Discover more from Overcoming Bias
Consider four possible acts:
Eating Twinkies
Watching Gilligan’s Island
Fighting cancer
Working for racial justice
Now consider pairwise comparisons of value between these acts. You might say which you prefer, or which matters more, or is more important or admirable.
It seems to me that we don’t mind ranking #1 vs #2. We might think the exercise silly, but we’d still be comfortable expressing an opinion. It also seems to me that we don’t mind puffing up our chest and intoning very seriously that either of #3,4 are more noble and admirable than either of #1,2, and looking sadly down on those who might say otherwise. But if asked to rank #3 vs #4, we are much less comfortable. In this case we could be seen as saying something against an act many find important and admirable. That isn’t the sort of thing we like to be quoted on. We don’t like to speak against the sacred.
Because of this, we end up sharing less info about relative rankings among the acts we most admire. Which, alas, are the acts most valuable to rank. We learn what others think of the relative ranking of silly tv shows and minor foods, but not about our most important choices. Silly humans.
I’m fond of this classic question pair: “What is the most important research question in your discipline?” followed by “Why aren’t you working on it?”
Ranking The Sacred
Even today, I'm not sure about the correlation between riots and anyone's measure of racial injustice. Ferguson seems rather average when it comes to the black/white arrest ratio, significantly less extreme than Santa Monica or Madison Wisconsin. The only respect in which Ferguson seems unusual is that the population is mostly black and the government isn't, a result of its demographic change being relatively recent.
You seem to have lost the thread of this conversation. The original use of lynching in no way suggested that we should see a continuous increase in its usage. The point was that not punishing it emboldens those who would seek to expand racial injustice. So the statistical decline in lynching does not contravene this point in any way given that lynchings declined because racists were under the impression that they had successfully cowed their targets. Furthermore, my comments about riots were not limited to the 60s or 70s. I was thinking also about contemporary events like we are seeing in places like Missouri.
Finally, if the cancer is downstream from the infection, that's all the more reason for me to support #4 over #3. I'd rather fight a disease than a symptom.