, which then also casts a hurtful shadow on any relationship between a local woman and foreign man. I hope any foreign man who dates there does so with respect for this problem." Why not?

tripletao 8y ago

"Have sex" is pretty clearly a proxy for "form some kind of intimate relationship with a woman" here. If it were just about the sex, a local prostitute would be more cost-effective than relocation to Thailand. I'm not sure what here makes you think I don't know math, and that's not something I'm often accused of. The point at which sex tourism is a serious problem that deserves attention comes well before the point where any foreign man there can reasonably be accused of it. You could have raised the issue in a way that made it clear you meant no suggestion of that against anyone here. Most people still take "you might not have deserved [to be suspected of being a pedo]" as an accusation--"might" implies "might not". If he'd said "New York City" instead of "Thailand", then would his comment have been fine? Must good honorable foreign men write off a country entirely once enough other foreign men do something bad? What's the tipping point? Is there some prostitution rate and GDP per capita at which Bangkok will be okay again? Do the thresholds vary with the man's race and income? Race only? > It sounds to me like you are just disproportionately sensitive about this because you feel like in this case you are the one being profiled. This was my first post in response to this story. So I'm not sure why I'd feel like I was being profiled, unless this is some kind of implication that I am (oops, "might be") a sex tourist too. I don't and have never lived in SE Asia, or had sex with anyone there. I get that you think I'm wrong. You've expressed this clearly, but you've made no attempt to explain why. I'd venture that if you stepped back and looked at this in perspective, you'd find a more difficult moral landscape than you currently perceive. ETA: Seriously, you're dancing around the idea that a poster here is a child sex tourist--an active pedophile, a man who rapes children, a criminal rightly considered among the worst imaginable. If there's no reason to suspect that he's a child sex tourist, then why was your (accurate) statement that that's disproportionately common in Thailand relevant? Given the opportunity, the closest you got to retracting the implication was to say he "might not have deserved" it. And you think I'm wrong to compare this to a false accusation of shoplifting? A foreign man living in Bangkok really is more likely to be a sex tourist than average, just as a black shopper is more likely to be a shoplifter. (Yes, disparate enforcement against black vs. white shoplifters skews the raw statistics against black people. No, this doesn't explain the full difference. Controlling for income and other factors removes a lot of the difference; but store security doesn't have that information, so that's not relevant.) I think that's the "Bayesian statistics" you're talking about. The point is that these real, nonzero correlations do not justify making the lives of entire classes of people worse. I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill".

jonathanyc 8y ago
You really haven’t engaged with my last comment, you’re just continuing your previous comment. Your doubling down on your attempt to compare harassing a black shoplifter and people’s initial replies to the GP is quite telling. I think you’re purposely looking for something to disagree with on this issue so that you can count some sort of moral victory. I said I wouldn’t respond, but you wrote this: > I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill". So for the record, no, I absolutely and without qualification* do not apologize, and yes, you and the GP need to step back as I have said and reevaluate objectively. The GP’s post clarifies that he is not a sex tourist. But as others have pointed out, his original post makes that suspicion entirely reasonable. Please don’t expect further replies from me, I haven’t gained anything from this conversation and I don’t think you have either. EDIT: I will allow the qualification that this is obviously a painful subject to discuss, and ideally we could avoid pain like this altogether. But whatever bizarre viewpoint you are arguing is not one that will lead to less pain for those in loving relationships involving people from those countries, and it is not one which will help with the very real problem of sex tourism. If I see a post like the GP’s again, I will reply the same way (note I was not even replying to him, but rather explaining why people replied they way they did).
- tripletao 8y ago
  What have I failed to engage with? I am looking at this from the perspective of ordinary people who live, visit, or do business in that region. While sex tourism is a problem, I believe those ordinary people outnumber the sex tourists. I understand that the context in which you encounter SE Asia may be mostly reports of sex tourism. For me, it is not--it's just another place I've had meetings. I think sex tourism there is around the same level as something like the opiate epidemic in the USA--something most people are aware of, but not something that directly touches most people's lives. There are many poor people, and there's also an educated professional class. There's little "tech" by the standards of California venture capitalists, but lots of manufacturing. This exchange began when you posted a comment that I suspect caused some pain to a guy who (we have no good reason to doubt) was engaged in a loving relationship with someone from that region. Now, you've just said that your viewpoint is better than mine, by that specific standard. How do you make that consistent? If I said that it was "entirely reasonable" to suspect that the black shoppers were thieves, on the basis of your Bayesian statistics, then I suspect you would call me a racist. I think you would be right. Where does the analogy fail here? It's wrong even though they really are more likely to be shoplifters, if we do statistics considering nothing but the color of their skin. That correlation by itself is not a reason to act, before considering the size of the correlation, and the social consequences to the group that you're about to harm. If you see a post like his again, then you could reply "They are probably thinking of sex tourism. That's a bad problem in the region, which then also casts a hurtful shadow on any relationship between a local woman and foreign man. I hope any foreign man who dates there does so with respect for this problem." Why not?