> I know that standard practice here is to tell the story of Clever Hans and then say That Is Why We Do Double-Blind Studies.
Yes, this is the answer to this entire article, and his attempt to dismiss this for some reason is strange to me.
Yes, this is the answer to this entire article, and his attempt to dismiss this for some reason is strange to me.
I often wondered why this is, because he seems like a very smart guy with interesting ideas sometimes, so it seemed kind of weird and conflicting.
Then I learned he's trying to hide his beliefs about scientific racism and political views (1) while often writing in the tone of "pained centrist just wanting to understand things scientifically" and it made much more sense as (in the worst case) an old school propaganda technique of FUD in science and rigorous science to make the HBD go down better and (more charitably) as Mr. Siskind just being another bright-but-human person who when writing on things he has actual expertise on can be very well worth reading, but simply shouldn't be trusted on anything aside from this. Rationalwiki has a decent writeup on him (2)
1: https://web.archive.org/web/20210217195335/https://twitter.c...
I thought it was a fascinating write up about how if you assume ESP doesn't exist then parapsychology research has something important to say about the replication crisis in social sciences.
Going into how double blind solves all this means skipping the interesting bit: that parapsychology can be viewed as a control group for the scientific method.
It was the Sandifer article "The Beigeness" that cleared it up for me: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to...
But what first got my attention (well, second, since the first thing was that Sandifer's article is as long and rambling as Alexander's is--both of them could have made what valid points they had with far fewer words) was this statement, a little earlier, about Scott Aaronson (referring to the comment in the blog post of Aaronson's that Alexander's article links to):
> Aaronson was declaring that, as a shy and nerdy man, he was a member of "one of society's least privileged classes" in response to someone saying they were a rape victim.
The reason this got my attention was that I had previously read the Aaronson post in question, and the comments, and I didn't remember any such thing. So I read through the post and comments again. The commenter that Aaronson was responding to when he talked about his personal history (the comment of his that Alexander quoted) did say she was a rape victim in that comment thread--but she said it after the quoted comment from Aaronson. Aaronson's quoted comment was in response to an earlier comment of hers, which did not say anything about her having been raped.
So Sandifer lied in her article about a fact that was key to her argument. I understand this is just one example, but there isn't room here for a multi-thousand-word critique and I don't have time to write one anyway. But the example I have given is not the only questionable thing I saw.
Amy did imply she was a victim of sexual assault previously, just not rape. So at the very least it was an error of degree. And regardless, Aaronson, had no reason to think he wasn't talking to a rape victim. The odds were something he surely knew. So I think Sandifer's correct that "this was neither the time nor the place to express them". And that's coming from a "shy and nerdy" guy.
Given that you're very up in arms about "questionable rhetorical tricks and shoddy reasoning", you'll see why I would expect you to do better than turning a reasonable and non-fatal error into a supposed lie about a key fact. But it is about what I'd expect from somebody working hard to defend a cryptofascist.
Obviously we are not going to find any common ground here if that's your opinion of Scott Alexander.
But if you can't talk to me or take responsibility for your own words because I have a negative opinion of one of your faves, that's a choice you're making.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genetic_variation
but more this variation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism.
Even if it was correct, I think if there are no nefarious consequences being pushed for, I think people who want to argue HBD should rise to the challenge of explaining in plain english what they mean and what consequences they would draw from their assumption being correct, instead of hiding behind obfuscation. While I am not necessarily 100% aligned with groups like AntiFa chapters, BLM etc., at least they are honest about what they think and want to achieve.
For hundreds of years people have energetically misused science to justify both their racist feelings and systemic racism. And other people have showed up to disingenuously defend that in many ways, including your evasive, just-asking-questions routine.
There is no reason to think that activity has stopped. And indeed, the shift in the last 50 years to make overt racism moderately less socially acceptable suggests that we might see an increase in the amount of covert racism. So I feel no obligation to take the latest iteration any more seriously than I would the 1850s version. It's the same deal with perpetual motion machines or multi-level marketing schemes or religious door-knockers: the next one to come along could finally be the one that isn't horseshit. But that's not the way to bet.
If you'd like to make the argument that your personal favorite scientific racism is better science than the scientific racism favored by other racists, feel free to take a swing at it. But just looking over your comment history, I'm not going to give it a lot of weight.
Is it possible that one day somebody will come along with a real perpetual motion machine and I'll miss out for a while? Sure. But there are other people who enjoy evaluating that stuff enough that I'll eventually hear about it. And it's the same deal here. I don't get my theology from evangelical Christians, and I don't get my bioanthropology from evangelical racists.