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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Society is necessarily built on ideology (also known as principles). The idea that differences in outcome shouldn't be based on factors like race isn't exactly a radical one. Nor is it based on rhetoric or emotion--if we assume races are equal, differences in outcome tied to race must be the result of societal inefficiencies and failures.

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First of all, principle and ideology are very different things.

Secondly and more to the point, there is no reason to privilege race over any other of the millions of filters with which to slice up society to find inequalities of outcome. And even if there was, showing a correlation between one of those filters (race) and an inequality does in no way show injustice 'based on race' no matter how emphatic the assertion.

People with different hair colors, or heights, last names, pet types, and sibling orders on average don't have identical outcomes. And these differences in outcome by themselves are not unjust, are mere correlations, and therefore do not require fixing. Just read Harrison Bergeron by Vonnegut; it's not long.

Pretending that income, one of the most important things in American society, is merely one of the “millions of ways” to classify people, and that a persistent large disparity between racial groups in that metric is mere “correlation” is intellectually dishonest.

That is literally the definition of the word correlation. Claiming 'intellectual dishonesty' is a nice rhetorical move but doesnt actually show anything. The point remains.

A second point above which needs addressing is that it simply does not follow logically that differences in outcome must be a result of 'social inefficiencies and failures.' Culture and biology are some other obvious causative factors, but there are others. There is no reason to adhere to a reductionist view in which everything is caused by social pressures.

> People with different hair colors, or heights, last names, pet types, and sibling orders on average don't have identical outcomes.

There aren't massive systematic factors working to negatively affect specific slices of those population groupings. It's not a good comparison.

That's not to say that Harvard's approach is necessarily the best way to tackle this issue. But it's very difficult to argue that there isn't an issue at all.

>There aren't massive systematic factors working to negatively affect specific slices of those population groupings. It's not a good comparison.

Yes there are massive systemic factors working against people disadvantaged in those factors, and yes it is a good comparison. Look up the average height of CEOs sometime and then tell me height discrimination isn't a thing.

Ah, good catch. I missed the height one. However, I think it's not even close in terms of magnitude. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing something like that tall individuals earn, on average, something like $1000 more per year. That's pretty small compared to differences in the usual groups that people tend to focus on.

What differences?

Just saying that height, facial attractiveness/symmetry, weight etc all could (unquantifiably but obviously) easily outweigh race in terms of societal privilege and it's just absurd to cherry pick the issue of race as the determining factor of privilege rather than something even more basic such as height or facial symmetry.

And that's not even accounting for the fact that (according to many academics at schools that ironically factor race into admission) race doesn't even exist while height and facial symmetry inarguably do exist.

That is a ridiculous over-reading of the notion --- not well supported in mainstream science --- that "race doesn't exist". Scientists who make that claim aren't suggesting that it's therefore impossible for someone to be discriminated against based on race. That would be a self-evidently ludicrous proposition, given observable reality.

I never said it was impossible to be discriminated against based on race. Obviously it is. And obviously race exists. I was pointing out the absurdity of colleges factoring race into admissions while simultaneously employing professors who claim race doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist then how can you justify factoring it into admissions? You can't -- because it exists.

TLDR I agree w u dude.

EDIT: HN won't let me reply to ur reply so let me say -- no my argument is very coherent. If you want to say that "it's not settled if race exists or not" then I agree. And I agree with your assertion that discrimination based on perceived racial characteristics is also obviously possible. I also never said that ppl who argue that race is only a social construct also are arguing that racism doesn't even exist, I don't even know where you got that from tbqh dude. This comment thread is weird to me because you're disagreeing with a ton of things I didn't even say and that I disagree with as well. I don't know why you're so hell-bent on disagreeing with straw man arguments you project onto me because all your points are solid bro and I agree with them all, except for your nonsensical assertion that I don't agree with u. Uhhh trust me bro, yes I do lmao. :)

No, you don't. Your argument is incoherent. It's not settled that race "exists" or what it means. People arguing that race isn't meaningful, or meaningful only as a social construct, aren't saying that there's no such thing as racial discrimination, nor can their arguments be reduced to such a claim.

It is a terrible idea, if not radical.

Outcomes are what they are, all you can do is make the process fair and let people do what they would like to. There are infinite groupings you can make of people (race just 1 aspect) and no matter what you pick, you will see group A be better or worse on some metric than group B.

Wanting to equalize outcomes based on random aspects is a recipe for chaos. Even if we reset the world tomorrow and gave everyone exactly the same resources, the inequality would appear within minutes. Therefore there is no purpose beyond emotional feel-good to say that everyone should be the same at the end because it only leads to misery by all.

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