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Comment by Oxitendwe | Hacker News Reader

Or, to put it a different way, "You don't actually need to be racist in order to be racist."

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but that's correct under the explanation of racism given by the parent comment (which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view).

The example about divesting from a neighborhood due to concerns about property value is spot-on. In a systematically racist society, it is rational to behave in ways that produce racist outcomes even one does not personally have racist beliefs. Racism ends up being perpetuated even if most people don't think of themselves as racists or believe they are doing anything to promote unfair racial outcomes.

> which is not merely the left-wing view, but the consensus academic view

This follows only because academics (in relevant fields) are a strict subset of the left-wing (and generally the extreme left wing), and the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias. These fields are very open about their commitment to activism over objectivity (and many in these fields consider objectivity and reason to be "tools of white supremacy" or some similar nonsense). We shouldn't confuse "sociologists believe in X" with "X is true or even falsifiable".

> the relevant fields are in the middle of a reproducibility crisis largely due to their political confirmation bias.

As someone who works very closely with academics (specifically sociologists), I would love to see some evidence for this baseless mud-slinging. All of science is having a reproducibility crisis

Do you have a knowledge of the field? Or do you just disagree with their conclusions? I would be happy to be proven wrong so I can let my sociologist friends know that they are doing such a thing.

EDIT: There's also this really neat nature article detailing some of the responses to the current reproducibility crisis in all of science. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-016-0021 Based on this article, it looks like the social sciences are actually the ones spearheading the effort for more reproducible science. One of my colleagues is actually investigating how the typical formulation of ideas with the scientific method can implicitly lead to biases and errors in the science actually performed.

You’re right. Which isn’t to say sociology isn’t a hostile environment for anyone who isn’t avowedly left wing, or that sociologists (or social psychologists, or anthropologists) don’t discriminate against people they know are right wing. But nothing I’ve read suggests that politics before truth is the majority position in sociology. It’s clearly a position, and not a fringe one, but it’s weaker than in the 60’s. Cultural anthropology is a writeoff though.

I would hope the social sciences are leading the charge on reproducibility. If you want to learn more on that topic read Andrew Gelman’s blog.

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