It's important to notice that, contrary to Murray's self-presentation of being only concerned with facts and not causality, this _is_ implicitly making causal claims: it's just that it's specifically making claims about the "crime → imprisonment" and "intelligence → success" links in the [causal graph](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/hzuSDMx7pd2uxFc5w/causal-diagrams-and-causal-models), while remaining silent about the equations underlying the "genes → intelligence ← environment" and "genes → intelligence ← environment" v-structures. But this is a technicality. (If someone with the requisite power and influence were trying to found a discipline of Actual Social Science in our world, one of the obvious first steps would be to hire [Judea Pearl](http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/BOOK-2K/) as a technical reviewer for Murray.) Murray's point is just that even if the trait differences were solely caused by environmental factors like poverty or the cultural legacy of slavery, the differences would still be real and still show up in statistics produced by procedurally fair and non-racist institutions; the strawman of "And the differences are 100% genetic" is expressly not implied. (Not that "And this looks likely to be somewhere between 40–80% genetic" would be more than 40–80% less unpalatable.)
-The problem is that this causality-blindness—or not-quite-coherently _attempted_ causality-blindness—is profoundly unsatisfying. The [difference between a causal model and a statistical model](https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/45/6/1895/2999350) is _about_ how the system would respond to interventions; [this isn't something you can dodge](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/) if you care about policy and possibilities, rather than just summarizing static facts about a static world. Compiling the stats and arguing that the stats aren't just lies is an important service, and educational to those who aren't already familiar with the stats, but no sophisticated advocate of structural-racism theories is going to have their worldview substantially altered by this book: it's very easy to concede that the trait differences Murray documents are real (not simply made up by lying teacher and cops), but that they would vanish in a sufficiently anti-racist Society, and Murray is _explicilty_ (and reasonably, given how difficult it is) declaring that question out-of-scope. Overall, my impression of _Facing Reality_ is favorable but restrained: I keep finding myself agreeing with Murray "as far as it goes", but thinking that it just doesn't go as far as Murray seems to suggest.
+The problem is that this causality-blindness—or not-quite-coherently _attempted_ causality-blindness—is profoundly unsatisfying. The [difference between a causal model and a statistical model](https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/45/6/1895/2999350) is _about_ how the system would respond to interventions; [this isn't something you can dodge](/2021/Feb/you-are-right-and-i-was-wrong-reply-to-tailcalled-on-causality/) if you care about policy and possibilities, rather than just summarizing static facts about a static world. Compiling the stats and arguing that the stats aren't just lies is an important service, and educational to those who aren't already familiar with the stats, but no sophisticated advocate of structural-racism theories is going to have their worldview substantially altered by this book: it's very easy to concede that the trait differences Murray documents are real (not simply made up by lying teachers and cops), but that they would vanish in a sufficiently anti-racist Society, and Murray is _explicitly_ (and perhaps reasonably, given how difficult it is) declaring that question out-of-scope. Overall, my impression of _Facing Reality_ is favorable but restrained: I keep finding myself agreeing with Murray "as far as it goes", but thinking that it just doesn't go as far as Murray seems to suggest.
After this overview, let me summarize the content of this pretty-short-for-a-book in the form of a pretty-long-for-a-blog-post. After introducing our topic, Chapter 2 covers the stats on American demographics. At present, the country is about 60% white, 18% Latino, 13% black, and 6% Asian, but the, um, black-and-white framing of American racial discourse makes more sense in this historical context that there were a lot fewer Latinos and Asians before a [1965 immigration reform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Act_of_1965): in 1960, the figures were 87% white, 11% black. Big cities have become much more multiracial, whereas smaller cities and towns remain either monoracially white or biracial (the two races being white/black in the South, or white/Latino in the southwest and southern California).
* And doesn't EY have this whole thing about how you can't just wish away coordination problems?! (Although, this also makes it harder to escape the self-ID Schelling point)
* Schild's ladder—noun classes in other languages are already pretty arbitrary; if the proposal is to make names like that
* TODO: buff my "circular definition satisfies no one" argument to not be vulnerable to the anti-Liskov-substitution property of natural language definitions
+* Amazing World of Gumball, "The Nest", "Who says this pregnant turtle is a her?" and everyone gives him a look. Yudkowsky isn't really claiming not to get the joke?! The show is rated TV-Y7!!! https://rating-system.fandom.com/wiki/TV-Y7 EY is dumber than a 7-year-old
* singular
>
> —"Fifteen Minutes" by Mike Kroll
-A big part of my reasoning for [not staying on HRT](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/)
+A big part of my reasoning for [not staying on HRT](/2017/Sep/hormones-day-156-developments-doubts-and-pulling-the-plug-or-putting-the-cis-in-decision/) was generic concern about generic long-term health outcomes.
+
+
+The human male body is not _designed_
+
+
+https://www.nickbostrom.com/evolution.pdf
+
+
"Impact Protection Potential of Mammalian Hair: Testing the Pugilism Hypothesis for the Evolution of Human Facial Hair"
https://academic.oup.com/iob/article/2/1/obaa005/5799080
+
+autoponyphilia: http://pone.tf/
Queue—
_ Student Dysphoria, and a Previous Life's War
-_ Link: "Blood Is Thicker Than Water"
2021 significant posts—
_ Trans Kids on the Margin, and Harms From Misleading Training Data
_ Blanchard's Dangerous Idea and the Plight of the Lucid Crossdreamer
_ Challenges to Yudkowsky's Pronoun Reform Proposal
_ A Hill of Validity in Defense of Meaning
+_ Joint Book Review: Kathleen Stock's Material Girls and Kathryn Paige Harden's The Genetic Lottery
Minor queue—
_ FaceApp tips
_ "Your Politics Are Interesting" as Worst Compliment
_ I Wish You Well
_ Gaydar Jamming (L.B. and R.H.)
-_ Book Review: Kathleen Stock's Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism (May)
-_ Book Review: Kathryn Paige Harden's The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (September)
+
Filler links—
_ Link: Halifax Pride: https://www.halifaxpride.com/news/2021/5/28/halifax-public-library-response
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / commitdiff