
Discriminate, but do it well - agronaut
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/nov/27/prejudice-discrimination-the-reality
======
mwsherman
Biases are turtles all the way down, one learns. The only “solution” I’ve
found for myself is not to “correct” them, but to have a lot less conviction
about my own correctness. Big error bars.

~~~
duaneb
Well said.

------
mswen
In some ways statistical modeling is trying to do with rigor and honesty about
error what we seem to do quite naturally in daily life. That is we make
decisions based on observed and/or shared and taught patterns.

Stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination are the crude, less substantiated
and often mean-spirited cousins of statistical models.

Models are useful as long as their limitations are well understood, and humans
use them with caution and compassion.

~~~
beccasanchez
Modern statistics and statistically modelling are actually just confirming the
validity of the majority of widely held stereotypes.

As statistics in the academy become more common and advanced, more and more
old stereotypes are just confirmed to be accurate. This is considered a crisis
right now in social psychology, for instance, because there are almost no
stereotypes that research has debunked. Again and again, research confirms
stereotypes, and shows that humans in the aggregate are very good at creating
accurate inferences.

Stereotypes create injustice when they lead to prejudice--failing to give an
individual a chance because they belong to a stereotyped group--but prejudice
is wrong because outliers deserve a chance, not because stereotypes are
incorrect.

How can liberalism persist in the face of so much science that dismantles its
most sacred beliefs?

~~~
nommm-nommm
>there are almost no stereotypes that research has debunked. Again and again,
research confirms stereotypes, and shows that humans in the aggregate are very
good at creating accurate inferences.

I'm calling BS on this unless you give some specific examples.

Not only this but confirming stereotypes does not mean that "humans in the
aggregate are very good at creating accurate inferences."

For example if (group) have the stereotype of being dumb that doesn't mean
that others are good at making accurate inferences, it may just mean that
others are good at denying (group) access to education and the same standard
of living.

~~~
beccasanchez
The only catch is that when attributes of the stereotyped population change
over time, the stereotype can lag behind the change for awhile, but the
stereotypes eventually catch up to fit the new situation. All cultures
stereotype and all cultures are quite good at it. Stereotypes are a pragmatic
and democratic form of knowledge-making that all human cultures use[1].

This bullet proof research came out of various well-funded attempts to debunk
stereotypes during the last 30 years. You know that science is working when
sincere and hopeful attempts to debunk common knowledge end up confirming it
very strongly!

[1]:Heine, Steven J., Cultural Psychology. 3rd edition. W.W. Norton, 2016.
ISBN: 9780393263985.

~~~
nommm-nommm
You gave no specific examples so I'm still calling BS.

~~~
beccasanchez
"Calling BS" does not seem very substantive and it doesn't feel very civil
either. I don't see who made you the authority here.

There are too many examples to list, but the citation I gave contains dozens
and dozens[1]. For instance, it turns out that North Asians really are better
at math than people of European ancestry. Ashkenazi Jews really are better at
learning languages and have larger vocabularies and superior grammatical
understanding and usage. Cultural psychologists have tabulated voluminous data
on all the ethnic stereotypes throughout the world--hundreds of stereotypes
that different Asians have of each other for instance--and again and again
they are found to be more true than not.

The big mistake would be to then have prejudice--to prejudge an individual on
the basis of their group affiliation. While it's a scientific fact that North
Asians (Korea, China, Japan) are better at math than other populations, there
are plenty of people in those groups that are worse than the global average.
So it would be a mistake to assume that just because someone you meet is North
Asian they are better than average at math.

[1]: Heine, Steven J., Cultural Psychology. 3rd edition. W.W. Norton, 2016.
ISBN: 9780393263985.

~~~
Pyxl101
No one would deny that there are substantial physical differences between men
and women, not just in form but in function, such as athletic performance. Men
hold the majority of individual performance world records, consistent with
stereotype. But there are also cognitive and intelligence differences [0]. Men
have an IQ distribution with greater variance than women, which suggests
statistically that there are more men than women per capita in the top
percentiles of intelligence, as well as the bottom [1] - one study placed
twice as many men as women in the top 2% [1], while Down syndrome and other
learning disabilities are also more common in males. Some studies find that
men have slightly (a few points) higher average IQ [2] and perform better on
reasoning tests [3]. (There is controversy of opinion about some of these
results and I don't know how to summarize their standing in the scientific
community.)

Anatomical differences in the brain are well known, with males having larger
brains, and using their hemispheres differently than females. A 2013 study
reported, "Sex differences in human behavior show adaptive complementarity:
Males have better motor and spatial abilities, whereas females have superior
memory and social cognition skills. [...] Overall, the results suggest that
male brains are structured to facilitate connectivity between perception and
coordinated action, whereas female brains are designed to facilitate
communication between analytical and intuitive processing modes." [4]

Another example is that female babies are more interested in faces and social
situations, while males are more interested in mechanical objects. This
difference even begins days after birth, too soon to be influenced by culture
[5], meaning that the difference is innate.

Some of these studies could be seen to be confirming stereotypes, e.g., males
having a proportionately greater attraction to mechanical objects could be an
inclination that leads to more men than women self-selecting into engineering
disciplines. More men having top percentile intelligence could correspond to
historical geniuses being stereotypically male (Newton, Einstein, Ramanujan,
etc.) - and there being more men in the bottom percentiles could explain why
more men are homeless and have mental illness (bag man or hobo stereotype). My
understanding is that IQ differences by race also tend to align with
stereotypes, with Asians and Ashkenazi Jews as you mentioned having top
average intelligence.

I try to understand as much research as I can, since I view it as the most
effective objective way to learn about the world. Scientific results don't /
wouldn't alter my view that humans all deserve to be treated with fairness,
equality, compassion, and judged on their individual behavior and merit, and
not by membership in some group.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intellige...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_intelligence)

[1] Deary, Ian J.; Irwing, Paul; Der, Geoff; Bates, Timothy C. (2007).
"Brother–sister differences in the g factor in intelligence: Analysis of full,
opposite-sex siblings from the NLSY1979

> Here we use a novel design, comparing 1292 pairs of opposite-sex siblings
> who participated in the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979
> (NLSY1979) [...]. Males have only a marginal advantage in mean levels of g
> (less than 7% of a standard deviation) from the ASVAB and AFQT, but
> substantially greater variance. Among the top 2% AFQT scores, there were
> almost twice as many males as females. These differences could provide a
> partial basis for sex differences in intellectual eminence.

[2] Allik, J., Must, O., & Lynn, R. (1999). Sex differences in general
intelligence among high school graduates: Some results from Estonia.
Personality and Individual Differences, 16, 1137-1141. [3] Lynn, Richard
(1994). "Sex differences in intelligence and brain size: A paradox resolved".
Personality and Individual Differences 17 (2): 257–71

> Yet the consensus view is that there is no sex difference in general
> intelligence. An examination of the literature shows that the consensus view
> is wrong. Among adults, males have slightly higher verbal and reasoning
> abilities than females and a more pronounced superiority on spatial
> abilities. If the three abilities are combined to form general intelligence,
> the mean for males is 4 IQ points higher than the mean for females.

[4] Ingalhalikar M, Smith A, Parker D, et al. (January 2014). "Sex differences
in the structural connectome of the human brain". Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111 (2): 823–8.

[5]
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0163638300000321)

> Sexual dimorphism in sociability has been documented in humans. The present
> study aimed to ascertain whether the sexual dimorphism is a result of
> biological or socio-cultural differences between the two sexes. 102 human
> neonates, who by definition have not yet been influenced by social and
> cultural factors, were tested to see if there was a difference in looking
> time at a face (social object) and a mobile (physical-mechanical object).
> Results showed that the male infants showed a stronger interest in the
> physical-mechanical mobile while the female infants showed a stronger
> interest in the face. The results of this research clearly demonstrate that
> sex differences are in part biological in origin

------
tux3
There's a trade-off between evaluating everything on a case-by-case basis
(which takes time and energy) and using general rules of thumb that allow
quick decisions making, but is essentially discrimination.

I like to reflect on my own judgement before I actually need to use it,
deciding which rules will be acceptable, what situations call for carefulness,
what ideas I should be wary of even if I'm in a horrible mood. The
subconscious is a wonderful thing, but sometimes it's nice to take charge of
one's own thoughts a little bit.

~~~
jessriedel
It's not just about time and effort. There are situations where we simply do
not have access to complete information, no matter how much time and effort we
spend gathering it.

------
robotresearcher
TLDR: use priors to help estimate robustly under uncertainty. Don't use
incorrect priors.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Help eliminate robustly?

------
meowface
Completely off-topic, but is the quote at the top grammatically correct? The
comma looks unnecessary.

I feel like it should be "We must make snap judgments on the basis of various
shortcuts, or we’d be unable to function", not "We must make snap judgments,
on the basis of various shortcuts, or we’d be unable to function". Is this
just an error, or was the comma added to more closely reflect how the
individual spoke?

~~~
kaybe
It changes the meaning, I think. In the second case, it means that snap
judgements must be made to function, and they're, incidentally, based on
shortcuts (but you can leave out this part of the sentence), while in the
first case 'on the basis of various shortcuts' is a very integral part of the
information, and snap judgements must be made this way.

~~~
meowface
Good point. I think I agree.

------
oneplease
I'm not sure I get the point of this article. On the teacher example, of
course we discriminate based on skill, no one's disputing that. I could not
find a deeper point than discriminate by legitimate metrics but not by skin
color, race, etc which is fairly obvious.

~~~
Afforess
The point of the article is that using outrage and shame culture to resolve
discrimination can be just as bad as acts of discrimination themselves. The
act of shaming a person can make you feel you have done your 'good deed for
the day', and allow you to unconsciously commit your own biases against
others. The article suggests that instead of shaming or attacking biases we
observe in others, we should reflect on ourselves first, and fix our own
misdeeds and mistakes.

The entire article could be summarized from a verse in the (NKJV) Bible:

 _Why do you look at the speck in your brother 's eye, but fail to notice the
beam in your own eye?_

~~~
trowawee
Because my brother is actually being a racist, which is a beam in his eye,
whereas I am calling him out for being a racist, which, if we accept that
there's something wrong with "outrage and shame culture" (which, tbh, I mostly
see used interchangeably with "PC" as a catchall putdown by people upset that
they can't just talk shit about minorities and women without consequence like
they used to be able to do in the good ol' days), is a speck in my eye.

~~~
VanillaLime
Is that really what you got from the article? I feel like the author makes a
pretty valid point: everyone pattern-matches people at first impression. If
you decide to climb on a tower of moral virtue because you _think_ you've
consciously decided to stop pattern-matching on the basis of race/gender and
thus don't introspect about your (many) other subconscious biases, you're
really not doing anyone a favor.

~~~
trowawee
I was specifically responding to the idea, suggested by Afforess, that "using
outrage and shame culture to resolve discrimination can be just as bad as acts
of discrimination themselves", which is ridiculous, and which the second
paragraph of the article at least somewhat seems to imply.

Obviously, if someone claims they've defeated the biases that everyone falls
prey to constantly, they are almost certainly incorrect. But, at least in my
experience, I've never seen that; I've seen a lot of people who are cognizant
of the studies suggesting everyone's prone to bias who then try to consciously
counteract that, I've seen a lot of people reject those studies and their
conclusions entirely and claim they and many others can make judgments that
are not prone to those biases, and I've seen a lot of people who don't know
what studies you're talking about. I haven't seen anybody saying "Everyone is
prone to these biases except me," much less the epidemic the article suggests.

~~~
vlehto
So your argument is: "...said nobody ever."

I haven't heard anybody in real life call black people dumb. So I could claim
that racism doesn't really exist.

Personal anecdotes prove nothing. We are both biased. I can't see what harm is
done by warning people about this stuff.

~~~
trowawee
You can literally go on twitter and find somebody spewing racist shit every
second of every day. You cannot do the same with "people claiming that
everyone is implicitly biased except for them".

~~~
vlehto
You can literally go on Facebook and find somebody spewing "you're racist".
They may or may not think "I'm racist too, but I handle it better." For some
reason they usually are careful not to say anything pointing to that
direction. We can't know that those people think.

That racist stuff on twitter could be just humor and nothing more. We don't
know how those people think either.

The point of the article was "hey people, you might be biased in this way."
Now what's wrong with saying that aloud?

------
idlewords
This is a survey article of sorts built on shaky foundations. The most
relevant paper to read in relation to this story is this one: "Over half of
psychology studies fail reproducibility test."
[http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-
studies-f...](http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-
reproducibility-test-1.18248)

By the time the results get distilled into a Guardian article, the situation
is probably hopeless.

~~~
losvedir
Economics, too: [https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/papers-in-
economic...](https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/papers-in-economics-
not-reproducible)

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brenschluss
I read the title, saw the photo of the author, and made a snap judgment that
the article was going to be a pseudo-intellectual, covertly conservative
argument, such as: "Why race is actually a thing, sometimes" or "Why gender
pay imbalances may be sometimes helpful" \- and my snap judgment was right.

~~~
klipt
What's funny about discrimination is some is overt, but much more is covert.
Overt is mostly frowned upon, although e.g. car insurance companies still
openly charge men more. I'm pretty sure that's only allowed because men aren't
the "protected gender" when it comes to discrimination.

~~~
nommm-nommm
The term you are looking for is protected class.

When gender based discrimination is outlawed men are included as well.

That being said Montana outlaws gender based discrimination in auto insurance
as does the EU.

Where its allowed it is allowed because nobody got around to outlawing it.
That can change.

Until Obamacare many US states allowed health insurance companies to charge
women higher premiums because women go to the doctor more. Obamacare outlawed
that.

I think gender discrimination is auto insurance will end eventually.

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asdfzxc
That article didn't say shit. It just asked me to go read a book..

