5 ms·
Are facts racist and sexist?
by TA0x0 6y ago
Are facts racist and sexist?
- shadowgovt 6y agoHistory shows interpretation of facts can be extremely racist and sexist. Phrenology and hysteria both come to mind.
- TA0x0 6y agoPhrenology and hysteria are not facts, and their interpretations are not facts either. Some facts are not open to interpretation.
- shadowgovt 6y agoThey were definitely understood to be facts at the time people believed them.
- TA0x0 6y agoThose were theories to describe specific phenomenas, not facts. Knock knock, science 101 is at the door calling for you.
- TA0x0 6y agoThose were theories to describe specific phenomenas, not facts. Certain facts are indisputable and not open to interpretation: FACT: African-Americans are more likely to commit violent crimes than Asian Americans.
- shadowgovt 6y agoQuite possibly, if one shows one's work on how one arrived at that statement (statistics can be bloody slippery things, and while individual data points are facts, the analysis, interpretation, and summarization of them starts to wander away from "fact," especially when one begins to do curve fitting or assumptions about population distributions). And if one runs with that fact alone and tries to build behaviors on it, one's likely to fall into a similar trap to the one the phrenologists fell into: assuming that a single fact is descriptive enough of the world to dictate theory or practice.
- TA0x0 6y ago>Quite possibly, if one shows one's work on how one arrived at that statement (statistics can be bloody slippery things, and while individual data points are facts, the analysis, interpretation, and summarization of them starts to wander away from "fact," especially when one begins to do curve fitting or assumptions about population distributions). Any and every statistical study ever done on race and crime supports the FACT stated above. Per capita, it's an indisputable fact that they commit more violent crimes, raw numbers alone, no curve fitting or extrapolation. >And if one runs with that fact alone and tries to build behaviors on it, one's likely to fall into a similar trap to the one the phrenologists fell into: assuming that a single fact is descriptive enough of the world to dictate theory or practice. Which brings us back to my original statement. Are facts racist and sexist?
- shadowgovt 6y agoHistory shows interpretation of facts can be extremely racist and sexist.
- TA0x0 6y agoInterpretations are not facts. There are some facts, like the one I listed above, that are not open to interpretation.
- shadowgovt 6y ago"Water at standard atmospheric pressure boils at 100 degrees C and freezes at 0 degrees C" is not open to interpretation. Making a terse sociological claim from statistics is almost always open to interpretation. Statistics is the science of interpreting discrete data points, looking for patterns and relations. Lies, damn lies, and all that. The only thing that stands alone without interpretation in statistics is the input data itself, and that tells us nothing. I suspect that for the specific claim you've made, the evidence supports the claim, but I'd want to see whether they've controlled for conflating the definition of "crimes committed" with "charged with crimes" or "convicted of crimes" to be certain. Or whether the statistics are using the Bayesian or frequentist approach (after all, the claim being made is "are more likely," and that always assumes a giant pile of unstated priors). Or or or, etc. Even still, whether the statistical claim being made is fact is uninteresting. If one assumes it's fact, the interesting question is "What do you do with it?" In isolation, with that one fact? Nothing. It's not nearly enough info to form theory or policy. Which is why my original response to your original post was about interpretation, not fact. Interpretation is where things get interesting. Facts without interpretation are dead as rocks.
- TA0X3 6y agoFlagged comment: Those were theories to describe specific phenomenas, not facts. Certain facts are indisputable and not open to interpretation: FACT: African-Americans are more likely to commit violent crimes than Asian Americans.
- throwaway56789a 6y agoFlagged comment: Those were theories to describe specific phenomenas, not facts. Certain facts are indisputable and not open to interpretation: FACT: African-Americans are more likely to commit violent crimes than Asian Americans.