[rjf72]

The tale of The Emperor's New Clothes [1] would be appropriate.

In society in general we've decided to take as an assumption that everybody is identically capable in everything and thus that any and all differences must then be attributable to some form of discrimination, bias, or prejudice. And this is something that is pleasant to believe in large part because not believing it has led to dystopic outcomes in the past, including but not limited to government driven eugenics. So it's something that we want to believe. And also stating you do not believe it is a great way to have people judge you for some secret ist of some sort or another.

At the same time this view is contradicted by reality. In times past this reality would have been mostly just empirical, but in modern times we also have genetic and other factors strongly contradicting any notion of inherent equality. So what to do? In my opinion the most important thing here is to ensure as much equality of opportunity as reasonably possible. And this is an effort that should never relent. However, at the same time, it also has to be acknowledged that the lack of equality of result does not inherently mean there's a problem. Ultimately it's the typical problem. Trying to create utopia is often a great path to dystopia. Enforced equality of result for all is rather a key point in Brave New World.

Of course this does not mean that discrimination does not exist. But the standard for assumption of such needs to start growing beyond wild induction from dubious toy experiments, or from works that start with absolute equality as an assumption.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes

[mcguire]

"In society in general we've decided to take as an assumption that everybody is identically capable in everything and thus that any and all differences must then be attributable to some form of discrimination, bias, or prejudice."

This is false, as you partially admit later. The default assumption in society is that many groups are intellectually, morally, emotionally, and physically inferior. This assumption has been made in our society for hundreds of years. And it has led to many poor outcomes---not for the ones benefitting from the assumption, though.

The countervailing hypothesis, that everyone is "identically capable" until clearly demonstrated otherwise, is very recent and hardly universally accepted. And the idea that this hypothesis is "contradicted by reality" is also not clearly true, since the data is not unambiguous.

In other words, if you find that the fundamental research on which your scientific field is based was falsified, you don't start to clean up the mess by assuming the falsified results are true.

[rjf72]

It's paradoxical as I do agree with you that this is a rather new ideology and is not widely accepted. Nonetheless, the view has a disproportionate hold on power. You're unlikely to face any consequence for suggesting outright false things that fit the ideology, but you can face extremely severe consequences for stating things, even well supported, that run against the ideals of the ideology.

However, I do not agree that the science is ambiguous here and I am very open to anything to the contrary. I can offer specific studies, but I'm fairly sure you'd agree that the more we reveal through genetic research, the greater a role it seems to play in practically everything. Yet there is the issue that many critical genetic factors are unevenly distributed and have very high rates of heritability. What gives reason to believe that it might be that people are "identically capable" in spite of this?

One final point I'd add is that in society power was traditionally not driven by assumption of power, but by power itself. Whichever group was able to prove itself smarter, more powerful, etc than another group had a tendency of imposing its will on the 'weaker' group. Power was rarely given, but often taken. This trend only came to a rapid freeze since the birth of nuclear weapons which have rather revolutionized the notion of power. In a world without nuclear weapons we would not have this unsteady "balance" of power between Europe, China, Mideast, US, and each of their respective allies.

[geofft]

> In my opinion the most important thing here is to ensure as much equality of opportunity as reasonably possible. And this is an effort that should never relent.

Cool, so you agree that a scientist who attacks his colleagues imperils equality of opportunity, then?

[rjf72]

Well intentioned ideologies do not inherently produce a non-negative outcome. Negative outcomes are very much a possibility, particularly when views are flawed. And so at some point any ideology that is not extremely well supported by data should be challenged, even if that ideology is the nicest most well intentioned one in the world. Google's recent pay study is one little microcosm that demonstrates this. Under fire for the widely perceived belief that females are underpaid for doing the same work as males, Google engaged in substantial data crunching and analysis to correct any inequities. It turns out they were underpaying their male employees.

Why might this be? We already answered this. There is a widely held belief that females are underpaid for doing the same work as males. This may be true in some instances, but it's certainly nothing like a universal truth. But you can see even on these forums that many Google employees do treat it as something approaching a universal truth, many even refusing to belief it was false following Google's analyses. And so when a manager has discretionary funds to distribute, whom is he going to prefer? People, generally, want to do the right thing. And so in the pursuit of equality, you end up creating inequality. These sort of paradoxical outcomes are not uncommon.

Declaring that a view is not well supported by evidence, even when that view is nice, is not 'attacking'.

[geofft]

I don't think you responded to anything I said. From the article: "He also showed cartoons deriding women campaigning for equality in science"

Doesn't that impair equality of opportunity?

[rjf72]

I was stating that stating 'good things' are wrong, when there is reason to believe they are, is not then "attacking" those things. As for the cartoon, when the media references something without showing it it's often wise to check it out for yourself. You'll find their description is often horribly biased. Here [1] are his slides, in full.

The cartoon "deriding women campaigning for equality in science" is 5th from the bottom. It shows women at a 'major/career fair' choosing to join gender studies instead of STEM fields. It then shows those same individuals later complaining about a lack of women in STEM. I would not consider this in any way whatsoever impairing equality of opportunity. Far from it, it demonstrates an extremely important point about utilizing the opportunities that you have.

The only other cartoon he had was of one woman telling another who was bringing in a volcano to a science fair that "science is male dominated! they'll never accept you, you'll be harassed!" The slide then asks whether the purpose of this rhetoric is to get more women into STEM or to try to indoctrinate individuals into an ideology.

[1] - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1c_NyUhOZ8erdqU2AGZJZtNfFeA9...

[geofft]

BTW, this is factually incorrect:

> Under fire for the widely perceived belief that females are underpaid for doing the same work as males, Google engaged in substantial data crunching and analysis to correct any inequities. It turns out they were underpaying their male employees.

I encourage you to reread the Google post.