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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31231 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Lying to you about whether you look fat has differences other than just magnitude to lying about whether the parachute you're about to jump with can handle your weight.

If white lies can be correct at small magnitude, why can't they be correct at large magnitude? The point of the dress example is to illustrate direction, not magnitude. Scaling the magnitude of a vector by a positive factor doesn't change its direction.

That is the lie that you want to tell.

Not what I said. I'm advocating a "muddle through" approach of providing evidence against oppression-related hypotheses as can be done appropriately & inoffensively (e.g. mentioning widespread existence of ethnic gaps probably not due to oppression, like the White-Asian IQ gap), and doing what we can to address factors that are addressable (environmental factors, cultural factors, that discrimination which actually exists). As a concrete point, I favor Supreme Court limitations on affirmative action, because I think at this point affirmative action is kind of just creating a class of people who are paid to argue for affirmative action.

If white lies can be correct at small magnitude, why can't they be correct at large magnitude?

Yes, I recognized this maneuver, that's why I specifically decided to argue against it instead of getting bogged down defending that I don't think white lies are a good idea either. To be clear I don't think white lies are correct even at small magnitude, but even if I grant they can be that does not imply well intentioned lies can be good at high magnitudes. I even provided an example for why the very same lie can vary in wrongness by magnitude.

I'm advocating a "muddle through" approach of providing evidence against oppression-related hypotheses as can be done appropriately & inoffensively (e.g. mentioning widespread existence of ethnic gaps probably not due to oppression, like the White-Asian IQ gap), and doing what we can to address factors that are addressable (environmental factors, cultural factors, that discrimination which actually exists).

This is just arguing HBD but handicapping yourself from using the truth and culture factors is not more broachable than HBD. so you're left with environmental explanations. As the interventions fail at incredible cost all we'll be left with is discrimination.

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