Blueberry comments on The Red Bias - Less Wrong

31 Post author: Jack 20 April 2010 11:42AM

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Comment author: Blueberry 20 April 2010 03:13:40PM 1 point [-]

I'm curious how this affects racial dynamics. What about people with very dark skin, for instance: how does this apply? I don't think there's any population group with literally red skin, but maybe increased melanin would have a similar effect, by making it more difficult to see blushing or becoming pale.

Of course, there are a great deal of confounding factors there.

Comment author: Clippy 20 April 2010 04:12:03PM 4 points [-]

What you call "white" and "black" people are actually neither black nor white; rather, they differ in the darkness of the red component of their skin color. (Though most don't view brown as red, its color breakdown is dominated by red; some cultures do see brown as a type of red.)

This actually ties in with why clippys don't visit earth. To put it bluntly, "These beings terminate each other over relative skin redness. I'm silver. Exit!"

Comment author: Blueberry 21 April 2010 02:58:13AM 1 point [-]

But, Clippy, we humans also fight over natural resources like iron ore... doesn't that make you happy?

Comment author: Clippy 21 April 2010 07:36:04PM 1 point [-]

Not if it means the iron ends up in some unusable or useless form, as is too often the case in these wars...

Comment author: tut 20 April 2010 04:30:18PM *  1 point [-]

If you are an alien AI, how come you use human colors?

ETA I mean, what colors you see depends on what cell types you have in your eyes. Red green and blue makes a lot of sense for a creature that lives in earth atmosphere and eat earth fruit etc. But what did your creators want you to distinguish that used the same colors?

Comment author: Blueberry 21 April 2010 02:57:22AM 2 points [-]

I would imagine Clippy is referring to the way humans see colors. That is, when e says "silver" e means "silver as seen by humans".

Comment author: Clippy 21 April 2010 07:36:25PM 1 point [-]

What User:Blueberry said, among other reasons.

Comment author: eirenicon 20 April 2010 03:44:37PM 1 point [-]

I think there is probably no relation. My guess is that red signalling probably precedes variation in skin colour, perhaps even loss of body-wide hair. It is a thoroughly unconscious bias, and does not apply to pink, or orange, or peach, but red, especially bright, bold baboon-butt red. In any case, I hope the sporting tests were controlled for skin colour, because that does seem like a weighty factor when considering scoring bias.

Comment author: Jack 20 April 2010 09:13:43PM *  0 points [-]

In any case, I hope the sporting tests were controlled for skin colour, because that does seem like a weighty factor when considering scoring bias.

For sure. In the case of the combat sports, outfit color was assigned randomly by the competition. In the Hagemann study, the outfits were alterted digitally so it was literally the same fighters. The goalie test which I linked to claims to use the same person just with different jerseys. For English football it seems unlikely that skin color and jersey color had any correlation but of course it wasn't explicitly controlled.

EDIT: Though it occurs to me that red could have different effects depending on the skin tone of the competitors (helps darker contestants, hurts lighter ones or something) and that certainly wasn't controlled for in any of the studies.