He knows what systemic means in this context. yummyfajitas's shtick is to try to dismiss or derail any discussion of social issues by repeatedly posing disingenuous semantic questions
Or maybe I'm trying to understand. Discussions like this involve a lot of jargon, non-standard definitions and hidden (or nonexistent?) moral assumptions.
I do this in all sorts of discussions when I don't understand the terms. "We want to increase engagement." "How do you define engagement?" "We want the estimator to be robust." "How do you define robust?"
You can call a request for clarification of terms "derailing" (or just flag me and call me racist, as many people do), but that makes it look like you simply want to avoid clarity. Asking for clear statements of claims and definitions of terms isn't derailing - it's simply good practice if your goal is understanding.
Asking what a person means when they use a word is not pointless - it's the only way to understand what they believe about the world. If you say "sound" and precisely define it as "auditory perceptions by a human", I then understand what you mean when you say "a tree falls in the forest and makes no sound". If you don't define "sound", then I might think you mean "a tree falling in the forest creates no vibrations in the air".
In contrast, using the word "vibrations" or "fred" instead of "sound" doesn't change the physical behavior of the air. That's why disputing definitions is pointless.
Come on, fajitas, enough. I mean, you're not really "trying to understand", now are you? Last time we had a similar discussion, I told you that you should read some books/articles. Clearly you haven't.
Your comments are no different from someone going to a graduate physics symposium and telling people, "Why are you using all this jargon? Tunneling? That means digging a tunnel through rock! And why are you using 'spin' and 'color' wrong? Please, I just want to understand!"
Well, just like Quantum Physics can't be explained in full in a HN comment, so can't history, economy, social work. So please. Either learn a little bit more about the subject, understand that the explanations you are given here are just small snippets of a much larger field of study (and reality), accept that you might not fully understand the terms, or stop making these juvenile comments over and over.
>Come on, fajitas, enough. I mean, you're not really "trying to understand", now are you? Last time we had a similar discussion, I told you that you should read some books/articles.
If you're trying to get people to believe things about society you're propagating an ideology, implicit or explicit. You should expect to get pushback on that all the time unless you're preaching to the converted.
Systemic is like privileged; there's a real, defensible academic sociological meaning. when used outside of that narrow context it's used as a stick to beat one's opponent with, to proclaim moral superiority and display tribal membership.
You should not expect people not already of your political persuasion to be persuaded by jargon you don't care to explain. It's like a Catholic theologian expecting to convert a Muslim one by argument.
"It all totally makes sense once you read this bookshelf."
Sure, there are sciences that don't convince people -- biology, climate science, and sociology to name a few -- and are considered by many to be ideologies. And, indeed, when I "preach" the realities of biology to the unconverted (and there are so many) I get exactly this kind of pushback, which I fully expect. This is what happens when reality disagrees with people's well-entrenched views of it, often created by being exposed to very narrow glimpses of it (reality, that is).
But while I often discuss the realities of our world with those who are intentionally ignorant, I find the kind of "pushback" you see here to be the most interesting and entertaining. The "unconverted" in this case, uses what he (and it is almost invariable a he, and a young he in most cases) considers science (or scientific thinking) to fight against other sciences, and chooses to ignore the fact that in the realms of intractable math, definitions are often open to debate, or at least discussion, and that does not make them any less valid.
For instance, did you know that even in biology (which yummyfajitas might or might not consider a science, I don't know), one of the most basic definitions -- at the very core of the science -- is not so clear-cut, and, in fact, stands in complete contradiction to other well-established facts concerning itself and even to its own definition? And yet, scientists involved in the field are able to look past such things, as they know physics-level rigorous definitions won't help their science in this case. I am talking, of course, about the term "species". While there is a sorta/kinda definition of a species, it is an undisputed fact that any organism belongs to the same species as its direct ancestor(s) -- hence an immediate contradiction. Yet, biologists understand this fuzzy notion of species and go about their business. The reason is that in the intractable sciences (biology, sociology, and even climate), it is often useful to describe a present state, even if the process that originated it is not fully understood. Thus is the nature of intractability.
And, after all, we're not debating ideas here -- we're debating facts. And when facts are debated, I tend to believe those who have actually studied them rather than those who haven't and just wish they weren't true.
A little learning is a dangerous thing;
drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
and drinking largely sobers us again.
So, if fajitas chooses not to drink deep, he should at least stop arguing with those who do.
Biologists don't make claims like "because X is a species, P is true of X" or "because Z is not a species, P is false of Z". The term "species" is not involved in any predictions.
I'm also not sure what facts you feel we are debating, or why you feel I "pushed back". I don't even know which facts lsiebert is attempting to assert, which is why I asked.
And the analogy you make to physics or other technical topics is a bit silly. Consider alternate technical topics which have critics - consider HFT. Go read kasey_junk or tptacek's comments on the topic - they don't don't appeal to unstated authorities, refuse to define their terms and attack anyone who asks questions. Strangely, they tend to be far more precise than the critics.
Fajitas, I'm sorry but you're behaving just like an evolution denialist. You ask something, you get an answer, you want more details (obviously, because there's a limit to what can be said here), you get referred to studies and books, which you don't read, and it's back to square one.
You call this "appeal to authority", but it's nothing than an appeal to science. I am really sorry about your frustration -- you can go on believing what you like, but know that your beliefs are in opposition to thousands and thousands of studies conducted in the past 40 years or so in many countries. Nerd discrimination makes sense to you? Great, go study it in earnest. You know what, if you publish a serious paper citing, say 20 of the top 200 papers done on racial and sexual discrimination, comparing them to anti-nerd sentiments, I will be an enthusiastic supporter of your findings. In fact, I'll be especially interested in the section on nerd disenfranchisement.
But the thing is, that some people spend their careers studying these things. They are called experts, but if you don't like the "appeal to authority" just look at their findings! But of course, you won't, because you're one of those people who keep saying "we haven't found the missing links" over and over, even though the fossil record is right in front of them.
Now HFT is a much, much, much simpler topic than racial marginalization in the United States. And trust me, the evidence on the nature of racism and sexism is a lot more convincing than tptacek opinions on HFT. Like an evolution denier, you just insist on not looking at the facts, going over your mantras again and again.
EDIT: Oh, and I just remembered how when I succumbed to your pleas for education and gave you the actual definition of sexism -- a new word invented by feminists in the 60s -- you still insisted that the people who invented the term use it wrong!
EDIT2: BTW, you and the writer of that infamous comment about nerd privilege both seem to think that what we're discussing is a lot less objective, and more subjective than it actually is. For example, you confuse misogyny (which is subjective and carries judgement) with sexism (which is simply an objective description of the state of affairs). Scott Aaronson confuses suffering (which is subjective) with disenfranchisement which is objective. Because you resent what you perceive as judgment (which may, indeed, be there) you try as hard as you can to misunderstand what is being said, which is no more than fact.
You call it an appeal to science, but science isn't about definitions. It's about predictions and matching them to evidence.
Unfortunately, we never get that far in this discussion because you want to argue about what words to use (and now throw ad hominems at me) rather than the real world.
And trust me, the evidence...
Not citing evidence and merely disputing definitions does not inspire trust.
Cite evidence? We're not talking about anything contentious, but a consistent body of research that has been accumulating for decades! Type "racial discrimination US" or "racial marginalization US" into Google Scholar and you'll get tens of thousands of papers with more evidence than you can read in a year. If you only dedicate a single weekend of your life into researching this, you'll see why what you said is exactly like that woman who told Richard Dawkins on TV, "but where are the fossils?" over and over, while he kept saying "but they're right there in the museum, why won't you go see them?", and she kept saying, "you don't have the fossils". Well, there's tons and tons and tons of evidence, right there on Google Scholar. And I throw ad hominems because you keep saying "I just want to understand", when clearly you have no desire to do that.
> Could you clearly state what positive claims you think I'm "denying"?
That racism in the US is the primary cause of segregation and marginalization of black people, and that that racism is systemic, i.e. cultural as well as bureaucratic (and so not directly related to personal xenophobia).
Let me get this straight. Elsewhere in this thread I discuss consumption choices based on tribalist feelings, including in housing, being a major contributor to segregation (using the word the way you and dalke use it at this point).
Further, I compare it to tribally informed consumption choices of extremely non-xenophobic people, such as my girlfriend's consumption of African American comedy.
Then somehow you conclude that I don't think racism/tribalism is the primary cause of segregation/separation? Or that I don't think it's cultural rather than bureaucratic, and not directly related to personal xenophobia?
Um, ok. Clearly I'm just a big racist nerd and you have excellent reading comprehension skills. And you are right that I definitely did bring up the topic of causes of marginalization in the auras and penumbras of my comments.
Racism is not tribalism. Tribalism is in-group loyalty. Racism is a property of a society where some races are largely absent from positions of power. If black people like Bugs Bunny and white people like Daffy Duck, that's not racism. If blacks are underrepresented in tech, politics and CEO positions -- that's racism. If blacks and whites live in different neighborhoods then that's not racism. If blacks live in neighborhoods where college attendance and average income are lower -- that's racism. Once you understand that power is the central component in what constitutes racism and sexism, we can move this discussion forward.
You see, if you asked something like, "well, teenaged nerds are in fewer romantic relationships, which are a source of social status and hence power, isn't that like racism", then at least you'll be in the ballpark. But as long as power is missing from your discussion of what you think racism (or sexism) is, then you're missing the issue altogether.
By the definition you espoused in the other thread (which is different from the dictionary and common usage), the claim that "racism in the US is the primary cause of segregation" is a near tautology. I have literally no idea why you would believe I deny a tautology, particularly given that I haven't even discussed it in this thread.
Why do you deny my claim that water is wet?
Seriously dude - get a grip. Read the post before dropping a gigantic wall of text on an unrelated tangent. And please read an article by uncited experts showing that disputing definitions is pointless.
First, I'm not debating definitions. But when a topic is discussed, like racism, if your definition is different from that intended in the article, then whatever you say is off-point.
Second, my definition of racism might be different from common usage, but so is that of spin or color in QM (as is that for energy), and I'm not going to start a debate on the use of the word color, when discussing a QM paper. What matters here isn't the common usage, but usage by the people quoted in the article. They use the definition(s) common in academic circles, or among those who study or care about the issue. Reading the introduction for the Wikipedia article on racism should suffice to at least know what kinds of definitions are commonly used in academia. And, in fact, the dictionary definition is much closer to the usage in academia than to your tribalism.
And that segregation in the US is a result of racism is, indeed, a near tautology, yet you were saying it's a result of tribalism, which is simply factually wrong.
As to Less Wrong, that blog and the people behind it are the subjects of a recent, brilliant Harper's article which I'll be happy to email you, if you want.
