[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

I think that this article highlights the left's version of climate change deniers. The climate change deniers on the right perceive that if climate change were true it would require significant government intervention in the economy (carbon tax, cap and trade, subsidies for clean energy, etc). Because that outcome is something they do not want, they try to deny the truth of climate change.

On the left, because they perceive these stereotype validating social studies as supporting racists, deny that stereotypes have any truth in them often against overwhelming evidence.

One side is not more rational than the other. For both, truth has become a casualty to goals. This is a very bad place to be in for the following reasons:

1) If instead of truth standing on its own, you are willing to suppress it to support an agenda (even if it is good), you remove your ability to morally object when someone with a different agenda suppresses a truth you would rather not see suppressed. You are in essence guilty of doing the same thing as the church did to Galileo.

2) It is ultimately counterproductive to your goal. Your suppression of the truth will be used against you by your opponents to good effect. People hate being treated like children with facts suppressed to support an agenda. Once, people realize what is going on, they have a natural urge to support the opposite of the agenda. Think about how atheists use the history of the church suppressing Galileo to persuade people of the danger of religion.

So, if the evidence supports that many stereotypes are generally true, let us accept that what the evidence says. However, that does not mean that we are automatically racists, sexists, etc. As the article says "In situations where one has abundant, vividly clear information about an individual, the stereotype becomes completely irrelevant". By getting to know people as individuals and not just as exemplars of a group can we truly overcome injustice. In addition, by acknowledging the truth in stereotypes we can then work to remedy underlying causes for some of the negative stereotypes.

[TeMPOraL]

I agree with your comment, but I have to pick on one thing in the interest of accuracy.

> guilty of doing the same thing as the church did to Galileo

The Church didn't oppress Galileo because of his work in astronomy. He got that for being an ass to the Pope (and a part of a political problem). Also, Galileo was only somewhat right, but for the wrong reasons (i.e. data supporting his statements wasn't there for many years).

http://lesswrong.com/lw/lq6/the_galileo_affair_who_was_on_th...

[carsongross]

Very few people have lost their job for being skeptical of anthropogenic climate change.

"Racist" has been a career-ender and guarantee of social ostracism since the 1980s, at least. It is perhaps the most powerful meme that has ever been invented.

[sevenless]

More accurately, complaining about left-wing political correctness has won the Right votes for decades, while even Hillary Clinton has done the odd bit of racist dog-whistling.

> It is perhaps the most powerful meme that has ever been invented.

"Heretic", "heathen", "infidel", "unpatriotic", "traitor", "communist", "un-American"...

Religious and nationalist political correctness is so pervasive it's hard to even recognize it as a form of PC.

[carsongross]

Has anyone been fired in the last 50 years for any of those epithets?

[sevenless]

Have you seen any prominent politicians propose substantial cuts to the military budget lately? Or evaluate Christian beliefs negatively, or say the USA is anything other than the greatest nation in the world?

There's a bit more at risk than being fired, too. How about being willing to criticize Islam in public?

[carsongross]

There are plenty of critics of military spending on both the left and right in the U.S. and it isn't a career ender for a normal human to advocate it. Nor is it a career ender to say you are a marxist or to criticize America. If you talk about The Bell Curve, however...

Islamists being willing to kill for their religion is its own thing, and doesn't (or, at least, didn't) have much to do with the western intellectual environment.

[js8]

I am leftist and I agree with the last paragraph, and I think many leftists would. And that's the point - the stereotypes are useless in policy and decision making, and studying them is unscientific. They are factoids perhaps good for cocktail parties.

I don't think that existence of correct stereotypes poses a great risk for ideology of the left, unlike global warming, which actually is a risk for completely free market ideology, because there is no way free markets can deal with externalities. It's only if you accept naturalistic fallacy (that stereotyping is natural, therefore ethical) you get these problems.

I think left has ideological problem (and thus bias), but somewhere else. Left cannot very well deal with people who perceive risk differently. Which is actually kinda connected to the existence of stereotypes.

[mr_overalls]

Let's say that you're forecasting budget requirements for a police department in a city whose demographics are changing.

Research indicates that in the United States, the correlation between violent crime rates and percentages of US state populations that are Black and Hispanic is 0.81. Controlling for poverty, education, and unemployment only reduces this to 0.78. [1]

Wouldn't this unusually high correlation be useful in making your budgeting decision?

[1] http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofcrime2005.html

[js8]

No. Forecast based on the crime rate trend would be more precise than using race as a proxy.