Reply to Re: Let's talk terrorism
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First of all, thanks Striker and Phoenix; I was starting to think everybody here disagreed with me.
I believe gender influences a person's thoughts in a million subtle ways, like weighted dice.
I agree. However, they are weighted in a million different ways, and for any particular task or occupation, the weights are canceling each other out. It's random noise, and there is no reason any gender is better at the job. In fact, an argument can be made that if you have a team, having input from different genders is valuable in itself.
And that's not just a genetic (cultural) thing: even if the differences would be entirely cultural (genetic), it is valuable to have knowledge in your team about how women (or blacks, or whichever group you talk about) are treated in society.
No one is teaching little girls their duty is to marry and leave the education to menfolk.
Yes, lots of people still teach that. After living in the US for a few years, I can say that everything we discuss here is much worse on this side of the ocean: there is more discrimination towards all groups we talked about than what I'm used to in Europe.
But even in the Netherlands, there are groups of Christians who teach exactly what you say. Their political party even wants to take away women's right to vote. Here in the US, there seem to be more people like that. It's so bad, that one of the four remaining contenders for the presidency, Ted Cruz, is one of those people. This is not something of the past; it may have improved, but it's certainly not solved.
because of natural tendencies, a fair system is never going to be 50% women and 50% men.
What percentage do you expect? Below which limit do you agree that there must be unfair discrimination at play? If you look at the world parliaments, the US is #95 at 19.4%. Every country from western Europe except Ireland(#111, 16.3%) scores higher. And aside from Greece (#93, 19.7%) not a little higher: it ranges from Sweden (#5, 43.6%) to France (#58, 26.2%).
Do you think that US women are genetically very different from western European women? I think it's pretty clear that there is a lot of discrimination happening. Because I've never heard a reasonable argument that women wouldn't be suited for leadership. And yet, there are only two countries in the world that have more than 50% women in their parliament. If everything is just small differences and there is a lot of natural variation, what other explanation can there be for this distribution?
Just to be clear: I don't think a country should force its parliament to be exactly 50/50. Sweden looks pretty good with almost 44%. But what about other places? How many female CEOs are there? How many female scientists? It good to be doing well in politics, and it's a reason to be proud, but it doesn't mean the problem is fixed entirely.
You say women are not discriminated? Then why do they earn less money for doing the same job as men? As a programmer, I encountered this: Women Can Code – as Long as No One Knows They're Women
And here's a list of articles about gender discrimination, almost all in favor of men. That's not selected that way; it's simply all news about gender discrimination (from a US news organization).
it was, like, the most un-racist thing imaginable.
I wouldn't go that far, but I agree that it wasn't the best demonstration of racism. It was however an explanation of how culture discourages some people from doing certain things. It also shows that it doesn't even have to be white people's fault: he didn't want to let his black peers down, and they said he shouldn't have a career in science. Now there is a lot of discrimination from white people as well (which he didn't talk about there), but it isn't the only thing.
It sounds like he already didn't face much hard racism in the 80s, and everything's gotten a lot better since.
Perhaps it has gotten better, but realize that last year, Missouri decided to take the confederate flag down from the state parliament. Just in case you don't know what that means: the confederate flag is the symbol of the losing side of the civil war, the side that wanted to break away from the United States, for exactly one reason: because they wanted to keep slaves. The symbol of that group was flown on the most important political building in the state until last year. This is not ancient history. Mississippi still has the confederate flag as part of their state flag, there has been discussion about changing that, but it didn't happen. Not (only) because of tradition, but specifically because they want to have the symbol of the confederacy in their state flag.
Have you heard about "Black Lives Matter"? It's a protest movement, which does peaceful protests to try to stop the police from killing (mostly unarmed) black people. Because they do that all the time, everywhere. Look it up, this is not history, it's happening right now.
Another example, which is very well corrected for bias: whites and blacks smoke marijuana at approximately the same rate. That is illegal here, so you can get arrested for it. Black people get arrested for it four times as much as white people. They commit the same crime. Blacks get arrested more. Discrimination is the only possible explanation here.
Black people get in trouble with the police for having their hands in their pockets, for wearing a hoodie, for looking nervous (that happened to Freddy Gray, they seemed to have broken his legs, put him in a police van without a seat belt, and gave him a rough ride. He later died from his injuries), for driving in a cheap car, for driving in an expensive car. In other words, just for being black. This is much worse here than what I've seen in Europe. But I'm pretty sure that there is a lot of discrimination in Europe as well. For example, I would be surprised if a person named Mohammed has as much chance of getting a job as a person named John.
Like lewd remarks, which isn't cool, but you deal with that like any insult - tell the person to go duck themselves.
If you know that you will be insulted on a daily basis when you go work somewhere, that may be a reason to not go work there. This means that if the best person for the job is a woman, you have an increased risk of never seeing her at a job interview, because she decided that she didn't want to be there. Don't forget: this isn't "one colleague is annoying sometimes". This is "almost every colleague implies every day that I don't deserve to be there".
It makes me think of the famous statement from Alexander Hamilton: No character, however upright, is a match for incessantly repeated attacks, however false.
I disagree that the system is rigged. Some people have poorer starting positions, but there isn't any white cabal that's actively pushing these people down the stairs.
Here in the US, I'm pretty sure there is such a cabal. Their PR department is called "Fox News" and they do a lot of pushing. But even if there isn't a cabal, the system can still be rigged. If one group has more opportunities for whatever reason, that's unfair. Fixing that is a good thing.
Ultimately, every person is responsible for themselves.
Every person is responsible for taking the opportunities that they get in life. A person is not responsible for getting the opportunities; that's out of their control by definition (if you don't get an opportunity, you can't take it; if you have the ability to create an opportunity for yourself, that is an opportunity itself).
it's up to you to rise above your origins, not up to society to lower the bar for you.
The bar is lower for the privileged people. They have more opportunities. My point is that in a civil society, that is considered unjust and in need of fixing. That means lowering the bar a little for all others, and raising it for the privileged people.
My problem with this is that it's very unfair towards individuals, and unequivocally racist.
Of course it's racist. There's nothing wrong with that. It's also not unfair. Let me explain.
Blacks are underrepresented in some well paying sector. Whites tend to stick together, so when they hire new people, they most likely hire more white people. That means that the fraction of blacks isn't going to increase by itself. (In fact, it's likely to decrease.)
That is unjust. It is because of the race, and so to fix it, we must differentiate people based on race. That is racist. But discrimination is only bad if it hurts people unjustly. And taking away privilege in order to achieve equality may hurt, but it certainly isn't unjust. Quite the contrary.
If there's a job opening, and I'm the most qualified applicant, I want them to hire ME, not some black person because supposedly I'm so much more privileged than they are (even if in this particular case, that weren't the case at all).
Yet it happens all the time that when the black person, or the woman, is the most qualified, they don't get hired. The point is that there are many biases involved, all of which are in favor of straight cis white males. If there is no intervention, almost all well paying jobs will be filled by people from that group. Do you believe that they are better at everything? I don't think you do. So then you must agree with me that this privilege in fact selects people who aren't the most qualified, right? Don't you then also agree that it is good to provide extra incentives to hire outside that group?
I believe gender influences a person's thoughts in a million subtle ways, like weighted dice.
I agree. However, they are weighted in a million different ways, and for any particular task or occupation, the weights are canceling each other out. It's random noise, and there is no reason any gender is better at the job. In fact, an argument can be made that if you have a team, having input from different genders is valuable in itself.
And that's not just a genetic (cultural) thing: even if the differences would be entirely cultural (genetic), it is valuable to have knowledge in your team about how women (or blacks, or whichever group you talk about) are treated in society.
No one is teaching little girls their duty is to marry and leave the education to menfolk.
Yes, lots of people still teach that. After living in the US for a few years, I can say that everything we discuss here is much worse on this side of the ocean: there is more discrimination towards all groups we talked about than what I'm used to in Europe.
But even in the Netherlands, there are groups of Christians who teach exactly what you say. Their political party even wants to take away women's right to vote. Here in the US, there seem to be more people like that. It's so bad, that one of the four remaining contenders for the presidency, Ted Cruz, is one of those people. This is not something of the past; it may have improved, but it's certainly not solved.
because of natural tendencies, a fair system is never going to be 50% women and 50% men.
What percentage do you expect? Below which limit do you agree that there must be unfair discrimination at play? If you look at the world parliaments, the US is #95 at 19.4%. Every country from western Europe except Ireland(#111, 16.3%) scores higher. And aside from Greece (#93, 19.7%) not a little higher: it ranges from Sweden (#5, 43.6%) to France (#58, 26.2%).
Do you think that US women are genetically very different from western European women? I think it's pretty clear that there is a lot of discrimination happening. Because I've never heard a reasonable argument that women wouldn't be suited for leadership. And yet, there are only two countries in the world that have more than 50% women in their parliament. If everything is just small differences and there is a lot of natural variation, what other explanation can there be for this distribution?
Just to be clear: I don't think a country should force its parliament to be exactly 50/50. Sweden looks pretty good with almost 44%. But what about other places? How many female CEOs are there? How many female scientists? It good to be doing well in politics, and it's a reason to be proud, but it doesn't mean the problem is fixed entirely.
You say women are not discriminated? Then why do they earn less money for doing the same job as men? As a programmer, I encountered this: Women Can Code – as Long as No One Knows They're Women
And here's a list of articles about gender discrimination, almost all in favor of men. That's not selected that way; it's simply all news about gender discrimination (from a US news organization).
it was, like, the most un-racist thing imaginable.
I wouldn't go that far, but I agree that it wasn't the best demonstration of racism. It was however an explanation of how culture discourages some people from doing certain things. It also shows that it doesn't even have to be white people's fault: he didn't want to let his black peers down, and they said he shouldn't have a career in science. Now there is a lot of discrimination from white people as well (which he didn't talk about there), but it isn't the only thing.
It sounds like he already didn't face much hard racism in the 80s, and everything's gotten a lot better since.
Perhaps it has gotten better, but realize that last year, Missouri decided to take the confederate flag down from the state parliament. Just in case you don't know what that means: the confederate flag is the symbol of the losing side of the civil war, the side that wanted to break away from the United States, for exactly one reason: because they wanted to keep slaves. The symbol of that group was flown on the most important political building in the state until last year. This is not ancient history. Mississippi still has the confederate flag as part of their state flag, there has been discussion about changing that, but it didn't happen. Not (only) because of tradition, but specifically because they want to have the symbol of the confederacy in their state flag.
Have you heard about "Black Lives Matter"? It's a protest movement, which does peaceful protests to try to stop the police from killing (mostly unarmed) black people. Because they do that all the time, everywhere. Look it up, this is not history, it's happening right now.
Another example, which is very well corrected for bias: whites and blacks smoke marijuana at approximately the same rate. That is illegal here, so you can get arrested for it. Black people get arrested for it four times as much as white people. They commit the same crime. Blacks get arrested more. Discrimination is the only possible explanation here.
Black people get in trouble with the police for having their hands in their pockets, for wearing a hoodie, for looking nervous (that happened to Freddy Gray, they seemed to have broken his legs, put him in a police van without a seat belt, and gave him a rough ride. He later died from his injuries), for driving in a cheap car, for driving in an expensive car. In other words, just for being black. This is much worse here than what I've seen in Europe. But I'm pretty sure that there is a lot of discrimination in Europe as well. For example, I would be surprised if a person named Mohammed has as much chance of getting a job as a person named John.
Like lewd remarks, which isn't cool, but you deal with that like any insult - tell the person to go duck themselves.
If you know that you will be insulted on a daily basis when you go work somewhere, that may be a reason to not go work there. This means that if the best person for the job is a woman, you have an increased risk of never seeing her at a job interview, because she decided that she didn't want to be there. Don't forget: this isn't "one colleague is annoying sometimes". This is "almost every colleague implies every day that I don't deserve to be there".
It makes me think of the famous statement from Alexander Hamilton: No character, however upright, is a match for incessantly repeated attacks, however false.
I disagree that the system is rigged. Some people have poorer starting positions, but there isn't any white cabal that's actively pushing these people down the stairs.
Here in the US, I'm pretty sure there is such a cabal. Their PR department is called "Fox News" and they do a lot of pushing. But even if there isn't a cabal, the system can still be rigged. If one group has more opportunities for whatever reason, that's unfair. Fixing that is a good thing.
Ultimately, every person is responsible for themselves.
Every person is responsible for taking the opportunities that they get in life. A person is not responsible for getting the opportunities; that's out of their control by definition (if you don't get an opportunity, you can't take it; if you have the ability to create an opportunity for yourself, that is an opportunity itself).
it's up to you to rise above your origins, not up to society to lower the bar for you.
The bar is lower for the privileged people. They have more opportunities. My point is that in a civil society, that is considered unjust and in need of fixing. That means lowering the bar a little for all others, and raising it for the privileged people.
My problem with this is that it's very unfair towards individuals, and unequivocally racist.
Of course it's racist. There's nothing wrong with that. It's also not unfair. Let me explain.
Blacks are underrepresented in some well paying sector. Whites tend to stick together, so when they hire new people, they most likely hire more white people. That means that the fraction of blacks isn't going to increase by itself. (In fact, it's likely to decrease.)
That is unjust. It is because of the race, and so to fix it, we must differentiate people based on race. That is racist. But discrimination is only bad if it hurts people unjustly. And taking away privilege in order to achieve equality may hurt, but it certainly isn't unjust. Quite the contrary.
If there's a job opening, and I'm the most qualified applicant, I want them to hire ME, not some black person because supposedly I'm so much more privileged than they are (even if in this particular case, that weren't the case at all).
Yet it happens all the time that when the black person, or the woman, is the most qualified, they don't get hired. The point is that there are many biases involved, all of which are in favor of straight cis white males. If there is no intervention, almost all well paying jobs will be filled by people from that group. Do you believe that they are better at everything? I don't think you do. So then you must agree with me that this privilege in fact selects people who aren't the most qualified, right? Don't you then also agree that it is good to provide extra incentives to hire outside that group?
