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PhilGoetz comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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Comments (1329)
We're qualified to inquire into any topic that seems worthy of curiosity.
There seems to be much convergent evidence that people who self-identify as "black" tend to test more poorly on some standard measures of cognitive ability than do people who self-identify as "white", and I don't think acknowledging that makes someone racist.
I'm in violent agreement with you that a) self-identification as a member of some ethnic group is a cultural phenomenon, not obviously related to any "natural kinds" or empirical clusters, b) standard measures of cognitive ability are a very poor proxy for what we may generally think of as "competencies", whereby individual humans contribute value to the world, c) it's unclear even if the 'genetic' claim were established as fact what influence it should have on social policies.
If we think about a) clearly enough we might be able to dissolve the confusing term "race" and that seems perhaps a worthy goal. If we think about b) clearly we might be able to dissolve the confusing term "intelligence" and its cortege of mysterious questions, and if we think about c) clearly enough the mysterious questions of ethics.
Isn't that what this site has been about all along?
Yes, it does, by definition. If you disagree, define racism in a way such that someone who believes different races have different distributions of attributes is not racist.
The problem is we have two meanings of "racist". One is "a person who believes the distribution of traits differs among races". The other is, roughly, "a person who hates members of other races". Most people believe these are equivalent.
I agree with what you mean, but I'm not sure the demarcation line between the two is very sharp, especially for non-nerds who don't overthink the issue.
Our brains store information as rough summaries, and don't always separate the value judgement from the characteristics. I'm not sure that there's a big difference between the mental representations for "X has such-and-such negative characteristic" and "I don't like X".
I'll pass on playing definitional games. What are we arguing about?
The first is a singularly useless definition satisfied by everyone. Everyone believes that the distribution of skin color differs between black people and white people.
I'd propose a third definition: "someone who treats different people differently based on their race."
Suggested alternate that captures what I think Phil means by the first definition "a person who believes the distribution of traits differs among races in a way that matters in some deep sense." That doesn't make it much more precise but I think it captures what he is trying to say in terms of your objection.
I think this makes the first definition a singularly useful one, because people who think about it and try to be consistent must either find some way in which skin color is a qualitatively different kind of property than every other property people have, or they must admit they are racists.
It's useful as a polemical tool, not useful in describing the ordinary meaning of the word, that describes actual clusters of common characteristics observed out in the world. I'm uninterested in using definitions constructed for polemical purposes instead of describing empirically observed clusters.