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Follow-up after an afternoon of reading: I dug into the source of the data you presented here in references [1] and [2], which is mainly from James Fearon "Ethn
by drewdevault 3y ago
Follow-up after an afternoon of reading: I dug into the source of the data you presented here in references [1] and [2], which is mainly from James Fearon "Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country" (2003). In this he actually explicitly cautions against making the kind of analysis and correlation that you posit here:
> First, it cannot be assumed, without argument, that ethnic distinctions are
wholly exogenous to other political, economic, and social variables of interest. For
example, poor economic performance could exacerbate distributional struggles, causing
people to see and act along lines of ethnic division that were formerly considered
unimportant. By contrast, robust economic growth might lead to the downplaying of
ethnic divisions and a greater emphasis on national identity. If Botswana seems more
ethnically homogeneous than Somalia does at this point, it may be that this is in part a
result rather than a cause of economic growth.
The paper also goes into great detail on the problems inherent in trying to categorize ethnic groups; these two factors combined are why I object to your methodology here and I would recommend that you read the paper for yourself. In other words, any conclusions drawn or inferences made based on this data without controlling for innumerable complicating factors is likely to be a case of garbage in, garbage out.
Of course, ethnic diversity is just one of many forms of diversity, which further removes this data from your argument.
- p-e-w 3y agoThe passage you quoted is the standard "cover your ass" disclaimer that you can find in almost any social science publication today, where the authors basically state that their results become invalid the moment they are used to draw potentially controversial conclusions. I've long learned to just ignore such statements. Either the data can be analyzed, or it's worthless. But which of the two is the case doesn't depend on the conclusion being drawn. In the Soviet Union, it was common for scientific articles to emphasize how the authors used "Marxist-Leninist science" to achieve their breakthroughs. I view those disclaimers as a modern equivalent to this phenomenon, unsurprising considering that scientific freedom during the past 20 years has been lower than at almost any point since the 18th century or so.
- drewdevault 3y agoThe passage I quoted is one paragraph out of seven pages spent addressing the challenges in defining and analyzing ethnic groups and drawing conclusions from that data, not to mention numerous caveats and counter-examples provided throughout the text intermixed with his methodology and data analyses, or the extra text re-enforcing these problems in the conclusion -- not some brief cover-your-ass passage but rather one quote from a lengthy and detailed academic analysis of the problems inherent in this data. It would be obvious had you read the paper -- but you selectively pick and choose whatever information and "data" that supports your racist conclusions and don't examine it any further in case it would turn out not to, a trend seen in every source you have cited in this discussion.