White people are kinda assholes

[Emily Lake]

I know people who are busy pretending to be rational like to make these kinds of comments and try to cast doubt on other people's assumptions etc, but try to be actually reasonable here.

This part is pretty offensive and condescending.

I'm going to assume you're smart enough to figure out that if we prove blonde children like cookies then whatever data we gathered or didn't gather on read-headed step-children has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what we just learned about blonde children.

Except that we didn't prove that it had anything at all to do with blondeness. The blondeness is an artifact of the survey design - it is not a finding. We only asked blondes, therefore, we can only opine about blondes. But cookie liking has nothing at all to do with blondes. Blondeness and cookie-liking aren't correlated with each other. There is no relationship between being blonde and liking cookies.

It's as meaningless as a finding as saying that people with size 9 feet and chipped left incisors breathe air to live... when the only people that you checked for air-dependence were people with size 9 feet and chipped left incisors. The actual truth is that ALL people breath air to live; there is no inherent and noteworthy relationship between air dependence and shoe size and tooth quality... unless you can show that that cohort of people has a dependence on air that is DIFFERENT from other people. It is not a relationship. It is artifice of bad survey design.

So making the assumption you're not suffering from some kind of catastrophic brain damage making you incapable of understanding basic logical structures I'm left with the conclusion you can, it's just that you can't be bothered.

What you appear to be suffering from is confirmation bias, as well as a profound ignorance of survey sampling theory... and a profound insistence on not being educated beyond that ignorance.

As well as a profound desire to insult any opponent into submission, apparently.

 

[The Paul]

fify.

You didn't fix anything only further demonstrating your scientific illiteracy.

You caught me, I'm just not scientifically literate enough to understand how comments like...

This is a blame whitey/white guilt thread. A standard tactic is to accuse you of being racist/latent racist or assume you have anxiety due to not acknowledging your white privilege or white guilt.

...illustrate the researchers' experimental errors.

 

[Emily Lake]

One effect should be that if you raise objections to a study you should be able to form meaningful criticisms of the methods used, highlighting uncontrolled variables that should have been controlled, poor record-keeping, something like that.

Poor record keeping isn't even at the top of the list here. The very base design of the study is at issue. What we have been criticizing is exactly what you're saying we should be criticizing: The methods used, and uncontrolled variables that should have been controlled.

In contrast, what you have done is to insinuate that we are emotional about it, and are reacting out of "white guilt" or something - without even knowing what color we are. You've made wild assumptions about us and used them as insults instead of actually engaging like a rational adult.

When the experiment is discussed in detail, however, the closet thing you're able to raise to a rational complaint is that the researchers didn't make use of some fundamentally inaccessible data.

Since when are non-white people inaccessible? That would serve as a reasonable control. Failing that, simply asking the white people their views on certain policies before and after exposure would provide a baseline - that is also not inaccessible. Controlling for age and expression of the photos shown is certainly not inaccessible. In fact, none of the suggestions made for how this study could have been improved for scientific rigor are inaccessible.

I'm not certain you know what the term actually means.

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I would like to take a moment here to point out that nobody is actually denying that these finding might be accurate; they may very well be true. What has been said, hwoever, is that this study does not support that conclusion. In order to demonstrate the conclusion being drawn, the study would need to be conducted differently. We have given suggestions on how the study should be conducted. If the study were conducted in a more robust fashion, and came out with the same conclusion, I would have no objection to the findings... because they would be rigorously supported and scientifically accurate conclusions.

I object to the methodology. I can neither accept nor reject the conclusion, because the methodolgy is not rigorous enough to support the conclusion drawn.

 

[The Paul]

Poor record keeping isn't even at the top of the list here. The very base design of the study is at issue. What we have been criticizing is exactly what you're saying we should be criticizing: The methods used, and uncontrolled variables that should have been controlled.

In contrast, what you have done is to insinuate that we are emotional about it, and are reacting out of "white guilt" or something - without even knowing what color we are. You've made wild assumptions about us and used them as insults instead of actually engaging like a rational adult.

When the experiment is discussed in detail, however, the closet thing you're able to raise to a rational complaint is that the researchers didn't make use of some fundamentally inaccessible data.

Since when are non-white people inaccessible? That would serve as a reasonable control. Failing that, simply asking the white people their views on certain policies before and after exposure would provide a baseline - that is also not inaccessible. Controlling for age and expression of the photos shown is certainly not inaccessible. In fact, none of the suggestions made for how this study could have been improved for scientific rigor are inaccessible.

I'm not certain you know what the term actually means.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would like to take a moment here to point out that nobody is actually denying that these finding might be accurate; they may very well be true. What has been said, hwoever, is that this study does not support that conclusion. In order to demonstrate the conclusion being drawn, the study would need to be conducted differently. We have given suggestions on how the study should be conducted. If the study were conducted in a more robust fashion, and came out with the same conclusion, I would have no objection to the findings... because they would be rigorously supported and scientifically accurate conclusions.

I object to the methodology. I can neither accept nor reject the conclusion, because the methodolgy is not rigorous enough to support the conclusion drawn.

Please answer this question:

Anyway, imagine you wanted to know if low temperatures can result in accelerated metabolisms in white mice, so you placed mice in atmosphere and temperature-controlled environments and measured their CO2 production. Imagine the mice are bred in a lab that normally has a temperature of 20C-22C, so you place one group of mice in a 21C aquarium. You place another group in a 5C aquarium. Imagine that over the next several hours you found that the mice in the 5C aquarium were producing more C02 per mouse than the mice in the 21C aquarium, and concluded that low temperatures cause metabolism to increase in mice.

Now consider several possible objections to the above experiment:

A) The timeframe was too short. The metabolic increase could have been due to anxiety caused by the change in temperature rather than the low temperature itself
B) You measured CO2 per mouse, but not per unit body mass. What if you had disproportionately large mice in the cold aquarium?
C) There were no voles in the in experiment.
D) You did not record the genders of the mice. Perhaps one of the chambers was disproportionately male or female, and that was the cause of the metabolic difference.

One of those objections is batshit insane. Which one do you think it is?

If you manage to answer incorrectly, I will begin taking your objections about the lack of non-white test subjects seriously.

 

[doubtingt]

There's no such thing as a baseline for this and it clearly describes what you seemed to think was a control in another context.

Knowing whether a person favored or disfavored a policy before being tested on whether exposure to stimulus affects that person's disposition towards that policy would be the control/baseline. A first grader would know this. Remember, the easiest person to fool is yourself!

It is true that they could have collected a baseline support for the policy, and this would have strengthened the methods. However, that is not the major flaw here. Many true experiments with valid causal implications do not collect pre-manipulation baseline measures. If you have two randomly assigned groups (and the sample sizes are big enough), then the difference between them can be inferred to be caused by something that happened after they were assigned to condition (b/c the probability is high that they were essentially equal on the DV at the time as random assignment). Without a baseline you still know that the groups were differently impacted by the difference in what the experiment exposed them to. What a baseline tells you is which group was affected by what they were exposed to? Did the people in one group increase their support relative to baseline or did the other group decrease their support relative to that baseline, or did both occur. Without a baseline (or a third control group that got no exposure to anything) there is no way to know this.

But the much bigger flaw in the method is that their manipulation was likely confounded by many other variables besides skin color of the prisoners, as I described in my earlier post. They used real mug shots and did nothing to control and equalize the many differences that would likely exist between a random group of mug shots of black criminals and white criminals. Any study that did make such efforts would certainly describe them in the article, so their lack of mention is in this case strong evidence that no such efforts were made and thus that many confounds did exist.

The second biggest flaw is that they used only white research subjects. Had they actually controlled for every other variable besides race of the prisoners (which they did not), then the results would still yield no information about the psychological processes underlying the effect, and there would still be no basis to interpret which of the many variables that are objectively (or subjectively) correlated with race were actually responsible for the effect. The underlying processes and mechanism completely determine whether the subjects are "assholes" or doing anything that we shouldn't expect perfectly moral, rational, non-racist to do.
Having base-rates would help a bit with some of these issues, but having data from non-white research participants would be far more informative.

In sum, the first flaw eliminates any ability to claim that the race of the prisoners had any impact on the results. The second flaw eliminates any ability to infer anything meaningful about where, when, why, and for whom the effect would occur, even it was triggered by exposure to the race of the inmates.

What the title of the article should say is "White people react to one of any number of uncontrolled variables for reasons that we have no idea about and their reaction may or may not be identical to that of non-white people." Of course no one would bother to publish or read such worthless "information" if it was so accurately labeled.

 

[Emily Lake]

Please answer this question:

Anyway, imagine you wanted to know if low temperatures can result in accelerated metabolisms in white mice, so you placed mice in atmosphere and temperature-controlled environments and measured their CO2 production. Imagine the mice are bred in a lab that normally has a temperature of 20C-22C, so you place one group of mice in a 21C aquarium. You place another group in a 5C aquarium. Imagine that over the next several hours you found that the mice in the 5C aquarium were producing more C02 per mouse than the mice in the 21C aquarium, and concluded that low temperatures cause metabolism to increase in mice.

Now consider several possible objections to the above experiment:

A) The timeframe was too short. The metabolic increase could have been due to anxiety caused by the change in temperature rather than the low temperature itself
B) You measured CO2 per mouse, but not per unit body mass. What if you had disproportionately large mice in the cold aquarium?
C) There were no voles in the in experiment.
D) You did not record the genders of the mice. Perhaps one of the chambers was disproportionately male or female, and that was the cause of the metabolic difference.

One of those objections is batshit insane. Which one do you think it is?

If you manage to answer incorrectly, I will begin taking your objections about the lack of non-white test subjects seriously.

1) First, I believe you mistyped. Either that or you're even more confused than you appear to be. For the moment I will assume that intended to say that if I manage to answer CORRECTLY, you will begin to take me seriously.

2) The "correct" answer is C), but probably not for the reasons that you think.

The question that your poor analogy is trying to answer is whether temperature affects metabolism in mice. Voles are not mice, and thus would have no place in this experiment. What you are NOT doing, however, is trying to conclude that the changed metabolism is something unique or special to mice. That it is a characteristic of "miceness". You are not implying that mice have changed metabolisms, and that non-mice would not. You're using mice as a proxy, with the implict assumption that other mammals would also have a change in metabolism. If you went on to say publish a paper that attempted to say that "miceness" leads to a change in metabolism when exposed to cold - to create a relationship between the fact that these are MICE and the change in metabolism... then I would very rightly point out that your experiment is a failure. It did not contain any non-mice.

But since that's not what your experiment was trying to prove, then it is irrelevant.

The prison study, however, WAS effectively trying to prove that "miceness" is what caused the change in metabolism. And they failed to include any non-mice. So it's concluding a correlation without proof of that correlation. It fails as an experiment. The relationship might or might not exist - it just has not been shown by this study.

 

[The Paul]

Please answer this question:



If you manage to answer incorrectly, I will begin taking your objections about the lack of non-white test subjects seriously.

1) First, I believe you mistyped. Either that or you're even more confused than you appear to be. For the moment I will assume that intended to say that if I manage to answer CORRECTLY, you will begin to take me seriously.

2) The "correct" answer is C), but probably not for the reasons that you think.

The question that your poor analogy is trying to answer is whether temperature affects metabolism in mice. Voles are not mice, and thus would have no place in this experiment. What you are NOT doing, however, is trying to conclude that the changed metabolism is something unique or special to mice. That it is a characteristic of "miceness". You are not implying that mice have changed metabolisms, and that non-mice would not. You're using mice as a proxy, with the implict assumption that other mammals would also have a change in metabolism. If you went on to say publish a paper that attempted to say that "miceness" leads to a change in metabolism when exposed to cold - to create a relationship between the fact that these are MICE and the change in metabolism... then I would very rightly point out that your experiment is a failure. It did not contain any non-mice.

But since that's not what your experiment was trying to prove, then it is irrelevant.

The prison study, however, WAS effectively trying to prove that "miceness" is what caused the change in metabolism. And they failed to include any non-mice. So it's concluding a correlation without proof of that correlation. It fails as an experiment. The relationship might or might not exist - it just has not been shown by this study.

Yeah, wow.

You are absolutely responding emotionally and not rationally here, because you're criticizing a study that doesn't actually exist. The researchers did not conclude that racism an attribute of whiteness, or that being white is what causes racism, or whatever.

The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants. The researchers don't go on to make any claims from there about white people being more racist, or meaner, or anything else than other groups.

You're imagining attacks on white people where they don't exist.

It's pretty rare for non-white people to do that, by the way.

Super weird for you to be doing that if you're not white.

 

[Emily Lake]

The Paul, this is a pointless endeavor. You've repeatedly failed to engage in a mature and insightful way, and have consistently resorted to baseless assumptions and insult. I've explained the scientific rationale for my objections to the study design quite coherently several times. And you insist upon insinuating that I'm racist and emotional rather than considering the content of my post from a logical point of view. At this point, I believe I have nothing more to say to you.

 

[The Paul]

I've explained the scientific rationale for my objections to the study design quite coherently several times.

No, you've complained about statements of your own imagining that you attribute the researchers.

And you insist upon insinuating that I'm racist and emotional...

I haven't insinuated either of those things. I've pretty plainly and openly stated that your objections are based on some kind of emotional response, though.

...rather than considering the content of my post from a logical point of view.

The content of your post is a complaint about wholly imaginary statements made by the researchers. If that fails to lead someone to a flattering impression of you, the problem isn't a lack of logic on their part.

At this point, I believe I have nothing more to say to you.

I guess we'll see.

 

[Metaphor]

The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants.

Except it does not show that, for all the reasons people have already explicated. The experimenters' manipulations had an effect on endorsed harshness of justice measures. You have to take a number of leaps (and ignore realities of the experimenter manipulations) to go from that to 'White people are racist'.

 

[Trausti]

The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants.

Except it does not show that, for all the reasons people have already explicated. The experimenters' manipulations had an effect on endorsed harshness of justice measures. You have to take a number of leaps (and ignore realities of the experimenter manipulations) to go from that to 'White people are racist'.

The Paul is like the creationist who insists that the diversity and complexity of nature is proof of God's existence. Your failure to accept this self-evident truth simply shows that you deny God in your heart (you're born a sinner, after all). Best to let this fizzle and expend your energy on other endeavors.

 

[The Paul]

The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants.

Except it does not show that,

I'd be more likely to give that kind of statement serious consideration if it were coming from someone who's able to tell the difference between the statements "The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants" and "white people are racist."

 

[Metaphor]

Except it does not show that,

I'd be more likely to give that kind of statement serious consideration if it were coming from someone who's able to tell the difference between the statements "The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants" and "white people are racist."

You know, I almost edited my post before I saw your response. I thought "The Paul might object to something as ludicrous as me paraphrasing 'White people have racist attitudes' to 'White people are racist'."

But then I thought 'no, that's petty and absurd, no-one's going to dismiss my entire post because of a paraphrase'.

Well, obviously, I understimated your willingness to cling to ridiculous minutiae and then make the most breathtakingly blatant ad hominemto weasel out of actually addressing any substantive points I made.

I'm sorry I expected more from you. That showed a misplaced faith and generosity of spirit on my part. I erred in too generously judging your personal and intellectual character.

But just so you'll have at least a little cognitive dissonance (if you haven't been able to completely shut that off):

The experiment does not show that the White participants had a racist attitude.

The outcome of the experiment is compatible with that hypothesis, but it is also equally compatible with a number of other hypotheses, and the experiment as it stands is not robust enough to favour one hypothesis over another.

 

[laughing dog]

I'd be more likely to give that kind of statement serious consideration if it were coming from someone who's able to tell the difference between the statements "The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants" and "white people are racist."

You know, I almost edited my post before I saw your response. I thought "The Paul might object to something as ludicrous as me paraphrasing 'White people have racist attitudes' to 'White people are racist'."

But then I thought 'no, that's petty and absurd, no-one's going to dismiss my entire post because of a paraphrase'.

Well, obviously, I understimated your willingness to cling to ridiculous minutiae and then make the most breathtakingly blatant ad hominemto weasel out of actually addressing any substantive points I made.

I'm sorry I expected more from you. That showed a misplaced faith and generosity of spirit on my part. I erred in too generously judging your personal and intellectual character.

But just so you'll have at least a little cognitive dissonance (if you haven't been able to completely shut that off):

The experiment does not show that the White participants had a racist attitude.

The outcome of the experiment is compatible with that hypothesis, but it is also equally compatible with a number of other hypotheses, and the experiment as it stands is not robust enough to favour one hypothesis over another.

Do you think the experiment showed that white participants are "kinda assholes"?

 

[The Paul]

I'd be more likely to give that kind of statement serious consideration if it were coming from someone who's able to tell the difference between the statements "The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants" and "white people are racist."

You know, I almost edited my post before I saw your response. I thought "The Paul might object to something as ludicrous as me paraphrasing 'White people have racist attitudes' to 'White people are racist'."

But then I thought 'no, that's petty and absurd, no-one's going to dismiss my entire post because of a paraphrase'.

Well, obviously, I understimated your willingness to cling to ridiculous minutiae and then make the most breathtakingly blatant ad hominemto weasel out of actually addressing any substantive points I made.

I'm sorry I expected more from you. That showed a misplaced faith and generosity of spirit on my part. I erred in too generously judging your personal and intellectual character.

But just so you'll have at least a little cognitive dissonance (if you haven't been able to completely shut that off):

The experiment does not show that the White participants had a racist attitude.

The outcome of the experiment is compatible with that hypothesis, but it is also equally compatible with a number of other hypotheses, and the experiment as it stands is not robust enough to favour one hypothesis over another.

There's a lot of things wrong here, but let's focus on the one we agree on: You can't be bothered to say what you mean.

That's pretty insurmountable, really.

 

[Bronzeage]

You know, I almost edited my post before I saw your response. I thought "The Paul might object to something as ludicrous as me paraphrasing 'White people have racist attitudes' to 'White people are racist'."

But then I thought 'no, that's petty and absurd, no-one's going to dismiss my entire post because of a paraphrase'.

Well, obviously, I understimated your willingness to cling to ridiculous minutiae and then make the most breathtakingly blatant ad hominemto weasel out of actually addressing any substantive points I made.

I'm sorry I expected more from you. That showed a misplaced faith and generosity of spirit on my part. I erred in too generously judging your personal and intellectual character.

But just so you'll have at least a little cognitive dissonance (if you haven't been able to completely shut that off):

The experiment does not show that the White participants had a racist attitude.

The outcome of the experiment is compatible with that hypothesis, but it is also equally compatible with a number of other hypotheses, and the experiment as it stands is not robust enough to favour one hypothesis over another.

Do you think the experiment showed that white participants are "kinda assholes"?

I think any experiment where the results involves a term like "kinda assholes" is suspect. Someone might call me a white asshole for urging stricter law enforcement in certain neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods which have 90% black residents. Pretty asshole move on my part. However, if it resulted in a 10% drop in homicides, there would be seven young black men who who be alive today, but didn't live to see 2014. Maybe it's a compassionate kinda assholery.

 

[doubtingt]

The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants.

It showed no such thing. It showed that white people were affected by one of many potential confounded factors is a terribly designed study. The "thing" may have been related to race of the prisoner or it may have been anything from age, emotional expression in the mug shots, general appearance, etc.. None of these things were controlled for. Even if there were not these confounds in the mug shots and it was something triggered by the race of the prisoners, it would not show racist attitudes among whites. It could be the triggering of accurate factual knowledge that blacks in prison are more likely to be there for violent crimes than are whites. Crimes with high levels of over-representation of blacks are murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault and weapons possession. Crimes for which whites are more equally represented are mostly things like vandalism, drug use, public drunkeness, violating liquor laws, and vagrancy (IOW, the kinds of crimes that rational people are more likely to oppose as a third strike basis for life in prison or even be crimes at all). And yes, it is absolutely possible to design a study that could measure some of these factors and test between competing explanations for how and why race might impact the willingness to act to release prisoners, but that would come after designing an unconfounded manipulation that actually showed race had any relation at all to the results.

 

[The Paul]

The research shows racist attitudes among the white participants.

It showed no such thing. It showed that white people were affected by one of many potential confounded factors is a terribly designed study. The "thing" may have been related to race of the prisoner or it may have been anything from age, emotional expression in the mug shots, general appearance, etc.. None of these things were controlled for. Even if there were not these confounds in the mug shots and it was something triggered by the race of the prisoners, it would not show racist attitudes among whites. It could be the triggering of accurate factual knowledge that blacks in prison are more likely to be there for violent crimes than are whites. Crimes with high levels of over-representation of blacks are murder, armed robbery, aggravated assault and weapons possession. Crimes for which whites are more equally represented are mostly things like vandalism, drug use, public drunkeness, violating liquor laws, and vagrancy (IOW, the kinds of crimes that rational people are more likely to oppose as a third strike basis for life in prison or even be crimes at all). And yes, it is absolutely possible to design a study that could measure some of these factors and test between competing explanations for how and why race might impact the willingness to act to release prisoners, but that would come after designing an unconfounded manipulation that actually showed race had any relation at all to the results.

You've got a couple of objections there.

Your first set is overcome by a large enough sample in the same way you described not controlling certain factors in the test participants being overcome by a large enough sample.

The second set isn't actually an objection, it's just an explanation as to white the participants might hold those racist attitudes.

 

[Metaphor]

You know, I almost edited my post before I saw your response. I thought "The Paul might object to something as ludicrous as me paraphrasing 'White people have racist attitudes' to 'White people are racist'."

But then I thought 'no, that's petty and absurd, no-one's going to dismiss my entire post because of a paraphrase'.

Well, obviously, I understimated your willingness to cling to ridiculous minutiae and then make the most breathtakingly blatant ad hominemto weasel out of actually addressing any substantive points I made.

I'm sorry I expected more from you. That showed a misplaced faith and generosity of spirit on my part. I erred in too generously judging your personal and intellectual character.

But just so you'll have at least a little cognitive dissonance (if you haven't been able to completely shut that off):

The experiment does not show that the White participants had a racist attitude.

The outcome of the experiment is compatible with that hypothesis, but it is also equally compatible with a number of other hypotheses, and the experiment as it stands is not robust enough to favour one hypothesis over another.

Do you think the experiment showed that white participants are "kinda assholes"?

It depends.

It depends on the mechanism that caused the differences that the experimenters found, and what actions (or reactions) you think make an asshole.

But if you're asking are there non-asshole possibilities that are compatible with the outcome, yes, I think there are. There are also asshole possibilities and racist asshole possibilities compatible with the outcome.

I've only read the news story and not the original paper, so I can't tell if the authors discussed these possibilities in their discussion section (even if it's to dismiss them). It would be extremely unusual if they did not address the alternatives at least briefly in their Discussion.

 

[Metaphor]

There's a lot of things wrong here,

Name one. Name a single thing I've said that you think is wrong, and explain your reason for finding it wrong.

You can't and you won't, because all you have are desperate drive-bye one liners in a sad attempt to assassinate my character.

but let's focus on the one we agree on: You can't be bothered to say what you mean.

That's pretty insurmountable, really.

But I've said exactly what I mean. Not only have I said it, I've explained the reasons for why I think what I think.

But if you are accusing me of failing to rush to a conclusion when the evidence does not justify it: guilty!