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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I get what you're saying. It's a mischaracterization of what I'm saying. I'm saying a scientific study assessing in what ways an oppressed group's actions contribute to that group's disadvantaged circumstances can be performed. Murray is saying he can and has performed it. (From what I read, he has not. Not even close. He's made all kinds of reckless leaps.) Those are two different statements.
Why? We do it in courts all day every day. A person claims discrimination caused career earning losses. The defense counters that not all of the claimed losses were caused by the discrimination -- that some were caused by the plainitff's own decisions. How is this controversial? The concept of a superseding cause is Torts 101.
This is where you're engaging in sleight of hand. No one has asserted that any oppressed group is responsible for its own oppression (Gypsies being responsible for the Nazis killing them). That would be absurd. But one can test whether over time, a group's own actions have contributed to its current disadvantages. To use your example, if Gypsies in Europe today suffer certain disadvantages, some of those would accrue from Nazi persecution, others would not. There would be myriad causes.
I don't know and I don't care. What's at issue is whether it's conceptually possible. And you've made no compelling rebuttal that it isn't.
Again, that he fails to credibly apply science does not mean that conceptually, if one wanted to apply scientific rigor in an unbiased fashion, it could not be done. I'm sure it has been done somewhere, but I'm not interested in that, as that's not necessary to answer the abstract question of whether it could be done.*
See immediately preceding point.
You still haven't answered my question. Is it your position that a group once and persistently discriminated against can not be responsible to any extent for anything it does afterward?
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* I also don't really want to see the study done, or read the results of any that were done. It'd involve too much identity politics-style generalization. I do not believe one can assess people based on their background "groups" at all, and that one can only credibly assess people individually. I'm only accepting the notion that assessing people based on their groups is valid for purposes of this discussion.
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An example: European Jews were persistently discriminated against. Some Zionists relocated to Israel and then did some things for which they might be held responsible. Are Zionists a "group"? Is Zionism to blame for anything that followed? Not sure, but perhaps. So my answer to your last question there shouldn't be "no."
But your idea of a "study," somehow "scientific," is total nonsense.
You said,
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No one has asserted that any oppressed group is responsible for its own oppression (Gypsies being responsible for the Nazis killing them). That would be absurd. But one can test whether over time, a group's own actions have contributed to its current disadvantages. To use your example, if Gypsies in Europe today suffer certain disadvantages, some of those would accrue from Nazi persecution, others would not. There would be myriad causes.
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You do something tricky with an unclear distinction between "oppression" and "disadvantages" here. What's the difference? If what you say is right, why couldn't a Nazi in 1945 have said, hey, Gypsies in Europe suffer, sure, but one can test over time the extent to which their own actions have contributed to their current situation? And the Nazi might say that this could be done with a study, scientifically. Why would that have been wrong?
