In an amusing twist, Richard Lewontin's landmark 1972 paper—which showed that the concept of race has no biological basis—uses Shannon entropy in its arguments rather than conventional biological statistics. Though this is not a knock on statistics, one can obtain the same result using conventional statistics.

@mehluv @viz

@timnitGebru @viz @madhu_shrieks @rupert @mehluv @anandphilipc

Relevant to this thread.

RE: https://dair-community.social/users/timnitGebru/statuses/116270042818651080

@dialecticalmusings Finding connections between modern tools and past eugenic ideas isn’t hard, but that alone is a weak argument. Tools like statistics and logistic regression are general-purpose and also enable beneficial things like vaccines and medical decisions. While it’s important to acknowledge problematic histories, to imply that tools are inherently racist or “baked” with those values is patently false and this line of argument is a waste of time.

@dialecticalmusings we need to understand that causality is complex and making causal claims is a bad idea unless there is a NEED to do so. we can oppose eugenics today and slavery today, without making essentialist arguments that not just are bad logic, but also bad politics.

@anandphilipc

I didn't make those arguments.

In fact, I had already answered a more or less similar question from you earlier.

RE: https://app.wafrn.net/fediverse/post/25fe80e1-fe4d-461b-85f8-484790925b8c