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non_radical_centrist  2mo ago (astralcodexten.com)   2536 thread views

How Should We Think About Race And "Lived Experience"?

astralcodexten.com

I'm generally a fan of "blurry" definitions where something can qualify as X if it fulfills a few of many criteria. I think trying to create hard rules around blurry areas like race and culture is fool's errand, and Scott does a great job laying out how overly strict definitions can go wrong.

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If pursuing the truth and accurate information is the goal of any research field, then there should be no issues in acknowledging some limitations and biases of racial categorizations.

Okay, so, obviously if you're, like, writing a paper on the impact of race and IQ, you should more complicated measures of ancestry than self-reported race if you can. I don't disagree with that. However, I think "race" is close enough to "ancestry" in casual conversation.

also e.g. biobanks don't allow people to use their data for race and iq research, which is both unfortunate and ... potentially indicative of the kind of bias that would systematically affect science on the topic!

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