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Derbyshire's firing wasn't a show for public consumption but a genuine rebuke from the National Review establishment caused by ideological differences.
Maybe. There is still undoubtedly a strong racist component to the right-wing belief melange.
But perhaps we're arguing semantics. I meant that the belief in question is something that would be associated with the right wing (due to said component), something that would be argued, with not-insignificant frequency, covertly by public figures and publicly by private citizens of that party, not that it's something a majority of right-wing-identified people would assent to, privately or publicly. Is that unfair?
Just for the record, my estimate is that it would be cca 70% as much "racist" as what we have today. (I don't have a high confidence in this number, I just though it would be fair to write my opinion if I am asking about yours.) So cca 30% of the racism can be explained by people updating incorrectly, but that still leaves the remaining 70% to be explained otherwise. Therefore focusing on the incorrect updates misses the greater part of the whole story.
Who's "focusing"? I would argue, if we take your numbers, that the incorrect 30% are disproportionately problematic compared to the remaining 70%, and that there are other, non-epistemic problems involved in racism. Eugine_Nier said that "the problem" is the 70%. That's the disagreement that's going on here. My claim is not that modern-day racism is on average a greater distortion of the facts than an inability to perceive race would be.
assigned-gender-during-childhood
Yep, I'd guess that matters a great deal. (IIRC certain radical feminists dislike male-to-female transsexuals for that reason.)
That's the explanation I'd lean towards myself.
As for the radical-feminists-versus-transsexuals thing - there seems to be a fair amount of tension between the gender/sexuality theories of different parts of the queer and feminist movements, which are generally glossed over in favor of cooperation due to common goals. Which, actually, is somewhat heartening.
(Leaving soon, will post math later if anyone is interested in the details.)
Short version: Suppose for simplicity of argument that all the probability of failure is in the portion of the machine that checks whether the received answer is correct, and that it has equal chance of producing a false positive or negative. (Neither of these assumptions is required, but I found it made the math easier to think about when I did it.) Call this error rate e.
Consider the set of possible answers received. For an n-bit answer, this set has size 2^n. Take a probability distribution over this set for the messages received, treat the operation of the machine as a Markov process and find the transition matrix, then set the output probability vector equal to the input, and you get that the probability vector is the eigenvector of the transition matrix (with the added constraint that it be a valid distribution).
You'll find that the maximum value of e for which the probability distribution concentrates some (fixed) minimum probability at the correct answer goes down exponentially with n.
Neat! I still need to give some thought to the question of where we're getting our probability distribution, though, when the majority of the computation is done by the universe's plothole filter.
They are also practically non-existent in right wing parties in the West. While being contrarian is a bad sign, getting people from all mainstream political positions to go into sputtering apoplexy with the same input can be a good sign.
I dunno, 2 and 3 seem like things I'd expect the right-wing to believe (though probably with less nuance) in America (not to say they wouldn't go into sputtering apoplexy if you said certain formulations of those ideas out loud and there was a camera nearby). And who was calling for revolution after the recent election? (tongue somewhat in cheek there)
I do not accept your contention that people just happen to be exactly the correct degree of racist.
People are usually not "exactly correct" about anything, so statements like this are almost automatically true. But is this your true rejection?
Imagine that tomorrow some magic will turn all people into exactly the correct degree of racists. That means for example that if a person with a given skin color has (according to the external view) probability X to have some trait, they will expect that trait with probability exactly X, not more, not less.
Would such society be more similar to what we have now, or to a perfectly equal society?
It's certainly my (a) true rejection of "the problem is that [people] are updating correctly". What did you expect I was rejecting?
I dunno what that society would be more similar to. I expect it'd be a fair distance from either, and that there would remain significant problems apart from inequality of social status, economic status, etc. Eugine_Nier's assertion was that it would be identical (read: very similar) to what we have now. I disagreed.
Many statistical effects of race are screened off by fairly easily obtained information,
Or would be if people weren't actively rigging said information such that this is not the case. And that's before getting into tail-effects.
Moreover, if you, say, beat someone for being black,
Which really doesn't happen these days. (It's certainly much rarer than someone being beaten up for being white.)
Some such information is degraded, yes, but not all, and not to uselessness. And yes, people are beaten in the first world in this day and age for being black or for being white, and I find it difficult to blame either of those on the use or misuse of Bayesian updating (except to the extent that observing a person's race might tell you "I can get away with this").
I do not accept your contention that people just happen to be exactly the correct degree of racist.
Do counterfactuals just exist eternally in idea space, or do they need for someone to think of them?
Well, they don't exist at all, so the risk that they will stop existing is very low.
Isn't the real problem that people are mishandling Bayesian updates based on race?
At this point I think the problem is that they are updating correctly.
I disagree. Many statistical effects of race are screened off by fairly easily obtained information, but people act as though this is not the case. Moreover, if you, say, beat someone for being black, that's really not tied to any sort of problem with your use of Bayesian updating.
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Considering that any mostly white gathering of Americans is at risk of being called racist until proven otherwise I'm not at all impressed at all by this observation. How would you differentiate the world with racism present beyond the background noise among Republicans and one where it is overrepresented?
Republicans could adopt any possible set of policy proposals they like, the opinions of their voters likewise could change to anything but as long as their voters retained the colour of their skin they would still end up being called racist at least occasionally.
Not really. Private citizens of the party arguing for such things publicly are generally quite rare. If the case where different why are the examples of racism among the republican base presented by the media so terribly feeble? The "racism" of say the Tea Party which was presented as this incredibly dangerous far right fringe movement, is not worth being called that at all.
I do agree some public figures probably do still in private hold such opinions.
So you believe that racism is not alive and well in modern America and American politics?
You don't think that the "birther controversy" was racist in nature? You think this whole thing is a coincidence? You think this type of thing doesn't happen? You think this is a complete fabrication?
This seems like a complete failure of critical thinking.
If this isn't what you're saying, could you say plainly what it is you believe and why?