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If you want to define "privilege" as pretty much anything which causes merit to be non-uniformly distributed, then the fact that Asian males are overrepresented

If you want to define "privilege" as pretty much anything which causes merit to be non-uniformly distributed, then the fact that Asian males are overrepresented due to privilege is tautologically true. Similarly, water is wet. All you've really said is "I assign the word 'privilege' to whatever the cause is for Asian males performing well in tech." That's not really relevant to this discussion. [edit: Sago, I think you've gotten off track. hackeruser was using the term "privilege" differently than you, treating it somewhat analogously to wealth and power and orthogonal to merit. When you use the word to describe anything that might cause disparities in merit, you are describing something far different than him.]

sago 12y ago
Nope, I've pointed out that the way you are using 'merit' overlaps with the way social scientists use the term 'privilege'. Change the word 'privilege' for 'boondoggle', it doesn't matter, the point still stands. But as I pointed out, the use of the word 'privilege' is often such anathema that it prevents certain groups of people listening to the point, instead having them focus on the word.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  To demonstrate that it's not a tautology, can you describe a world in which a group is overrepresented but not privileged? If you can't construct such a scenario, then by definition it is a tautology.
  - sago 12y ago
    Why are you so exorcised by the word privilege? My point was nothing to do with what you seem to have a problem with. My point was that what is seen as 'merit' is a function of a whole bunch of other factors, which means it isn't somehow a racists discussion stopping thing to point out that Asian men have higher levels of 'merit' (when merit is defined in the way I understood it to be in the post I was responding to). My point in using 'privilege' is to say that the idea of 'merit' overlaps with 'privilege' in the ways I described, and that the people the OP might thing of as wanting to 'stop' the discussion, do, in fact, have this discussion a lot, though they'd use 'privilege' instead to mean those things, because that is the term of art. You seem to have a problem with a word. Call it 'probabilistic causes of non-equal representation', then. Point out there are many such causes, and some of them are hardly things we could easily change (there are very few people with very low IQ in top tech jobs, so higher IQ is a 'privilege'). Your reaction to the word, rather than the point, seems rather ideological. Tautology is not a synonym for synonym. And the equation you accuse me of making is a strawman, my point was to unpack merit, not to define privilege. I'm sorry if it was unclear.
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      I don't know why you think I'm "exorcised" by a word. I'm simply pointing out that you are using a completely different definition of it than myself and hackeruser, and as a result your posts are completely missing the point. If privilege means "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", then that's a very broad definition and every non-deterministic unequal representation is caused by privilege. But you were responding to a discussion where we were using "privilege" to mean something along the lines of "social biases unfairly favoring one group". By definition, Asian males have 8x the "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation". It seems highly unlikely that they have 8x the "social biases unfairly favoring one group", which is what hackeruser and myself were actually discussing. You also don't seem to be using this definition consistently. For example, if I take this comment of yours and substitute this definition in, it makes no sense: "When you find achievement highly correlated with a cultural group, however, it is pretty likely to be a function of probabilistic causes of non-equal representation. The alternative hypothesis is that, for example, Jews are just innately better at science." I'm beginning to think you are attempting a Motte and Bailey: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...
      - swatow 12y ago
        Nice link on the "Motte and Bailey" article. I might link to this in my blog since I independently came up with the same argument. In this case, I think one version of "privilege" is the idea that our society involves unipolar power relations where one group/ideology is privileged and enjoys special advantages. Individual people might in some ways align with this group/ideologies, and in other ways not (this is called "intersectionality"). But when they do align with this group/ideology they receive some of its benefits. Sago's version is that privilege is just another word for any group having any advantage for any reason. I.e. "privilege" stripped of its underlying assumptions about societies power structure. It's unfortunate that Sago feel so strongly that they represent sociological research, when I think that almost all sociologists use the other definition. Sago says that Asians might be privileged simply because their culture [0]. The orthodox view would be that Asians only receive White privilege, by their willingness to accept both the White lifestyle, working under a capitalist system, and adopt White views on Black/White race relations. To the extend that Asians also study harder, that would be an accident of history, and probably something an orthodox sociologist would try to downplay (e.g. by looking at Nth generation Asians). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9126189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9126189
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sago 12y ago
Reply to your edit, I read hackeruser as using the term informally, to mean 'a good thing someone possesses', I was using it in the way it is normally used in discussions of equality, racism, sexism, and so on. I didn't actually note hackeruser's use of the term, so I wasn't responding to that. My point, I think, stands alone. It doesn't become a tautology, it has a specific meaning, and one important point is that when folks say 'merit' they are often bundling a bunch of stuff in there which is problematic and discriminatory. Merit sounds like a good thing. (Who wouldn't want to be Pro-Life, right?) But there are structural oppressions within it that deserve to be challenged.
marcus_holmes 12y ago
hang on, but where are you drawing the lines between "merit due to innate skill/aptitude" and "merit due to favourable environmental factors"? Because similarly if you define merit as "anything that causes one person to do better in the tech industry than another" then the tech industry is tautologically a meritocracy - water is wet. Until and unless we can unpack merit and privilege in the manner that Sago is attempting then we will continue to misunderstand our problem and continue to let the best programmers become nurses because of that misunderstanding.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  I'm defining "merit" as the ability to get the job done and make the company money. For example, I'm trying to hire a data scientist/data oriented generalist. Knowledge of statistics and aptitude for learning contributes to merit, as does the ability to write scalable and deployable code. Sex appeal does not contribute to merit, nor does being a nerdy-but-attractive hipster. Does that clarify? Note that Sago's definition, "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", quite deliberately doesn't unpack anything. All it does is apply the label "privilege" to the cause, whether that cause is explicit deliberate racism (to take one extreme) or completely biological factors with entirely unbiased decisions (to take another).
  - sago 12y ago
    You do like ignoring that I actually gave a list, don't you: money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, in-group bias, and many other factors (note, many was not intended to be exclusive) that you continue to think my point was to apply the label "privilege" seems obtuse, bordering on the willfully ignorant, since I've explicitly said that was not the point at all, and that the label is irrelevant.

sago 12y ago

Nope, I've pointed out that the way you are using 'merit' overlaps with the way social scientists use the term 'privilege'. Change the word 'privilege' for 'boondoggle', it doesn't matter, the point still stands. But as I pointed out, the use of the word 'privilege' is often such anathema that it prevents certain groups of people listening to the point, instead having them focus on the word.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
To demonstrate that it's not a tautology, can you describe a world in which a group is overrepresented but not privileged? If you can't construct such a scenario, then by definition it is a tautology.
- sago 12y ago
  Why are you so exorcised by the word privilege? My point was nothing to do with what you seem to have a problem with. My point was that what is seen as 'merit' is a function of a whole bunch of other factors, which means it isn't somehow a racists discussion stopping thing to point out that Asian men have higher levels of 'merit' (when merit is defined in the way I understood it to be in the post I was responding to). My point in using 'privilege' is to say that the idea of 'merit' overlaps with 'privilege' in the ways I described, and that the people the OP might thing of as wanting to 'stop' the discussion, do, in fact, have this discussion a lot, though they'd use 'privilege' instead to mean those things, because that is the term of art. You seem to have a problem with a word. Call it 'probabilistic causes of non-equal representation', then. Point out there are many such causes, and some of them are hardly things we could easily change (there are very few people with very low IQ in top tech jobs, so higher IQ is a 'privilege'). Your reaction to the word, rather than the point, seems rather ideological. Tautology is not a synonym for synonym. And the equation you accuse me of making is a strawman, my point was to unpack merit, not to define privilege. I'm sorry if it was unclear.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    I don't know why you think I'm "exorcised" by a word. I'm simply pointing out that you are using a completely different definition of it than myself and hackeruser, and as a result your posts are completely missing the point. If privilege means "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", then that's a very broad definition and every non-deterministic unequal representation is caused by privilege. But you were responding to a discussion where we were using "privilege" to mean something along the lines of "social biases unfairly favoring one group". By definition, Asian males have 8x the "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation". It seems highly unlikely that they have 8x the "social biases unfairly favoring one group", which is what hackeruser and myself were actually discussing. You also don't seem to be using this definition consistently. For example, if I take this comment of yours and substitute this definition in, it makes no sense: "When you find achievement highly correlated with a cultural group, however, it is pretty likely to be a function of probabilistic causes of non-equal representation. The alternative hypothesis is that, for example, Jews are just innately better at science." I'm beginning to think you are attempting a Motte and Bailey: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...
    - swatow 12y ago
      Nice link on the "Motte and Bailey" article. I might link to this in my blog since I independently came up with the same argument. In this case, I think one version of "privilege" is the idea that our society involves unipolar power relations where one group/ideology is privileged and enjoys special advantages. Individual people might in some ways align with this group/ideologies, and in other ways not (this is called "intersectionality"). But when they do align with this group/ideology they receive some of its benefits. Sago's version is that privilege is just another word for any group having any advantage for any reason. I.e. "privilege" stripped of its underlying assumptions about societies power structure. It's unfortunate that Sago feel so strongly that they represent sociological research, when I think that almost all sociologists use the other definition. Sago says that Asians might be privileged simply because their culture [0]. The orthodox view would be that Asians only receive White privilege, by their willingness to accept both the White lifestyle, working under a capitalist system, and adopt White views on Black/White race relations. To the extend that Asians also study harder, that would be an accident of history, and probably something an orthodox sociologist would try to downplay (e.g. by looking at Nth generation Asians). [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9126189 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9126189
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sago 12y ago

Reply to your edit, I read hackeruser as using the term informally, to mean 'a good thing someone possesses', I was using it in the way it is normally used in discussions of equality, racism, sexism, and so on. I didn't actually note hackeruser's use of the term, so I wasn't responding to that. My point, I think, stands alone. It doesn't become a tautology, it has a specific meaning, and one important point is that when folks say 'merit' they are often bundling a bunch of stuff in there which is problematic and discriminatory. Merit sounds like a good thing. (Who wouldn't want to be Pro-Life, right?) But there are structural oppressions within it that deserve to be challenged.

marcus_holmes 12y ago

hang on, but where are you drawing the lines between "merit due to innate skill/aptitude" and "merit due to favourable environmental factors"? Because similarly if you define merit as "anything that causes one person to do better in the tech industry than another" then the tech industry is tautologically a meritocracy - water is wet. Until and unless we can unpack merit and privilege in the manner that Sago is attempting then we will continue to misunderstand our problem and continue to let the best programmers become nurses because of that misunderstanding.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
I'm defining "merit" as the ability to get the job done and make the company money. For example, I'm trying to hire a data scientist/data oriented generalist. Knowledge of statistics and aptitude for learning contributes to merit, as does the ability to write scalable and deployable code. Sex appeal does not contribute to merit, nor does being a nerdy-but-attractive hipster. Does that clarify? Note that Sago's definition, "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", quite deliberately doesn't unpack anything. All it does is apply the label "privilege" to the cause, whether that cause is explicit deliberate racism (to take one extreme) or completely biological factors with entirely unbiased decisions (to take another).
- sago 12y ago
  You do like ignoring that I actually gave a list, don't you: money, aspiration, parental ambition, education, culturation, in-group bias, and many other factors (note, many was not intended to be exclusive) that you continue to think my point was to apply the label "privilege" seems obtuse, bordering on the willfully ignorant, since I've explicitly said that was not the point at all, and that the label is irrelevant.