US Politics Mega-thread - Page 8461

On August 17 2017 22:56 Gorsameth wrote:

Got some more background info on that? What did the Sherrif do?

On August 17 2017 22:59 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

<snip>

Here it is.

On August 17 2017 13:48 mozoku wrote:


I brought up Bayes because a stereotype is an informal prior for a person. When there is pre-existing precise language developed for having this discussion, it improves the discussion to make use of it. I didn't bring it up because it's "cool."

I never made the claim that race was a strong predictor of violence on trains. In fact, I even acknowledged it was very weak in my post ("the probability of being the victim of a crime is still low"). My point was merely to demonstrate that stereotypes have predictive power in character as well as Mahjong skill prediction. Even if skin color isn't the cause (and it certainly isn't), it has predictive power because it correlates with factors such as socioeconomic status, culture, etc., and that information often isn't known in real world situations. This is where the issue of racism gets tricky. Using the predictive utility of skin color isn't necessarily racist imo; attaching an irrationally strong prior (based on skin color because it's usually the first thing you see about someone) and not conditioning effectively on a person's actions is evidence of an actual racist. Of course, this is from a pure predictive utility perspective. In reality, most people have some sense of moral obligation and probably actively work to widen their prior (i.e. "reduce their bias" in common lingo). However, it's necessarily a trade-off in the sense that actively working to widen your prior for the exclusive purpose of fairness (what is promoted by "social progressives"), while noble, necessarily reduces predictive utility. Note that this doesn't mean that people don't often widen their priors from simply learning more (e.g. maybe spending more time around a certain race and realizing their prior was too narrow)--obviously, this is a best case outcome when it happens.

The apparent current progressive "correct" prior is a totally flat (uninformative) prior, which I believe to be silly. To be clear, a flat prior would be to claim that a random Chinese and a random white person have an equal chance in a game of Mahjong. If you acknowledge that skin color on a train has any predictive power for crimes in the case where you lack any other information about the person (which is a fairly realistic assumption for strangers on a train... you might be able to see their facial expression, mannerisms, and clothing but that's really about it [and all of those are also correlated with race anyway]), then you're acknowledging that stereotypes about people's skin color have some predictive utility in terms of character (if you accept propensity to commit crime as an indicator of character, which is admittedly an argument of its own).

If you recall, the original point was that the word "racist" has become diluted. My argument is that "racist" has been broadened to include "people who harbor stereotypes", which is a rather ridiculous definition as I argued above--as stereotypes are not necessarily "bad", and can increase utility.

[I should also note that I argued that the term "racist" has been diluted because it is used by social progressives to defend socially progressive policies from people who agree that diversity is good, but disagree with the progressives on the merits of current socially progressive policy (e.g. probably Damore imo). But we're not discussing that argument here.]

Also keep in mind that I'm only making arguments that demonstrate the existence of the "stereotype utility" phenomenon here. Stereotypes are employed hundreds (if not thousands) of times each day by everyone. It's literally impossible to argue what stereotypes are appropriate for each and every situation, so an argument of existence is going to have to make do if we're keeping this discussion general. Obviously, the magnitude of the "stereotype utility" is going to vary drastically from case to case, so making arguments about it in a general discussion makes little sense. In the train scenario, the "stereotype utility" is obviously small, as I've acknowledged in all my posts. In the Mahjong example, the "stereotype utility" is larger.

If I'm sitting on a train car with 5 African Americans from the South Side of Chicago, I can observe that I'm x times more likely to be the victim of a crime than if I were sitting among five random members of the general US population. Therefore, I feel more threatened on this train car.

It's literally the same example as Mahjong, but now it's politically sensitive. No, it's not fair to the African Americans on the train. And I would be irrational to assume I'll likely be the victim of a crime on that train, since base crime rates are very low. But I'm still logically and mathematically justified in feeling more threatened on that train car than I would with 5 other random US citizens.

President Donald Trump stood by his heavily criticized defense of monuments commemorating the Confederacy in a series of tweets Thursday morning. Trump said that removing the statues of Confederate generals meant removing "beauty" — that would "never able to be comparably replaced" — from American cities. As he did in a Tuesday press conference, he also attempted to equate some Confederate generals with some of the Founding Fathers.

Strung together, the tweets read:

"Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!" [ellipses removed for clarity]

On August 18 2017 00:08 Plansix wrote:
I’m still having a hard time taking the “rational discourse” from a guy who argued that marital rape isn’t real. Or that SJW are destroying science fiction novels.

On August 17 2017 15:04 IgnE wrote:
Capital flows seem to necessitate cultural mixing at this point. Why do you think I was emphasizing the imperial nature of American global power? Capital increasingly relies upon the barbarian energies of the immigrant hordes, just as it increasingly relies upon the uncontrollable generative capacities of "disruptive" non-linear technologies.

Capital only triumphs when it becomes identified with the state, when it is the state.
-Fernand Braudel

What makes you think that it is possible to put this genie back in its bottle without completely disrupting the world economy? I know Sermolaka has taken the approach, "if it doesn't kill me it can only make me stronger" and is now more confident than ever that growth will go on forever, but long-term zero or negative growth capitalism is an impossibility. Since David Ricardo everyone has been making fun of mercantilism, but it's a rational strategy in a world of limited wealth.

There are quite a lot of similarities I think between the "fundamentalisms" of ISIS and the white supremacists. Because they are both reactionary losers in the globalism game, but also because fundamentalists cut themselves off from so-called "rational discourse." It is kind of frightening to listen to the Nazis speak and to know that no real communication is possible. Pluralism is only possible under the conceit of a common language community, or interpretive community, where "rational discourse" is at least intelligible to the other side despite differing metaphysical commitments. Under dissolving norms and irreconcilable assumptions what is left? Schmittian political theology? Isn't that Donald Trump, exactly? He is the "charismatic" meme leader who doesn't have to say anything either because (he's an idiot) who won't be understood by the other side anyway or because within his own community there is nothing left to be said (i.e. everyone already understands or knows).

On August 18 2017 00:32 ticklishmusic wrote:
honestly, i'm kind of okay with it. 1 TB is a pretty generous amount of data- i mean, that much would be downloading the equivalent of my full hard drive every month. like 99%+ of people don't go that high.

though i guess it would be fair if you went over one month, then the extra bit you paid rolled over to the following months.

On August 18 2017 00:52 m4ini wrote:
Lets see Trumps reaction to the newest terror attack, how long it takes to condemn it, et cetera. Guesses?