Comment by sago | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sago | Hacker News Reader

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Why are you so exorcised by the word privilege? My point was nothing to do with what you seem to have a problem with.

My point was that what is seen as 'merit' is a function of a whole bunch of other factors, which means it isn't somehow a racists discussion stopping thing to point out that Asian men have higher levels of 'merit' (when merit is defined in the way I understood it to be in the post I was responding to). My point in using 'privilege' is to say that the idea of 'merit' overlaps with 'privilege' in the ways I described, and that the people the OP might thing of as wanting to 'stop' the discussion, do, in fact, have this discussion a lot, though they'd use 'privilege' instead to mean those things, because that is the term of art.

You seem to have a problem with a word. Call it 'probabilistic causes of non-equal representation', then. Point out there are many such causes, and some of them are hardly things we could easily change (there are very few people with very low IQ in top tech jobs, so higher IQ is a 'privilege'). Your reaction to the word, rather than the point, seems rather ideological.

Tautology is not a synonym for synonym. And the equation you accuse me of making is a strawman, my point was to unpack merit, not to define privilege. I'm sorry if it was unclear.

I don't know why you think I'm "exorcised" by a word. I'm simply pointing out that you are using a completely different definition of it than myself and hackeruser, and as a result your posts are completely missing the point.

If privilege means "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", then that's a very broad definition and every non-deterministic unequal representation is caused by privilege. But you were responding to a discussion where we were using "privilege" to mean something along the lines of "social biases unfairly favoring one group".

By definition, Asian males have 8x the "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation". It seems highly unlikely that they have 8x the "social biases unfairly favoring one group", which is what hackeruser and myself were actually discussing.

You also don't seem to be using this definition consistently. For example, if I take this comment of yours and substitute this definition in, it makes no sense:

"When you find achievement highly correlated with a cultural group, however, it is pretty likely to be a function of probabilistic causes of non-equal representation. The alternative hypothesis is that, for example, Jews are just innately better at science."

I'm beginning to think you are attempting a Motte and Bailey: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric...

Nice link on the "Motte and Bailey" article. I might link to this in my blog since I independently came up with the same argument.

In this case, I think one version of "privilege" is the idea that our society involves unipolar power relations where one group/ideology is privileged and enjoys special advantages. Individual people might in some ways align with this group/ideologies, and in other ways not (this is called "intersectionality"). But when they do align with this group/ideology they receive some of its benefits.

Sago's version is that privilege is just another word for any group having any advantage for any reason. I.e. "privilege" stripped of its underlying assumptions about societies power structure. It's unfortunate that Sago feel so strongly that they represent sociological research, when I think that almost all sociologists use the other definition.

Sago says that Asians might be privileged simply because their culture [0]. The orthodox view would be that Asians only receive White privilege, by their willingness to accept both the White lifestyle, working under a capitalist system, and adopt White views on Black/White race relations. To the extend that Asians also study harder, that would be an accident of history, and probably something an orthodox sociologist would try to downplay (e.g. by looking at Nth generation Asians).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9126189

Didn't I specifically list some of the things I was talking about, explicitly?

Privilege is used in various senses: both the narrow power one group has over another, propagated by their ability to pass it to others in the group and more generally (in the later camp I gave the example somewhere on here of privileges of high IQ). I was trying to be clear in my OP by listing what I meant, so I really don't see why the word is what you're hanging on. OR why you think my purpose was to define it. As I said, call it boondoggle, I was explicit what I meant by it.

By definition, Asian males have 8x the "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation". It seems highly unlikely that they have 8x the "social biases unfairly favoring one group", which is what hackeruser and myself were actually discussing.

Why would the factors have to be equal for the point to stand? If something isn't 100% the cause, then it isn't significant? If it turns out that 4x the effect is due to cultural privilege, of the kinds I listed, and 4x is due to demographic, bias, so what?

You did not specifically list the things you were talking about - you ended the list with "and many other factors". That's not explicit at all. Then you said Call it 'probabilistic causes of non-equal representation', at which point I thought you were finally being clear. My mistake.

If it turns out that 4x the effect is due to cultural privilege, of the kinds I listed, and 4x is due to demographic, bias, so what?

Scroll up - as I said, you completely lost the context of the conversation.

Hackuser was asking "if a system is truly meritocratic then why would 38% of a population[1] produce 90%[2] of the winners?" The implicit assumption here is that "money, power, privilege" (as defined by hackuser) and merit are distinct, otherwise the question makes little sense.

Now if only 4x the effect is due to cultural privilege, then the answer to his question is "yes" - a perfectly meritocratic system can have disproportionate representation of Asian males.

Right, I think I understand why we're shouting loudly over each other's shoulders.

If you scroll back, you'll see I was responding to a particular point that I quoted: the idea that, pointing out the over representation of Asian men would be considered racist and lead to (I assume) proponents of equality and social justice (or the "Pretty People" as you wrote) stopping intellectual discussion.

My goal was to provide evidence for my disagreement with that point. So I wanted to show that, embedded in this idea of 'merit' are a whole bunch of factors that absolutely are talked about by those Pretty People (or, perhaps not them, but the intellectuals from whom their derive their outlook), albeit in different terms. And, modulo that change in terminology, not only do they not stop intellectual discussion, they are absolutely central to that discussion.

So, given that was the point I responded to, and what I was trying to say (and, again, sorry if I was unclear). Can you see why being badgered about whether my definition of 'privilege' is overly broad seemed obtuse? Can you see why I felt that the definition of 'privilege', whether tautological, specific or not, was irrelevant?

I suspect, in contrast, you tried to read my comment arguing against the entire point you were making, and therefore, trying to support hackeruser's argument in some sense. And therefore you missed what I was attempting to get at. Fair enough. Again, I could have been clearer. And I should have thought more carefully about why you seemed to be missing my point. It seemed I'd hit some nerve just using the word 'privilege'.

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