On Individuals and Groups
The New York Times asked people in Super Tuesday states why they voted for Trump. Here’s one answer.
The same with Muslims getting on airplanes: I think we should spend 25 times as much time searching a Muslim young man than a white middle-aged woman. It’s just common sense, even though it sounds like prejudice. — John Rupert, 75
The bleeding-heart liberal response is that a “Muslim young man” has rights, and it’s not fair to single him out specifically. And yes, there’s a xenophobic component to this “common sense”. But that’s only half the fallacy. Even if we establish that most terrorists are Muslim, that doesn’t mean most Muslims are terrorists. That’s because number of Muslims (terrorist or not) dwarfs the number of terrorists (Muslim or not).
That is: even if you know some statistical property about Muslims as a population, it doesn’t help when you’re dealing with an individual. The statistics of the group barely move the needle for one person. There is a cost to more screening, both in terms of TSA resources (your tax dollars!) and infringing on the rights of the passenger.
Now, if there was a minority group where 50% of its members were terrorists, then you’d be justified searching them more thoroughly. But the only way this hypothetical could happen if there were a lot of terrorists, or if the minority group was really small. (There are about one billion Muslims in the world.)
That’s only considering airplane hijackings as an isolated risk, of course. You’re far more likely to die in a car on the way to or from the airport. The people we do restrict from flying can still legally obtain guns. And so on…
The tech community has a reputation for being unwelcoming to women, but they’re working to improve that image. You’ll see conferences brag about what percentage of speakers are women, with the implication that 50% is the target, that 50% is “fair”.
Now, there is abundant evidence that any women can program just as well as any man. There are enough women with the necessary talent and skills that hiring should be gender-blind. This both provides opportunities for women, and gives tech companies a larger pool of applicants. When you meet a women at a tech conference, you should not assume that she spends her working days in Photoshop rather than vim.
But does this mean that 50% is the ratio to aim for? Not necessarily. There’s some percentage of men who make good programmers, and I don’t know if the percentage for women is comparable, lower, or higher. Or maybe there’s some kind of statistical distribution. It could be really complicated.
This seems like heresy to liberals. Of course women are just as good as men. But are they? They seem to be better than men at ballet. That doesn’t mean you won’t find an amazing male ballet dancer, but you’ll have to look a lot harder. Do you find similar differences in a purely cognitive profession? Until I see data and not mere anecdotes, I don’t know, I can’t know.
This is the reverse of Muslims on airplanes: just because we know a lot about individual women programmers doesn’t tell us anything about the population. Maybe women really are worse, and 40% is to be expected. Or maybe social conditions favor men so much that we’d see 60% women on a level playing field.
Making judgements about people requires both statistics and compassion.
