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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 11, 2024

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The issue is that there isn't an objective standard of a fair split (this is precisely what you argue).

I don't think you'd think we should make these sorts of policies broadly applicable.

One side points at specific statistical material gaps between two groups and says 'the gap is evidence that there's some form of discrimination or inequality at play somewhere, we should have policies to try to eliminate the gap.' The other side says 'One group is naturally inclined to outperform the other on whatever metric there's currently a gap in, so those gaps are natural and unavoidable and we shouldn't try to close them.'

Now let those two groups be defined differently. Urban areas have higher GDP per capita. Should we, to fix this inequity, direct money to even this? There are many other axes you could look at: even if you choose a 50-50 split, always, as the fair option, your selection of what measures to check along itself involves bias.

Whereas the first side at least has a natural stopping point of eliminating the gaps, and would need some kind of major narrative shift to justify going past that.

We know what happens when gaps are eliminated: switch measures until you find one where your favored groups are disadvantaged, or just stop caring.

You see this in education: no one complains that it's unfair that more women go to college than men.