Statistical cues tend to be very weak relative to other, more relevant cues. When they really are *all* you have, or in the rare cases where they provide fairly strong evidence, it makes sense to use them. But the road is littered with examples where the use of a statistical cue leads one to ignore much stronger individual cues that were available with little extra effort.

I believe we have a signficant bias toward overvaluing our initial information about a problem (first-impression bias). To me, this is equivalent to “hammer-nail bias” — the first tool we use to look at a problem becomes a lens that we tend to have on everytime we look at the problem, so to speak. A tool that we use often enough, becomes a lens that we leave on our eyes all the time, and we have trouble imagining what the world would look like without it.

Therefore it behooves us as much as possible to avoid letting a weak cue be the first information we process about someone/thing, or to make a habit of using a tool that primarily generates very weak cues.

No, I don’t have any science to justify my claim, I’m just throwing it out there as a possibility based on anecdotal evidence. If I am correct, then using statistical discrimination in a computer algorithm for a first order sort on large data sets is not so damaging, but using it habitually in everyday life is likely to lead one down a precarious path.

A strong argument could be made that beauty discrimination is much more integrated into our cognitive architecture, and much less amenable to manipulation by changing social mores: more of a bias than a prejudice. For instance, there’s not any organized group or grassroots movement that I’m aware of standing up for the rights of ugly people, as there is for women and black people and gay people, and even fat people. If fat people have their own movement and ugly people don’t, I don’t think there’s a lot of hope for one until ugliness becomes treatable. (Say, when we start having robot bodies or something.)

Steve Sailer, I am not suggesting that people should be willing to pay an infinite price to avoid even a small amount of statistical discrimination. I’m certainly not willing to do that. I am saying that: (i) avoiding statistical discrimination is a worthy liberal principal that is worth sacrificing for; and (ii) the social payoffs are likely to be large. BTW, the example is not a good one because in the example the relevant fact is that the neighborhood is crime-ridden, which presumably can be objectively known without recourse to statistical discrimination.

Good point – the rules are a messy hodgepodge, generally created when some group became organised enough to petition for them, are fought against by employers (or whatever group is targeted) and then slanted by whatever party happens to be in power at the time.

They also tend to apply to things that are normally easy to measure (which is why beauty doesn’t often make the cut).

And most things that we can change, like our jobs, locations, friends, etc. we usually prefer not to change.

It’s no only a question of preference, but a question of effort, cost, and efficiency. Changing religions, in most circumstances, involves large costs and efforts, and a (short-term) disruption or lack of efficiency. Changing sexes and races is even more expensive, and not totally successful. This is all out of proportion with whatever real gain can be had by such change (as opposed to other’s judgement of that gain).

Cost alone can’t be used as sensible underpining for anti-discrimination laws, as getting an education, say, or repressing one’s violent urges, also carry costs.

Sticking to job discrimination: as a suggestion, would a sensible basis for anti-discrimination laws be “discrimination should not be made on the basis of elements which carry a large cost to change, and which are unreliable indicators of the ability of the applicant to do the job”?

In that case, one could shift the burden of effort (figuring out if the applicant is trully qualified) to the employer (the effort being much less than a sex/religious change).

That seems a good moral basis for the laws (and would include beauty in most professions). Whether this moral basis should be accepted is a judgement call, and its eventual implementation would need to be balanced against other issues.

The situation would be somewhat different from nowadays – discrimination on the basis of a handicap would be considered the worst, as being the hardest to change. Permitted discrimination levels would also vary depending on technological developments.

Any feelings on this idea?

(PS: I don’t personally entirely agree with this principle, but my reservations feel more like emotional biases rather than reasoned objections)

It is striking to me how many people want to speak up and declare support for standard anti-discrimination rules, and how little consensus there seems to be on reasons for these rules.

I feel that’s more a question of “bowing to the inevitable” – trying to enforce anti-beauty discrimination would be impossible, and in most circumstances, religious identity is imovable – for belief and social reasons. Plus, the various religious groups are very influencial.

Let’s look at one specfic case of discrimination: I’m a racist boss wondering whether to hire a salesman from another ethnic group. I’ve decided not to hire him. Several points appear:
1) Turning him down on racist grounds definetly spares me any effort, a net gain.
2) However, I have restricted my field of possible candidates – a loss, dependent on the number of other candidates.
3) Other people may share my prejudice, so this salesman may not have sold well to them – a gain, dependent on how many others share my views.
4) However, hiring a salesman from the same background as myself may mean he shares the same prejudices as me – a loss if there are clients of the other ethnicity. conversely, the one I turned down may have known a lot about selling to his own group.
5) Hiring this worker, and interacting with him, may have developed my empathy for this other group. May be a loss or a gain (there are some professions – accounting, boder guards – where pretty much any empathy is bad). May have lead to new business opportunities, have made my judgement more accurate, or taken up my time for no efficiency gain.

These are just a few points – there are many more.

That last point – empathy – may be the key to anti-discrimination laws. They seem to hit precisely those domains where accurate empathy is most difficult (man to woman, the disabled, other religions, other cultures – other races is a more subtle, but comes under other cultures).

Whethe you can mandate empathy by law is another matter…