Comment by zozbot234
6 years ago
The one that comes up the most, relating to 'race' specifically. is opposition to the claim that the comparatively low numbers of BIPOC minority folks in high-skill industries (such as 'tech') are indicative of a systemic racist bias within those industries. The broad consensus among SSC commenters is that this is a pipeline problem, and that concerns should thus be directed earlier in the pipeline. People do disagree, even vocally at times, about what the actual problem is and how to best address it.
Some observers have used this to argue that SSC commenters hold racist views towards BIPOC minorities. Obviously, this is not really the case.
There are other cases where prevailing narratives of systemic racism towards BIPOC folks were examined in careful and nuanced ways, generally with interesting, even compelling results. Unfortunately, some people don't like it when their simplistic views are challenged in such a way.
I'm getting the feeling you may not be presenting the discussion or the reactions to it entirely honestly here.
I sympathize. For whatever reason, many people take any sort of nuanced, academically-formal discussion about highly contentious topics involving politics, society, etc. as prima facie evidence of dishonesty. This peculiar sort of naïve anti-intellectualism is actually quite common across the culture-wars spectrum. I'm not saying that this is what you're doing here: I'm saying that this alone is reason to be highly skeptical wrt. the prevailing rumors within the 'left' about people on SSC being horribly bigoted, racist etc.
I cannot stand the smug "we're objective academics that base our beliefs on nuanced logic and facts" of, to add insult to injury, self-declared "rationalists". That most are seemingly demographically and politically homogeneous are just the weirdest coincidence.
Dogwhistling doesn't stop being so just because you wrap it in an overly verbose academic sounding language. I think it's time for some introspection if this is all it takes for mainly young privileged [white] men to start considering race science and the likes as unfortunate but actually true. Exactly the same thing can be seen with figures like Jordan B Peterson.
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