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by YeGoblynQueenne 1826 days ago
The phrase "the bias is correct" sounds like an oxymoron. Could you explain what you mean by it?

Also, who is (oft-)suppressing the "elephant in the room"?

1 comments

I have a feeling you might already have a good hunch about the answers to your questions, but I’ll bite:

If you see in a data set that Danes are tall, and that Kenyans are fast, and that Ashkenazi’s are smart, then it is a valid hypothesis that should not be thrown out outright, that the reason that’s the case is due to actual differences inherent to the population groups and not any other confounding factors.

As for your second question: mostly progressives, leftists and liberals.

Please don't bite unless you're a fish. I'm certainly not trying to reel you in. Rather the reason I'm asking is that the expression you used is vague and imprecise and I don't know what exactly you mean by it.

As you suspect, I can guess what you might mean, but if we start double-guessing each other, we're just injecting noise in the conversation and a few comments from now we end up completely confused about what each other is trying to say. So much better to establish some common language before we waste time talking past each other. Doesn't that make sense?

Keeping that in mind, I am still not happy I understand what you mean with the following:

>> If you see in a data set that Danes are tall, and that Kenyans are fast, and that Ashkenazi’s are smart, then it is a valid hypothesis that should not be thrown out outright, that the reason that’s the case is due to actual differences inherent to the population groups and not any other confounding factors.

The reason for my continued uncertainty is that you do not say, in the above example, what is the "bias" and how it is "correct". You've identified a hypothesis that you can make about the data (rather than a hypothesis derived from the data, i.e. some kind of model that explains the data). But a hypothesis is not bias. A hypothesis can be correct or incorrect, and bias may play a part in that, or not. But a hypothesis is a hypothesis and bias is bias. So what is "bias", the way you mean it?

>> As for your second question: mostly progressives, leftists and liberals.

Ugh. I shouldn't have asked. I'm going to take a wild guess that you're from the USA and that you have some kind of stake at the culture war you folks got brewing over there. I'm not from over there and I want no part in that. So forget I asked. And good luck getting all that sorted out between you.