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Eugine_Nier comments on [Link] Admitting to Bias - Less Wrong Discussion

19 Post author: GLaDOS 10 August 2012 08:13AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 11 August 2012 01:15:34PM *  5 points [-]

Your approach of "we should/shouldn't say X in order to include/exclude certain groups" seems to miss something. Specifically there frequently is a fact of the matter regarding X and that should also be a very important consideration.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 11 August 2012 11:22:54PM *  -2 points [-]

My approach is not "we should/shouldn't say X" at all. It is, rather, "if we want to learn about people of category Q, we should listen to (and welcome) those people themselves, in preference to people of category P who make conjectures about people of category Q. And people of category Q often don't have much patience for being conjectured about in ways that are not only unflattering, but have long ago been debunked."

For instance, if you want to acquire information about the experiences, psyches, and motives of women, you're better off listening to women rather than listening to misogynistic pick-up artists. If you want to learn about black people, you're better off listening to black people rather than listening to white raci(ali)sts. And so on.

(This is, by the way, part of why I think we shouldn't use religion as a cheap example of irrationality. Religion is a lot more complicated than many skeptics' models of it would suggest.)

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 12 August 2012 04:50:40PM 6 points [-]

being conjectured about in ways that are not only unflattering, but have long ago been debunked.

Really, could you direct me to where and when this debunking happened? When I look around I see a lot of evidence for these conjectures and a lot of incoherent arguments against them backed up by claims that it's evil to even consider the possibility that the conjectures are correct.