A further poll about prejudice and discrimination

[AleoMagus]

I posted a poll earlier today in which it seems the intellectual might of the 2+2 SMP forum thinks it is ok in certain circumstances to make decisions which discriminate between one or another race on the basis of statistical or probabilistic info.

A poll about prejudice and discrimination (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=3364895&page=0&view=colla psed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1)

I'm a little surprised by the results of this poll, and while I'm not saying everyone is wrong, I did suggest that it is a slippery slope and we should be cautious.

I present a further poll, which I think is a little farther down the slope

You are about to get on a airline on a flight near Washington DC on Sept 11 2005. There two flights boarding from nearby gates that you may choose from (lets say you were delayed or gave up a seat). You arrive just in time to see the last passengers pass through each gate. They are:

A very surfer-california looking white male aged 25-30
An man of obviously middle eastern descent aged 25-30

Which flight do you choose?

What if you were given some kind of a tip and knew for a fact that one of the men was a suicide bomber intent on hijacking the airplane. Don't get all heroic here either, I am just interested in which you think is more likely the terrorist. For the sake of the question you should assume that you can do nothing to stop it in time, and want to avoid the terrorist.

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I'm a little surprised by the results of this poll, and while I'm not saying everyone is wrong, I did suggest that it is a slippery slope and we should be cautious.

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I'm interested in hearing why this is a slippery slope.

[sexdrugsmoney]

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What if you were given some kind of a tip and knew for a fact that one of the men was a suicide bomber intent on hijacking the airplane.

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Where's the option to not get on the plane?

[AleoMagus]

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I'm interested in hearing why this is a slippery slope.

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Seriously?

Ummm... I guess because many of the more extreme racist positions out there may be justifiable in this way. At very least, this is how many extremist racists attempt to justify a lot of their views.

As for the other poster's comment about not getting on the plane, reread the question. I am just interested in which plane would be better for you to get on if you were interested in avoiding the terrorist.

Regards
Brad S

I don't see how. You're asking if I was given a choice where there was a higher risk of dying vs a lower risk of dying, which would I take? The race issue is irrelevant here. No one knows of my choice. It has no negative effect on any person or on society. Only people with a phobia about the appearance of racism would think this choice has anything to do with race.

Or am I wrong?

[sexdrugsmoney]

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As for the other poster's comment about not getting on the plane, reread the question.

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Ok.

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I am just interested in which plane would be better for you to get on if you were interested in avoiding the terrorist.


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Easy ... NO [censored] PLANE. (And all the re-readings in the world won't change my mind)

Although, I like how someone voted to flip a coin for the first choice, but ultimately chose the white guy upon having 'inside info'. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

But I still maintain that nobody in their right mind would get on any plane hearing a passanger has plans to hijack it, especially on this date, so the poll is uber naïve IMHO.

[AleoMagus]

Ugh

I remember being in a 2nd yr phil class once when we were taught about prisoners dilemma. We were presented the dilemma initially as a 'what would you do' kind of decision, and this one guy in the class kept saying things like

"easy, I'd never commit a crime or get caught to be in that situation in the first place"

as if that was somehow an ingenius way of circumventing the hypothetical, when it was really just missing the point of what the hypothetical was trying to demonstrate.

You aren't that guy, are you?

Regards
Brad S

[AleoMagus]

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No one knows of my choice. It has no negative effect on any person or on society.

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Ok, I guess this is getting somewhere constructive

So you are saying that the key to this not being any kind of immoral racial discrimination is that it has no negative effect on any individual or society?

What if the question was instead something like:

You are hiring for low level airport security and have to choose between these two men. Their resumes look very similar but are not overly detailed in any way.

all you really know is that they have a high scool education, some work experience in minimum wage jobs, and maybe a year or two of community college each.

The one who does not get hired will be adversely affected, as he will remain unemployed.

Do you still go with the white male, or do you now flip a coin?

Regards
Brad S

[sexdrugsmoney]

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Ugh

I remember being in a 2nd yr phil class once when we were taught about prisoners dilemma. We were presented the dilemma initially as a 'what would you do' kind of decision, and this one guy in the class kept saying things like

"easy, I'd never commit a crime or get caught to be in that situation in the first place"

as if that was somehow an ingenius way of circumventing the hypothetical, when it was really just missing the point of what the hypothetical was trying to demonstrate.

You aren't that guy, are you?

Regards
Brad S

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That is the weakest comparison I have ever heard.

Most people may say they would never commit a crime but nobody knows if they would and/or when one is at the mercy of the law they can be imprisoned against their will.

However in the extremely naive example above, unless you have been living under a rock post 9/11 nobody in their right mind will get on the plane after hearing a possible hijack is on the cards given the significance of the date.

Just admit it's a bad example, it's ok.

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You are hiring for low level airport security and have to choose between these two men. Their resumes look very similar but are not overly detailed in any way.

all you really know is that they have a high scool education, some work experience in minimum wage jobs, and maybe a year or two of community college each.

The one who does not get hired will be adversely affected, as he will remain unemployed.

Do you still go with the white male, or do you now flip a coin?

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If there was absolutly no way to differentiate the two in terms of who is best for the job, and I found some hard statistical evidence showing that middle eastern men similar to the guy I am hiring (have been living in the country for about X years, came from country Y, etc...) have a higher density' of terrorists then white men similar to the guy I am hiring, then yes, I'd go white male. Conversely if statistically the white male was more likely to be a terrorist, I'd go the middle eastern guy.

Yes, I believe that racial stereotypes may be justified if there is unbiased statistical data showing a high likelyhood of some kind of correlation

At the moment I hold no sterotypes because I have seen any data that could support one. But I haven't actively looked for any such reserch.

[AleoMagus]

There is a great episode of the original BBC series 'The office' (which was way better than this new American version btw) that reminds me of this conversation with you.

A training day is held at the office and all the staff are gathered together. In one of the training sessions, pairs of two a asked to solve a hypothetical. In the hypothetical, a farmer must get a fox a chicken and a bag of grain across a river in a boat but can only take one at a time, and cannot leave the fox with the chicken, or the chicken with the bag of grain at any time.

One funny character, Gareth, cannot see the question for what it is and keeps asking silly questions like "why does the farmer need a fox? Farmers hate foxes!" or "why doesn't he put the bag of grain up high when he leaves it with the chicken?", "how come he has such a small boat? I've never heard of a boat that small!".

You know what I am asking here, and you know that if I had to, I could concoct some weird circumstance in which you'd need to either make this decision, or at least structure a similar decision. The stupid details are not important unless you think that all similarly structured problems somehow suffer from the same kinds of loopholes in the question.

Regards
Brad S

[theben]

to some degree, everybody is prejudiced even if they refuse to admit it

[sexdrugsmoney]

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There is a great episode of the original BBC series 'The office' (which was way better than this new American version btw) that reminds me of this conversation with you.

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If nothing else then I'm glad I have reminded you of the genius of Gervais.

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A training day is held at the office and all the staff are gathered together. In one of the training sessions, pairs of two a asked to solve a hypothetical. In the hypothetical, a farmer must get a fox a chicken and a bag of grain across a river in a boat but can only take one at a time, and cannot leave the fox with the chicken, or the chicken with the bag of grain at any time.

One funny character, Gareth,

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He is funny.

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cannot see the question for what it is and keeps asking silly questions like "why does the farmer need a fox? Farmers hate foxes!" or "why doesn't he put the bag of grain up high when he leaves it with the chicken?", "how come he has such a small boat? I've never heard of a boat that small!".

You know what I am asking here, and you know that if I had to, I could concoct some weird circumstance in which you'd need to either make this decision, or at least structure a similar decision. The stupid details are not important unless you think that all similarly structured problems somehow suffer from the same kinds of loopholes in the question.

Regards
Brad S

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May I ask you a question Brad?

Was it Brent who proposed the hypothetical? (keep in mind if you answer yes, the correlation you have drawn between myself and Gareth, also draws one to you and Brent, and we all know what happens to Brent in the end)

Checkmate. /images/graemlins/grin.gif /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[AleoMagus]

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Was it Brent who proposed the hypothetical?

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No

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Checkmate.

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Not quite

Regards
Brad S

[sexdrugsmoney]

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Was it Brent who proposed the hypothetical?

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No

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Checkmate.

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Not quite

Regards
Brad S

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I must verify these statments. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

[bronzepiglet]

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Was it Brent who proposed the hypothetical?

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No

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Checkmate.

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Not quite

Regards
Brad S

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I must verify these statments. /images/graemlins/grin.gif

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The training guy they brought in to the office brought up the hypothetical problem.

Not to bust your balls, but you are acting a little bit like Gareth in that episode... you're just supposed to pick one of the options because picking an option is a given with the exercise. It doesn't matter that no option is desirable. Besides, there is no wrong answer.

[Darryl_P]

Are you saying that your own observations of the world have no reliability at all!? Surely you will want to get off that leash at some point, no?

An apt quote from paragraph 26 of the Unabomber's Manifesto:

"The oversocialized person cannot even experience, without guilt, thoughts or feelings that are contrary to the accepted morality; he cannot think "unclean" thoughts. And socialization is not just a matter of morality; we are socialized to confirm to many norms of behavior that do not fall under the heading of morality. Thus the oversocialized person is kept on a psychological leash and spends his life running on rails that society has laid down for him. In many oversocialized people this results in a sense of constraint and powerlessness that can be a severe hardship. We suggest that oversocialization is among the more serious cruelties that human beings inflict on one another. "

Full text: http://www.thecourier.com/manifest.htm

[Darryl_P]

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to some degree, everybody is prejudiced even if they refuse to admit it

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True...some people are so prejudiced as to think races are equal despite seeing compelling evidence to the contrary.

[NLSoldier]

If you cant see that the odds are clearly in favor of the middle eastern guy being the terrorist than you are an idiot.

[xniNja]

Here's a question:

If we are at war with Japan, which is scarier, a white surfer, or a Japanese male? If we are at war with Russia, which is scarier, a white surfer, or a Russian male? Repeat with any nation with a particular ethnic population and you realize that the question isn't so significant and not really at all about discrimination.

[SmileyEH]

In the first case it makes no difference to me. If the chance of the middle eastern guy being a terrorist is 1 in 100k, and the surfer dude at 1 in 1mil I really could care less. But if we know 1 is actually a terrorist than we are an 10:1 favorite for dying in a terrorist attack if we get on the middle eastern guy's plane, so I'd get on the surfer dude's plane.

-SmileyEH

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The one who does not get hired will be adversely affected, as he will remain unemployed.

Do you still go with the white male, or do you now flip a coin?

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I do my job. If I'm instructed to be race blind regarding security risk, then I will be, and I'll flip a coin. If it's entirely up to me I pick the white male.

Before you start screaming from the rooftops, I'd also pick the black male over the middle eastern, the latino male over the middle eastern, the asian male over the middle eastern, in a job that had security aspects. I would flip a coin every time between white,black,latino,asian.

Plus the other problem is, if you hire a middle eastern, they all look the same anyway so a terrorist could pull a switcheroo and no one would be any wiser.