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In (2) the term 'immoral' is doing wizardly levels of work. These days in the context of 'social bias' the word 'bias' seems to mean 'difference between what h

• mjburgess 5y ago
  Yes, deliberately so. Whether an action is prejudicial is not a statistical question, but an ethical one. The temperature of frozen water is likewise, not a statistical question, but a scientific one. Both questions "require a theory". Statistics itself is essentially pre/post-theoretical analysis -- theory has to be added to statistics. My use of "immoral" here is to sign-post that something is missing: an ethical theory. I have seen esteemed people try to reduce (2) to (1) -- you may as well do so with scientific questions, ie., eliminate all of chemistry in favour of just "how often ice melts at a given temperature". We know, of course, that we do not even have data for the whole range of actually knowable states of water -- because we have theories which describe them. (And without theory, we'd not even know what data to have collected.) Likewise, ethics is not a matter of outcomes being different whenever they are different. Ethics, like science, is a discrete constraint on theory-building -- not on data analysis.
  • taneq 5y ago
    > Whether an action is prejudicial is not a statistical question, but an ethical one. I think this is kind of what we're talking about, though, isn't it? Does "prejudicial" mean "having preconceptions about a person based on a few observed characteristics"? Or does it mean "assuming things I think are unfair about a person"? > My use of "immoral" here is to sign-post that something is missing: an ethical theory. If that was the intent then it worked for me.