[andrewcooke]

the difference here is on the meaning of "natural". you're taking it to mean something like "what we have" and then your argument makes sense: we see what we have because of some process that exists (is natural).

but fowler is using "natural" in a sense more like "unbiased by historical accident" or "what we would get if a bunch of people were suddenly created out of nothing and formed a society from zero".

so there's nothing new here. grumpy, indignant old men (self aware or not) believe the status quo (which only incidentally favours them) to be natural. people like fowler do not.

[edit: i've removed fowler's superlatives to be less unpleasant (sorry - in my defense i have been configuring maven all day...); the grumpy old man characterisation is from the parent post]

[lsd5you]

Is it really 'grumpy' vs 'smart' and 'inquisitive'. You're rather close to making a value judgement here, to say the least.

He is clearly starting from a conclusion and looking for the evidence and/or complicated logic to satisfy his own conclusion. In discussions of inequalities you will always find evidence to support the 'but it should be equal stance', because

a) Egalitarian assumptions invalidate otherwise valid explanations (which as sherlock holmes/bayes have it means all other explanations are more likely)

b) The world is a big complicated place, with lots of unknowns and ambiguities

c) Positive feedback may have reenforced an inequality, exaggerating it and thus making it hard to explain the magnitude using only simple explanations.

In this argument, he is only smart in the sense that he is taking a socially acceptable/convenient position.

[DanielBMarkham]

Great comment. Thanks.

Yes, you are correct. I made an edit to that effect.

If I observe something, it is occurring, correct? Or I could not have observed it.

The question becomes why is it occurring? We can observe "simple" things like trees and rocks and disagree on the reasons happen the way they do.

I'm not trying to argue from ignorance here. Certainly you could ask each and every person and draw some general conclusions. But that kind of approach is very fluffy and you could spin the results to say just about anything you wanted. If you have a master's degree in computer science and decided to be stay-at-home dad, is that because the system is flawed? Perhaps you just prefer being with your kids? Most people don't make those kinds of decisions for any one reason. It's complex.

Like I said, I love diversity. I think my biggest problem is this continuing thing we do where we define diversity as external characteristics. It's the internet age. I could care less what your sexual organs are or skin color is.

EDIT: Just to be sure I am advancing the discussion, the moral question is this: Assume I run a company with 100 employees. Only 20 of them are a member of a sub-group that is 30% in the larger population. Is it the moral thing for me to do to hire another 10 people of this subgroup, even if it means not hiring people of another group that might be better qualified just so the ratios match up?

If the answer to that question is "yes", then I have two follow-up questions. One, how many kinds of subgroups do I need to track? One-armed people? People who have beards? Who gets to decide what subgroups are special or not? Two, is it moral for a voter to make somebody do something because they personally find that it has a moral outcome? If I wanted people to be nicer in the world, could I pass a law that required all of them to give 10% to charity? Does something I feel morally outraged about automatically mean I should go mucking around with somebody else's freedom? If so, where's the stopping point?

As for Jim Crow laws, please note that I am not saying that society shouldn't evolve. I'd argue that some degree of legislating morality is necessary for society to move along -- even though I find it most distasteful. But there should be time limits on these things. That's why I bring up the internet. I really don't need grandpa's generation telling me how I should think. This is something each generation needs to settle for itself.

[MartinCron]

It's the internet age. I could care less what your sexual organs are or skin color is.

Even if you don't care about those things, it feels shallow and dangerous to pretend to live in a world where nobody cares about those things.