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Brillyant comments on Open thread, Oct. 03 - Oct. 09, 2016 - Less Wrong
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Why do you think that? The Gender studies folks that speak most about implicit bias aren't the demographic that tries to create evidence-based policing policy. It also doesn't seem to be a group of people who are on good terms when it comes to speaking with police departments about how to design their policy.
Because people have implicit cognitive biases. It's useful to discuss them.
Peoples' cognitive maps aren't the territory. And people aren't always conscious of the mistakes. Further, many people I've heard discuss politics in this election cycle seem unaware that there even could be errors in their map.
Instead of arguing over our competing maps, one good first step is to acknowledge our maps have errors, which is what I think Clinton's line about "implicit bias" did.
The fact that a claim is true doesn't automatically mean that it's useful to discuss it.
No, it's not an admission of Clinton that her maps have errors. In general people ability to interactually recite "all maps have errors" doesn't mean that they use that belief for interacting with their own maps differently.
When it comes to having a rational discussion this is even bad, because it allows people to easily play motte-and-bailey.
It doesn't? In what way would it not be useful?
I think it's extremely useful to discuss how the brain you are using to solve problems has flaws that may be inhibiting you from solving those problems, or even recognizing the problems accurately. (It's why I was on LW originally...)
(Maybe you're using "automatically" here as a qualifier to make your statement technically correct—Is that what you mean? Like, people could discuss cognitive biases in a really stupid and irrational way that would make it unproductive? If that's what you mean, then, yeah. Of course.)
It's not? I thought she said we all (i.e. humans) have implicit biases? Wouldn't that include Clinton?
Whether a discussion is useful depends on the results of the discussion. There are a lot of true things you can say that don't advance a discussion into a direction that leads to a positive outcome.
It wasn't a discussion of how implicit bias works but an uncited assertion that it has effects in certain conditions.
That might be true but it's not what the LW mission of rationality that's about systematic winning is about. I understand the mission to be about finding thinking strategies that lead to making winning decisions.
You can make an argument that logically it includes Clinton. You can also look at the decision making literature and see what saying "everyone has biases" does to a person self awareness of their own biases. It generally does little.
People could discuss cognitive biases in a really stupid and irrational way that would make it unproductive? If that's what you mean, then, yeah. Of course.
Yeah? It wasn't really the format for a CFAR plug.
Right. Like approaching policy debates with a reduction in mind-killedness. Acknowledging implicit bias is a great step.
It does more than not acknowledging people are biased—this was literally what Clinton's critics said in regard to her comment. They essentially denied that implicit bias exists.
You seem to making a black or white argument that Clinton's comment isn't useful because it's not that useful—it won't solve anything or make rationality win U.S. policy on this issue. I am not under the illusion her one sentence will un-mindkill U.S. politics. I'm merely contrasting the (a) acknowledgement of bias with (b) being apparently unaware that it exists.
A is better than B.
The way she discussed it wasn't productive. There also the general field of Gender studies. As a field it doesn't encourage open and data driven debate about the subject. When you start a discussion with saying that your opponent holds their position because of implicit bias that doesn't tend to be a discussion where it's easy to focus on rational argument.
The problem is that you are making claims that are wrong. It wasn't a discussion of how implicit bias works. If you want to analyse claims about a debate it's useful to stay with the facts.
No. Focusing a discussion on implicit bias means to not focus the discussion on "How can we solve this problem?" It's a rhetoric strategy to signal concern about Black Lives Matter while at the same time not having to actually discuss policy solutions to the problems.
There's also a good chance that a conservative person who hears the debate is harder to educate about the concept of implicit bias after listening the debate.
The intellectual toolkit of Gender studies with includes asserting that the opponent is driven by implicit bias and privilege is not useful for having rational discussions. The communities that engage in that toolkit generally don't want to let data decide.
The also don't ask the obvious questions such as whether the fact that more Whites get killed than Asians is also due to implicit bias. That a very straightforward question if you look at the data and want to use implicit bias as a cognitive tool for explaining the data of police killers.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Can you restate it?
You mentioned "gender studies" a couple times in a negative light—Why? It doesn't have anything to do with this discussion.
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Generally, the idea that (a) we all have implicit biases based on how our brain works and our life experiences, (b) these biases may significantly obscure our map of the territory, and (c) in the special case of police—where men and women need to quickly make highly consequential decisions under extreme stress—this obscured map may lead to irrational, "non-winning", decisions seems uncontroversial. Certainly nothing you've said has rebutted it.
For the record, I don't think every police shooting is racist. Not even close. And I think the left goes way too far trying to spin this.
Why aren't you seeking to explain why White's get more likely to be killed by police than Asian's? Why do you think it's a question that people like Clinton don't address?
Because it's difficult to have a conservation about the quality of the public debate without accounting for the cultural forces that are responsible for the public debate being the way it currently is.
Making winning decisions is about agency. Hillary Clinton could say that she wants that all police wear body camera's. If she can win a majority for that policy she can implement it.
On the other hand you can't pass a law that people shouldn't have implicit bias anymore. Speaking about it is useful if Hillary Clinton wants to engage in virtue signaling but not actually focus on getting policies changed.
If she wanted to do rational policy making she could say: "We should do controlled trials that try different policies in different area's to find out which policies actually help with changing the status quo."
In what kind of ontology do you believe if you think that a police shooting could be racist, even in principle? That there are some police shootings that are racists and other that aren't? If you want to use the word "racist" to be a property of events and not a property of people than it means something qualitatively different than what the term "implicit racism" is about.
This looks like your conceptualization of racism is the standard meaning of the word and has little to do with the academic term of "implicit racism".
She didn't address it because it wasn't relevant to the discussion at hand. Is the disparity between Whites and Asians killed by police significant? Is it an issue that is pressing in terms of it's current effect on the body politic?
You speak about this is a very definitive way, as if you know exactly what would work. I don't know what would work. It seems to me these are complex issues. I just noted it was good and, I think, useful to hear someone mention the everyone is subject to bias as opposed to the same old Red v. Blue talking points. I'd have praised anyone who said something similar, regardless of which team they played for.
My phrasing was poor.
I don't think race is a factor in every police shooting. Despite this, the left seems to try and make every single police shooting involving an African American into another example of blatant, explicit racism. I don't agree with this at all and I think it detracts from the effort to improve things. Every police shooting ought to be examined based on the objective facts.
The idea that an officer (or judge, or anyone) could have an implicit bias against a group of people, and that that bias is consequential, seem to me to be worth exploring.