8 ms·

Opinions formed after a best-as-you-can assessment of the evidence are better than the alternatives. Sure, agreed. A group of black people are perfec

Opinions formed after a best-as-you-can assessment of the evidence are better than the alternatives. Sure, agreed. A group of black people are perfectly capable of empathising with, understanding and having a nuanced opinion of the concerns of disabled people. Swap adjectives around as you like Absolutely not. Nobody will have as much evidence on the experiences of a group as those within the group. Have you ever worked closely with disabled folks? Been one? Had them in your home? As somebody with minor disabilities myself, it is absolutely humbling when my friend with different disabilities visits, because various things in my home and the surrounding environs affect her in ways that I could not imagine without her help. Am I discussing anecdota, rather than hard evidence? Certainly, but most of the truly hard decisions in the world are not the sort that lend themselves to purely evidence-based approaches. There is no conclusive study or collection of studies that can, for example, tell us how to resolve the Israel/Palestine matter, whether allowing women to abort their pregnancies is a good idea, etc. We can not establish proper control groups, etc, to study these issues. Much purported "evidence" is biased. We need to lean on the evidence as much as possible, but there is also no substitute for the voices belonging to those being discussed.

radu_floricica 6y ago
There is a post on SSC about Isolated Demand for Rigor which, well, I can't link you to because it's down. But I think it is relevant to many points made in this conversation. Is it better to have representation when making policy decisions? Pretty much everybody is saying yes. And somehow, this "yes" gets interpreted as "can't have an opinion on any topic as long as I'm not part of a certain group". That's identity politics taken to the extreme. I'm going to put common sense on the table and say that yes, I can have opinions on various topics. Including, among many others, disabled people. Are my opinions equally valid, given that I'm not part of that group? And here we start to see how things get confused - because absolutely nobody deigns to give a definition of "valid". Are my opinions correct? good? useful? - that's damn easy to judge, comparatively. But "valid"? Hell, I could have the best damn idea in the whole wide world, and it still wouldn't make it "valid" - in the climate we're moving towards. Are opinions of people not of that group, on average, equally good as those in the group? That's a completely different question, and now the isolated demand for rigor becomes clear: we move from a statistical bias to being allowed to do something. Being less likely to be right is not a criteria for being allowed in the public discourse. Nor should it be.
- imperfect_blue 6y ago
  To add, personal experience can be useful, but is not the end-all in decision making. It's useful in the ways anecdotes are useful, that is to say, good as an illustrative example but may not be statistically representative. In general, you do not need to have personally experienced X to have a useful or "valid" opinion on X. As a reductio ad absurdum, nobody would be allowed to have an valid opinion on murder.
  - simlevesque 6y ago
    No one advocates that you should only speak if you lived it, we say that those who lived it must have a say if that is in any way possible.
    - imperfect_blue 6y ago
      The original question was > how much of this nuance is achieved by having discussions about issues which have real life-or-death impacts on people but without having any of those people inconveniently present? Followed by an assertion that > A group of X people is [not] capable of of empathising with, understanding and having a nuanced opinion of the concerns of !X people So I think there are people advocating that you should be speaking only if you lived it. Of course, anecdotes and personal experiences are valuable and including people with personal experience is helpful, but the central claim here is that you can have productive discussions about X without anyone with personal experience with X.
      - JohnBooty 6y ago
        You can have a discussion about X, as long as you recognize that the discussion is going to be flawed without anybody from X there. Sometimes this is a necessity. In history class we learn about ancient Sumerians without inviting them to the discussion, because they have all been dead for a long time. So we make do. Certainly, if we had the chance, we'd love to have them there. (A useful thought experiment: what if a bunch of ancient Sumerians fell out of a time machine and were available for discussion? Would we not think poorly of people who wanted to discuss ancient Sumerians did so without the Sumerians, who were standing like... right outside the room?) Can a bunch of e.g. men sit around and have a meaningful discussion about women? It... really depends. Certainly a group of male gynecologists could usefully discuss some procedure, although the history of gynecology also certainly suggests that for many years the profession surely suffered from a lack of female perspective. Men can usefully discuss gender relations, because they are a part of the group that experiences gender relations, although again this discussion will be a lot weaker if it involves exclusively male perspectives. A room full of men can probably not very usefully discuss issues highly specific to women, unless they were indirectly drawing upon female experiences (e.g., two men could certainly learn from a discussion about an article written by a female author about childbirth or male-on-female sexual assault, etc)
cousin_it 6y ago
That's fair, though also note that in a discussion whether Alice or Bob should get $100, Alice and Bob will be the most biased voices, not the least. So by all means, listen to the testimony of interested parties, but treat it with as much skepticism as other evidence.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  This obviously works well when it comes to Alice and Bob's little dispute, assuming we don't have a personal connection to either. This approach doesn't scale up to meet most of the world's difficult and interesting questions and problems. Issues of society, race, gender, economy, and so forth affect all of us. How can there ever be a disinterested party when it comes to matters of national or societal importance?
  - cousin_it 6y ago
    If we can't have an impartial judge, the next best thing is impartial standards of evidence.
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      Even in the ridiculously hypothetical case of Alice and Bob, how would we apply impartial standards of evidence to decide who gets the $100?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - noch 6y ago
    > How can there ever be a disinterested party when it comes to matters of national or societal importance? The scientific method doesn't require that I be a disinterested party, but it does require that I evaluate evidence, to the best of my ability, in a disinterested manner.[2] E.g. I might believe women are discriminated against in academia and locked out of opportunity; my heart might beat out of my chest because of all the horror stories my friends tell me. However, the data seems to indicate that 57%[0] of university degrees in the U.S. are awarded to women, and that this proportion is increasing. I am emotionally invested in my belief in the former injustice, but I have to evaluate the data as though I weren't and update my beliefs accordingly.[1] > This approach doesn't scale up to meet most of the world's difficult and interesting questions and problems. Issues of society, race, gender, economy, and so forth affect all of us. Anecdotally, I've heard many social justice advocates recently assert that dispassionate analysis of evidence and data can't lead to solutions for social problems. "Other ways of knowing" or different "epistemological frames" such as "lived experience" are emphasised. I find this misguided: Indeed mathematics and the scientific method are _the only_ tools that can help us find the truth about social problems. Why would the intellectual tools that build homes, bridges, hydroelectric dams, energy grids, the internet; that find surgical methods, discover medicines, design microchips, and so on, be somehow less effective than lived experience in the social realm? No, these are humanity's most powerful tools. We must not abandon them. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-near-milestone-in-the-college-educated-labor-force/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-n... [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-education-gap/546677/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-... [2] "What is Science?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJZUiQnBtBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJZUiQnBtBg

radu_floricica 6y ago

There is a post on SSC about Isolated Demand for Rigor which, well, I can't link you to because it's down. But I think it is relevant to many points made in this conversation. Is it better to have representation when making policy decisions? Pretty much everybody is saying yes. And somehow, this "yes" gets interpreted as "can't have an opinion on any topic as long as I'm not part of a certain group". That's identity politics taken to the extreme. I'm going to put common sense on the table and say that yes, I can have opinions on various topics. Including, among many others, disabled people. Are my opinions equally valid, given that I'm not part of that group? And here we start to see how things get confused - because absolutely nobody deigns to give a definition of "valid". Are my opinions correct? good? useful? - that's damn easy to judge, comparatively. But "valid"? Hell, I could have the best damn idea in the whole wide world, and it still wouldn't make it "valid" - in the climate we're moving towards. Are opinions of people not of that group, on average, equally good as those in the group? That's a completely different question, and now the isolated demand for rigor becomes clear: we move from a statistical bias to being allowed to do something. Being less likely to be right is not a criteria for being allowed in the public discourse. Nor should it be.

imperfect_blue 6y ago
To add, personal experience can be useful, but is not the end-all in decision making. It's useful in the ways anecdotes are useful, that is to say, good as an illustrative example but may not be statistically representative. In general, you do not need to have personally experienced X to have a useful or "valid" opinion on X. As a reductio ad absurdum, nobody would be allowed to have an valid opinion on murder.
- simlevesque 6y ago
  No one advocates that you should only speak if you lived it, we say that those who lived it must have a say if that is in any way possible.
  - imperfect_blue 6y ago
    The original question was > how much of this nuance is achieved by having discussions about issues which have real life-or-death impacts on people but without having any of those people inconveniently present? Followed by an assertion that > A group of X people is [not] capable of of empathising with, understanding and having a nuanced opinion of the concerns of !X people So I think there are people advocating that you should be speaking only if you lived it. Of course, anecdotes and personal experiences are valuable and including people with personal experience is helpful, but the central claim here is that you can have productive discussions about X without anyone with personal experience with X.
    - JohnBooty 6y ago
      You can have a discussion about X, as long as you recognize that the discussion is going to be flawed without anybody from X there. Sometimes this is a necessity. In history class we learn about ancient Sumerians without inviting them to the discussion, because they have all been dead for a long time. So we make do. Certainly, if we had the chance, we'd love to have them there. (A useful thought experiment: what if a bunch of ancient Sumerians fell out of a time machine and were available for discussion? Would we not think poorly of people who wanted to discuss ancient Sumerians did so without the Sumerians, who were standing like... right outside the room?) Can a bunch of e.g. men sit around and have a meaningful discussion about women? It... really depends. Certainly a group of male gynecologists could usefully discuss some procedure, although the history of gynecology also certainly suggests that for many years the profession surely suffered from a lack of female perspective. Men can usefully discuss gender relations, because they are a part of the group that experiences gender relations, although again this discussion will be a lot weaker if it involves exclusively male perspectives. A room full of men can probably not very usefully discuss issues highly specific to women, unless they were indirectly drawing upon female experiences (e.g., two men could certainly learn from a discussion about an article written by a female author about childbirth or male-on-female sexual assault, etc)

cousin_it 6y ago

That's fair, though also note that in a discussion whether Alice or Bob should get $100, Alice and Bob will be the most biased voices, not the least. So by all means, listen to the testimony of interested parties, but treat it with as much skepticism as other evidence.

JohnBooty 6y ago
This obviously works well when it comes to Alice and Bob's little dispute, assuming we don't have a personal connection to either. This approach doesn't scale up to meet most of the world's difficult and interesting questions and problems. Issues of society, race, gender, economy, and so forth affect all of us. How can there ever be a disinterested party when it comes to matters of national or societal importance?
- cousin_it 6y ago
  If we can't have an impartial judge, the next best thing is impartial standards of evidence.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Even in the ridiculously hypothetical case of Alice and Bob, how would we apply impartial standards of evidence to decide who gets the $100?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- noch 6y ago
  > How can there ever be a disinterested party when it comes to matters of national or societal importance? The scientific method doesn't require that I be a disinterested party, but it does require that I evaluate evidence, to the best of my ability, in a disinterested manner.[2] E.g. I might believe women are discriminated against in academia and locked out of opportunity; my heart might beat out of my chest because of all the horror stories my friends tell me. However, the data seems to indicate that 57%[0] of university degrees in the U.S. are awarded to women, and that this proportion is increasing. I am emotionally invested in my belief in the former injustice, but I have to evaluate the data as though I weren't and update my beliefs accordingly.[1] > This approach doesn't scale up to meet most of the world's difficult and interesting questions and problems. Issues of society, race, gender, economy, and so forth affect all of us. Anecdotally, I've heard many social justice advocates recently assert that dispassionate analysis of evidence and data can't lead to solutions for social problems. "Other ways of knowing" or different "epistemological frames" such as "lived experience" are emphasised. I find this misguided: Indeed mathematics and the scientific method are _the only_ tools that can help us find the truth about social problems. Why would the intellectual tools that build homes, bridges, hydroelectric dams, energy grids, the internet; that find surgical methods, discover medicines, design microchips, and so on, be somehow less effective than lived experience in the social realm? No, these are humanity's most powerful tools. We must not abandon them. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-near-milestone-in-the-college-educated-labor-force/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/20/u-s-women-n... [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-education-gap/546677/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-... [2] "What is Science?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJZUiQnBtBg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJZUiQnBtBg