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The basic hypotheses for the pro-affirmative action crowd are: 1) Black people are not actually less “good at stuff”, we just have a habit of defining “stuff”

The basic hypotheses for the pro-affirmative action crowd are: 1) Black people are not actually less “good at stuff”, we just have a habit of defining “stuff” in a way that excludes the things that black people are more likely to excel at. And, 2) Where black people do statistically worse, it’s not due to any innate difference, it’s because socially accepted “normal” support systems are more useful for people with challenges more common in white populations than challenges common in black populations. So the idea is, if you change the support systems and measures of success to be more universal, the differences will go away. And then the metric for whether administrative bodies have succeeded in this is “equal outcomes”. What you call “racism”. But the inferences on which this affirmative action position are based make rational sense. There’s no logical flaw. There’s no conclusive evidence for these hypothesis either, but they are logically plausible. The opposite perspective is the same: rational, yet lacking any basis in evidence. That is the perspective that black people, through biology, socialization, and/or culture, are actually “worse at stuff”. And the support systems and performance metrics are fair. There’s no way to prove something is “fair” or “not fair” in the face of “unequal outcomes”. It just comes down to what you want to believe. There’s no rational basis to come to one conclusion or the other. I choose to believe that all of the big categories of people are pretty similarly “good at things” but I can acknowledge that belief is a leap of faith. The truth is unknowable.

paulolc 4y ago
No. The truth is not unknowable. Some truth is unknowable, though.
tomp 4y ago
Which of these basic hypotheses supports reparations? I'm pretty sure there needs to be a 3) blacks are poorer as well.
- erikpukinskis 4y ago
  You can shift the analysis from “black” to “poor” or “poor and black” or “poor and white” but it doesn’t get you out of the subjectivity trap.
- 8note 4y ago
  Take both of the two, and add the theory of compounding interest They're poor now because they were prevented from gaining wealth then, and wealth grows geometrically
  - davidgay 4y ago
    I think the logical conclusion of this argument is that reparations should be paid for from a wealth tax? (as opposed to the likely default of "from general revenue")
- btilly 4y ago
  The logic of reparations does not require poverty on the part of the victim. It requires acknowledgement of an injustice, and a requirement that the perpetrator has to make good on it. In the case of blacks we have forcible capture, slavery, a variety of discriminatory laws and policies, lynchings, and so on. There is no shortage of historical wrongs done to blacks that were never meaningfully made up for. So far, so good. However the logic runs into some major problems. First of all, what are the rights of current blacks to reparations due to the wrongs done to their ancestors? Second, how do we identify the perpetrators who need to owe repayment? Third, is it fair to punish those descendants now for the actions of ancestors that they do not know? And fourth, what reparation would be sufficient? My personal position is as follows. First, if we extend to one group reparations for wrong past, we have to extend this to all groups. That way lays insanity. I'm half Irish. My ancestors were targeted by the KKK for being Catholic, targeted by the English over centuries for being Irish, and escaped to the USA from an entirely preventable famine. Every ethnic group can rehearse its own story of victimhood, and the act of doing so primarily harms those groups again. Second, identifying perpetrators is hard. For example American blacks are more likely to be descended from slaveholders than the average white American. I grew up in poverty and there were no slaveholders in my ancestors for at least the last 200 years. I don't think it is fair to ask me to pay for the crimes of other people's ancestors. Third, holding people accountable for the actions of their ancestors crosses the line into collective punishment. Collective punishments of all kinds are considered human rights violations, no matter how strong the rationale. See https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule103 https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule103 for a list. Fourth, no one-time cash reparation can make up for the ongoing problems that we continue to inflict on black communities. Therefore rather than focusing on the justices or injustices of such reparations we should focus on fixing what we continue to do wrong in the present. Of which, unfortunately, there is no shortage.
  - JackAndJack 4y ago
    Things that your forefathers suffered, may be 6 to 10 generations before you. Can you name one thing which directly or indirectly affects you today because of their sufferings? Slavery was that long ago. White's were sold as slaves in North Africa before black slaves where brought to America. Even white women were sold as sex slaves and they used to call them "White Gold". ( You can search for term "White Gold Slavery") Do whites also get reparations? Additionally nobody talks about modern day slavery, which are sex slaves. There are millions of women stuck in that trade who were forced in to it against their will and they cannot leave.
btilly 4y ago
Sorry, but I take offense at this "it is all a matter of opinion and all opinions are equally valid" BS. 1) It is trivially true that if you define your measure right, you can make anyone succeed. For example black people are better at looking like black people. But we try to define "stuff" in a way that correlates with ability to do economically useful tasks. There are excellent reasons to do so. 2) You are ignoring the obvious fact that blacks do NOT get anything like equal treatment. They start with terrible schools, in neighborhoods that are aggressively targeted by police, and grow up with realistic expectations of going to jail that are amply born out by lived experiences. It takes willful blindness and stupidity to ignore that there are excellent reasons why we should expect poor black performance. Given that the inferences on which this affirmative action position are based require willful blindness and stupidity to believe, there really is a giant logical flaw. It is most emphatically NOT plausible to say that we should expect equal performance from children whose fathers are in jail, whose schools are atrocious, whose neighborhood is dangerous, and who rightly believe that they are being unfairly targeted by police. Both how common these factors are and how important they are to actual outcomes is borne out by extensive research. The scientific truth is that we have no data either way that can even begin to address whether one group is innately better than any other. The reason being that we have no way to separate out the impact of racism and history from innate ability. Read https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/the-genetic-lottery https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th... if you want a more complete accounting of that fact. But you do not need to have an opinion on that question to identify many factors that are helping ensure that black kids don't get a fair shake at life. And it is obvious that affirmative action can be at best too little, too late, compared to the things most urgently in need of fixing.
- mynameishere 4y ago
  we have no data either way that can even begin to address whether one group is innately better than any other Does all of world history count as data? What should we go by? Propose a test.
  - btilly 4y ago
    Given that I said we have no data that can begin to address this question, it is at best disingenuous. Because how can I offer a test without data? It is true that all of world history is data, but it is not necessarily data that can answer any particular question. The problem is the age-old nature versus nurture debate. Both genetics and environment are important to IQ. Both generally affect IQ through long, convoluted, and poorly understood reasons of cause and effect. Therefore we can establish evidence of differences, but can't necessarily distinguish between theories about the causes of those differences. What would make a difference is a theory of mechanism. For example it is uncontroversial that people with ancestry from Nigeria are better at sprinting, and people with ancestry from Kenya are better at long distance running. For this we can identify specific facts about body type that help with sprinting versus long distance running, and we can identify strong evidence that these body type differences are due to genetics. But we have no such theory of mechanism that can be applied to IQ. And therefore the mass of data we have about the existence of differences does not distinguish between potential causes of said differences.
cuteboy19 4y ago
But then Asians come along and outperform whites at the supposedly racist metrics. So much so that whites require affirmative action policies like Legacy Athletics and Dean's List. Simultaneously defeating both white supremacist arguments as well as anti-merit ones

paulolc 4y ago

No. The truth is not unknowable. Some truth is unknowable, though.

tomp 4y ago

Which of these basic hypotheses supports reparations? I'm pretty sure there needs to be a 3) blacks are poorer as well.

erikpukinskis 4y ago
You can shift the analysis from “black” to “poor” or “poor and black” or “poor and white” but it doesn’t get you out of the subjectivity trap.
8note 4y ago
Take both of the two, and add the theory of compounding interest They're poor now because they were prevented from gaining wealth then, and wealth grows geometrically
- davidgay 4y ago
  I think the logical conclusion of this argument is that reparations should be paid for from a wealth tax? (as opposed to the likely default of "from general revenue")
btilly 4y ago
The logic of reparations does not require poverty on the part of the victim. It requires acknowledgement of an injustice, and a requirement that the perpetrator has to make good on it. In the case of blacks we have forcible capture, slavery, a variety of discriminatory laws and policies, lynchings, and so on. There is no shortage of historical wrongs done to blacks that were never meaningfully made up for. So far, so good. However the logic runs into some major problems. First of all, what are the rights of current blacks to reparations due to the wrongs done to their ancestors? Second, how do we identify the perpetrators who need to owe repayment? Third, is it fair to punish those descendants now for the actions of ancestors that they do not know? And fourth, what reparation would be sufficient? My personal position is as follows. First, if we extend to one group reparations for wrong past, we have to extend this to all groups. That way lays insanity. I'm half Irish. My ancestors were targeted by the KKK for being Catholic, targeted by the English over centuries for being Irish, and escaped to the USA from an entirely preventable famine. Every ethnic group can rehearse its own story of victimhood, and the act of doing so primarily harms those groups again. Second, identifying perpetrators is hard. For example American blacks are more likely to be descended from slaveholders than the average white American. I grew up in poverty and there were no slaveholders in my ancestors for at least the last 200 years. I don't think it is fair to ask me to pay for the crimes of other people's ancestors. Third, holding people accountable for the actions of their ancestors crosses the line into collective punishment. Collective punishments of all kinds are considered human rights violations, no matter how strong the rationale. See https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule103 https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/customary-ihl/v2/rule103 for a list. Fourth, no one-time cash reparation can make up for the ongoing problems that we continue to inflict on black communities. Therefore rather than focusing on the justices or injustices of such reparations we should focus on fixing what we continue to do wrong in the present. Of which, unfortunately, there is no shortage.
- JackAndJack 4y ago
  Things that your forefathers suffered, may be 6 to 10 generations before you. Can you name one thing which directly or indirectly affects you today because of their sufferings? Slavery was that long ago. White's were sold as slaves in North Africa before black slaves where brought to America. Even white women were sold as sex slaves and they used to call them "White Gold". ( You can search for term "White Gold Slavery") Do whites also get reparations? Additionally nobody talks about modern day slavery, which are sex slaves. There are millions of women stuck in that trade who were forced in to it against their will and they cannot leave.

btilly 4y ago

Sorry, but I take offense at this "it is all a matter of opinion and all opinions are equally valid" BS. 1) It is trivially true that if you define your measure right, you can make anyone succeed. For example black people are better at looking like black people. But we try to define "stuff" in a way that correlates with ability to do economically useful tasks. There are excellent reasons to do so. 2) You are ignoring the obvious fact that blacks do NOT get anything like equal treatment. They start with terrible schools, in neighborhoods that are aggressively targeted by police, and grow up with realistic expectations of going to jail that are amply born out by lived experiences. It takes willful blindness and stupidity to ignore that there are excellent reasons why we should expect poor black performance. Given that the inferences on which this affirmative action position are based require willful blindness and stupidity to believe, there really is a giant logical flaw. It is most emphatically NOT plausible to say that we should expect equal performance from children whose fathers are in jail, whose schools are atrocious, whose neighborhood is dangerous, and who rightly believe that they are being unfairly targeted by police. Both how common these factors are and how important they are to actual outcomes is borne out by extensive research. The scientific truth is that we have no data either way that can even begin to address whether one group is innately better than any other. The reason being that we have no way to separate out the impact of racism and history from innate ability. Read https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/the-genetic-lottery https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190808/th... if you want a more complete accounting of that fact. But you do not need to have an opinion on that question to identify many factors that are helping ensure that black kids don't get a fair shake at life. And it is obvious that affirmative action can be at best too little, too late, compared to the things most urgently in need of fixing.

mynameishere 4y ago
we have no data either way that can even begin to address whether one group is innately better than any other Does all of world history count as data? What should we go by? Propose a test.
- btilly 4y ago
  Given that I said we have no data that can begin to address this question, it is at best disingenuous. Because how can I offer a test without data? It is true that all of world history is data, but it is not necessarily data that can answer any particular question. The problem is the age-old nature versus nurture debate. Both genetics and environment are important to IQ. Both generally affect IQ through long, convoluted, and poorly understood reasons of cause and effect. Therefore we can establish evidence of differences, but can't necessarily distinguish between theories about the causes of those differences. What would make a difference is a theory of mechanism. For example it is uncontroversial that people with ancestry from Nigeria are better at sprinting, and people with ancestry from Kenya are better at long distance running. For this we can identify specific facts about body type that help with sprinting versus long distance running, and we can identify strong evidence that these body type differences are due to genetics. But we have no such theory of mechanism that can be applied to IQ. And therefore the mass of data we have about the existence of differences does not distinguish between potential causes of said differences.

cuteboy19 4y ago

But then Asians come along and outperform whites at the supposedly racist metrics. So much so that whites require affirmative action policies like Legacy Athletics and Dean's List. Simultaneously defeating both white supremacist arguments as well as anti-merit ones