[HN Gopher] Science magazine touts the existence of strong and u...
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Science magazine touts the existence of strong and ubiquitous
"implicit bias"
Author : peanutcrisis
Score : 40 points
Date : 2023-03-05 17:53 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (whyevolutionistrue.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (whyevolutionistrue.com)
| space_fountain wrote:
| I'm really not impressed by hacker new's scholarship on this.
| Here's a paragraph from one of the papers cited here. Basically
| one of the key arguments in this paper is that basis might be
| justified. Ignoring for a second that biase in real humans is
| much strong than differences between races, it also is beside the
| point. Race isn't something people can control. If people at
| large are classifying people based on it that will legitimately
| act to keep the situation locked in place. If I think everyone
| with red hair is a criminal and act like it people with red hair
| will have pretty bad lives and a lot more of them will end up
| turning to crime
|
| > Cultural knowledge and accuracy as sources of implicit
| associations.This analysis has akinship to that of one of the
| earliest critiques of the IAT (Arkes & Tetlock, 2004). They
| argued that,rather than reflecting prejudice, the race IAT might
| reflect knowledge of cultural stereotypes. Our argument, however,
| goes further. The associations tapped by the IAT may reflect not
| just cultural stereotypes, but implicit cognitive registration of
| regularities and realities of the social environment.Consistent
| with this analysis, IAT response times were faster when stimuli
| corresponded to ecologically valid base rates (Bluemke & Fiedler,
| 2009). Even evaluations of groups may come from knowledge of
| those groups' social conditions (Payne et al., 2017). For
| example, groups disproportionately living in unpleasant
| conditions (such as poverty, crime, rundown housing) may be
| associated with "unpleasant" more than other groups
| space_fountain wrote:
| This article also says something about IAT test being strongly
| correlated with other things, so their individual contribution
| to racist outcomes is small as evidence against IAT tests which
| the original article turned around and tried to say means
| implicit basis isn't real or that IAT tests are bad, but it
| literally doesn't, just that you could measure implicit bias in
| other ways
| seneca wrote:
| Modern day Lysenkoism. Compromising science for ideology, any
| ideology, is one of the more destructive things a society can do
| to itself. Not only does it halt progress, it destroys the
| credibility of the scientific community.
| akomtu wrote:
| Is it like dark matter in cosmology? Except that here,
| "scientists" observe a social galaxy and note that it's round.
| According to their beliefs, the galaxy must be rectangular, so
| they had to postulate an invisible ubiquitous force that makes
| the galaxy round. They called this dark force many names:
| inequity, implicit bias, structural racism.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I understand the analogy you're trying to make, but that
| particular one doesn't track. Dark matter is required by
| quantum mechanics. Sean Carroll had a great explanation of this
| in his Biggest Ideas in the Universe video series. The models
| of particle creation in the early universe require there to be
| _something_ with the characteristics of a class of particles
| holding the label "dark matter."
|
| "Structural racism," "inequity," and "implicit bias" all mean
| very different things.
|
| Structural racism is where a society is deliberately
| constructed to be racist, as under Apartheid in South Africa.
| (It is otherwise nonsensically applied to current Western
| governments that employ capitalism as an economic system.)
|
| Inequity is the state of receiving disparate treatment. It can
| be caused by structural racism, by personal racism, or by
| empirical discrimination (person A is denied a mortgage because
| their income indicates they likely cannot afford to pay the
| loan back, whereas person B is granted the mortgage because
| their income indicates they likely can).
|
| Implicit bias is an actual psychological phenomenon where
| quirks in the way humans think affect their judgement. The
| classical example is to take two parallel line segments of
| equal length where the ends are lined up. On one segment draw
| arrowheads pointing outward, on the other, arrowheads pointing
| inward. When asked, humans will visually judge the line segment
| with arrowheads pointing inward as being longer than the one
| with arrowheads pointing outward [1]. Convincing yourself the
| line segments are of equal length requires measurement. That
| this occurs is true. That it is the great bugaboo of our times
| and the cause of inequity has a far more tenuous connection to
| reality.
|
| That these phrases are used as proxies for "bad" is the real
| problem. We can agree that structural racism is evil. Inequity
| occurs for the full spectrum of reasons, some immoral, some
| moral, some merely neutral and reasonable. Implicit bias simply
| _is_. The hard part is separating out acculturated bias (like
| racism) from implicit bias. One evaporates in the face
| differing environments. For example, children that grow up in
| integrated schools and integrated neighborhoods are far less
| likely to suffer from racist attitudes. The other is a
| cognitive feature that must be countered with measurement
| (empiricism) or rules (equally applied).
|
| Those attempting to use the terms as umbrella labels diminish
| our ability to talk about and address issues arising from them.
| It isn't a single dark force, and there isn't a giant
| conspiracy out to perpetuate all perceived societal ills.
|
| [1]
| https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/i...
| fabian2k wrote:
| The mentioned article appeared in the "News" section of Science,
| not the "Research" section. There are very different standards
| for those, this is not a peer-reviewed paper. The snarky remark
| in the first sentence is a bit misplaced here as this is actually
| the section of Science that is more like a magazine than a
| scientific journal.
| amluto wrote:
| Is there a link to the article in question?
| fabian2k wrote:
| The image is a link, I missed that at first as well.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/do-no-unconscious-
| ha...
| Connor_Creegan wrote:
| A few questions that are never really addressed in these
| discussions about "bias", "discrimination", "race", etc.:
|
| What _is_ discrimination at a fundamental level? The term
| originally means to perceive something as validly distinct - e.g.
| to discriminate between truthhood and falsity, between up and
| down, between black and white. The term is most often now used
| with the implicit qualification of "unjust", "unwarranted",
| "unreal" or "quasi". So-called "racial discrimination" is a
| charge made when there appears to be some kind of injustice in
| the evaluation. So does this mean the mark of racial/ethnic/(even
| religious)/whatever stock is to be totally unrecognized as a
| heuristic in all judgments? Or just some? If just some, which
| ones? Why? Where is the line drawn? How many cycles of flawed
| attempts at psychological programming (the unintended
| consequences of which are perhaps not even entirely observed or
| taken into consideration) do we need to go through before
| ditching this endeavour? As it pertains to law enforcement, is it
| easier to simply admit that our current system can't be reformed
| through psy-ops, and that maybe we need to revert to a more
| subsidiarian/local principle of security in general?
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Thomas Sowell breaks down discrimination into far more useful
| categories.
|
| > At a minimum, we need to know what we ourselves mean when we
| use a word like "discrimination," especially since it has
| conflicting meanings. The broader meaning--an ability to
| discern differences in the qualities of people and things, and
| choosing accordingly--can be called Discrimination I. The
| narrower, but more commonly used, meaning--treating people
| negatively, based on arbitrary aversions or animosities to
| individuals of a particular race or sex, for example--can be
| called Discrimination II, the kind of discrimination that has
| led to anti-discrimination laws and policies.
|
| He goes on to break Discrimination I down into two
| subcategories, A and B.
|
| Type Ia: "The ideal, and more costly, variation is seeking and
| paying the cost for information that would permit judging each
| individual as an individual, regardless of the group from which
| that individual comes."
|
| Type Ib: "In other cases, where such information is too costly
| to be worth it, individuals may be judged by empirical evidence
| on the group they are part of."
|
| An example of type Ib is judging a person's ability to pay back
| a mortgage loan based on their income.
| Connor_Creegan wrote:
| These are good distinctions. But I think maybe the central
| question or line of questioning I was driving at was this:
| what is it that makes some given discriminatory judgment
| borne of animosity or pure arbitration without reason? How
| could we even consistently determine something like that?
| Even about ourselves? If it must be borne of explicable
| reasons, to whom must we justify ourselves with these
| reasons?
|
| Personally, instead of dealing with this litany of issues I'd
| rather do what I normally do and just lol at people who
| charge me with _waaaacism_ for whatever bizarre reason they
| happen to concoct today.
| lumb63 wrote:
| What work is this from? I've been meaning to read some of
| Sowell's, and this sounds fascinating.
| pjscott wrote:
| That's from the book "Discrimination and Disparities".
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Yes, and it's an excellent read.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Was under the impression implicit bias stuff had largely been
| debunked.
|
| It's hard to keep up.
| pjscott wrote:
| Yes, the whole field has pretty much fallen to the replication
| crisis. The thing this article is complaining about is that
| "Science" magazine apparently has a section in which it
| uncritically repeats politically-fashionable junk science.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Unfortunately we are now in a situation where there will a
| trailing legacy for the next 30 years of people who went
| through the university system and have been indoctrinated to
| believe there is only the one correct opinion on any given
| topic.
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