4 ms·

I certainly hope race is factored into insurance! Sex is. Why wouldn't race be? Geographical location is, and that is largely a proxy for race. It is not "u

I certainly hope race is factored into insurance! Sex is. Why wouldn't race be? Geographical location is, and that is largely a proxy for race. It is not "unjust" to make more accurate predictions using the data you have available. It is fundamentally incapable of being unjust. Injustice comes from making wrong decisions, not from making right decisions. You seem like the type of person that would declare statistics racist because it reveals facts you don't want to hear.

DoughnutHole 3y ago
This is such a juvenile understanding of racism. Justice is not derived from statistics. Espousing statistics does not justify racial discrimination. We did not ban racial discrimination because we engaged with statistical arguments for racism and decided they were unfounded. A decision can be supported statistically (in some contrived way “right”) and be ethically wrong. We undid legal racial discrimination because it’s morally repugnant.
- memefrog 3y ago
  >We did not ban racial discrimination because we engaged with statistical arguments for racism and decided they were unfounded. That is exactly what we did. Legally entrenched racial discriminatiom was widely supported pretty much exactly up until science refuted scientific racism. The whole argument against racism is that race doesn't matter, it is just a social construct, "race" is meaningless because there is more variability with races than between them, etc. That has always been a key argument against racism. >We undid legal racial discrimination because it’s morally repugnant. It is morally repugnant because it is incorrect. It would not be morally repugnant to discriminate racially if it wasn't baseless, just as it isn't morally repugnant to discriminate in any situation where it is justifiable. For example nobody has a problem with not hiring a black man to play a white female character in a film. Nobody has a problem with having publicly funded breast cancer screening programs that are only available for women, even though in very rare cases males can get breast cancer. Racism is morally repugnant when you make decisions based on race. It is obviously not morally repugnant if you are making decisions based on something else, and that happens to correlate with race. There is quite obviously nothing wrong with basing insurance premiums on all available information about someone, including genetic information. Would you say it is morally repugnant to charge higher premiums to white people for skin cancer health insurance cover? Come on! Use your brain, man.
  - timschmidt 3y ago
    > The whole argument against racism is that race doesn't matter, it is just a social construct That's an interesting misunderstanding you have. Perhaps telling. From my perspective, the whole argument against racism is that it paints people as something other than individuals with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and positions in life.
    - memefrog 3y ago
      That is just another way of saying what I just said
      - timschmidt 3y ago
        Disagree.

DoughnutHole 3y ago

This is such a juvenile understanding of racism. Justice is not derived from statistics. Espousing statistics does not justify racial discrimination. We did not ban racial discrimination because we engaged with statistical arguments for racism and decided they were unfounded. A decision can be supported statistically (in some contrived way “right”) and be ethically wrong. We undid legal racial discrimination because it’s morally repugnant.

memefrog 3y ago
>We did not ban racial discrimination because we engaged with statistical arguments for racism and decided they were unfounded. That is exactly what we did. Legally entrenched racial discriminatiom was widely supported pretty much exactly up until science refuted scientific racism. The whole argument against racism is that race doesn't matter, it is just a social construct, "race" is meaningless because there is more variability with races than between them, etc. That has always been a key argument against racism. >We undid legal racial discrimination because it’s morally repugnant. It is morally repugnant because it is incorrect. It would not be morally repugnant to discriminate racially if it wasn't baseless, just as it isn't morally repugnant to discriminate in any situation where it is justifiable. For example nobody has a problem with not hiring a black man to play a white female character in a film. Nobody has a problem with having publicly funded breast cancer screening programs that are only available for women, even though in very rare cases males can get breast cancer. Racism is morally repugnant when you make decisions based on race. It is obviously not morally repugnant if you are making decisions based on something else, and that happens to correlate with race. There is quite obviously nothing wrong with basing insurance premiums on all available information about someone, including genetic information. Would you say it is morally repugnant to charge higher premiums to white people for skin cancer health insurance cover? Come on! Use your brain, man.
- timschmidt 3y ago
  > The whole argument against racism is that race doesn't matter, it is just a social construct That's an interesting misunderstanding you have. Perhaps telling. From my perspective, the whole argument against racism is that it paints people as something other than individuals with unique backgrounds, perspectives, and positions in life.
  - memefrog 3y ago
    That is just another way of saying what I just said
    - timschmidt 3y ago
      Disagree.