army1987 comments on Don't Get Offended - LessWrong

32 Post author: katydee 07 March 2013 02:11AM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 08 March 2013 12:05:21AM 3 points [-]

When someone says something offensive to you - they're racist, homophobic, sexist

Taboo, "racist, homophobic, sexist". In my experience these words, especially when spoken by the offended, frequently mean "you are making an argument/stating a potential truth that I don't like".

For example: is it racist/sexist to point out the differences in average IQ between the people of different races/genders? Does it become racist/sexist if one attempts to speculate on the cause of these differences?

Comment author: [deleted] 09 March 2013 09:43:52AM 2 points [-]

For example: is it racist/sexist to point out the differences in average IQ between the people of different races/genders?

The way I'd use the word, it depends on why you're pointing them out. (Hint: if someone is pointing out that white people are more intelligent than black people in average for non-army1987::racist reasons, they'd most likely point out that East Asians and Ashkenazi Jews are even more intelligent in average.)

The wording is also important -- “blacks are idiots” is no more of a reasonable way to put that than “females are midgets” is a reasonable way to state the fact that the average woman is shorter than the average man, so if someone is willing to say the former but not the latter, there's likely something wrong.

(BTW, AFAIK men and women have the same average IQ (though different types of intelligence are weighed in a way deliberately chosen to make that the case), but the distribution of men's IQs has a larger standard deviation.)