Nornagest comments on Factions, inequality, and social justice - Less Wrong

23 [deleted] 03 December 2012 07:37PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 03 December 2012 09:21:24PM 8 points [-]

Robin Hanson has wondered why folks seem concerned about inequality based on some stuff, like race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and disability, but not other stuff, like height, appearance, intelligence, sleep, conscientiousness, and perhaps most importantly, happiness.

My explanation: Race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and disability are fairly discrete ways of classifying people. Most people (though not all) can be categorized fairly neatly in to a single race, birth gender, desired gender, and sexual orientation. By contrast, looks, smarts, and happiness all vary in a continuous fashion. For some/all of these characteristics, there's a bell curve--many people in the middle and fewer people at the extremes.

How would wealth or income inequality relate to this? Wealth and income are clearly not a discrete group, but a large number of people are very concerned about wealth and income inequality.

Comment author: Nornagest 03 December 2012 11:28:26PM *  4 points [-]

I'm not sure if this works for or against the theory, but it's not terribly uncommon for activists to take parameters generally thought of as discrete and reconceptualize them as continuous: for example, by pointing out the existence of intersexed individuals or bringing up the Kinsey scale. Doesn't seem to happen quite as much for race, but I've seen it occasionally: the paper bag test sometimes seems to refer to one version, for example.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 December 2012 02:05:36PM 2 points [-]

the paper bag test

A test that I would likely pass in February but not in September. (Also, what part of your skin do they compare with the bag? The back of my hand is darker than the palm...