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The first comment is bizarre. If you have ever taken an elementary stats class you'll know that a "so-called" normal distribution has nothing whatsoever to do with "default humans". I don't expect regular people to know anything about stats, but I would expect a contributor to Scientific American to.

Honestly to me it sounded like something a science-y type might write to take the piss out of woke culture
 
yeah, basically a normal distribution is just one where most of the things or values you sample are near the average value. which is a pattern which is incredibly common.

her statement is either astoundingly ignorant or wilfully misinterpreting it. and amazing that it got past the editors.

an example; 'human height is normally distributed'

you could get an average of six foot, say, if half the people were four foot and the other half six foot. a normal distribution just means the pattern actually is that most people will be, say, between five and a half and six and a half foot.
 
The first comment is bizarre. If you have ever taken an elementary stats class you'll know that a "so-called" normal distribution has nothing whatsoever to do with "default humans". I don't expect regular people to know anything about stats, but I would expect a contributor to Scientific American to.

Honestly to me it sounded like something a science-y type might write to take the piss out of woke culture
this is the context in which she was using the phrase


Hyperlinked from the article.

She worded it clumsily - but she’s not talking about a stats in a pure sense here, but how marginalised communities can be excluded/misrepresented by focus on/comparison with data derived from majority communities

The ants comment is daft, but there is a growing (admittedly politicised) debate about this in terms of medicine, population and social science

You may disagree - but it’s unlikely to be a pisstake
 
it's *incredibly* clumsily worded if so. at face value, she's blaming a statistical tool for it being used incorrectly.
it's as valid as saying 'the concept of average assumes there are default humans....'
 
Ok. I can see what context she is coming from, so yes it's unlikely to be a pisstake ... but that means that Sci Am is running op-eds by people who are utterly ignorant of basic science. Which sucks :(
That’s your take - to call them ignorant of basic science is a stretch. Poorly worded and very politicised yes
Sci American is a magazine - not a peer reviewed journal
 
it, coupled with her comment about colonies, suggests to me she might be tripping over the naturalistic fallacy.
how so? (honest question) was she not saying wilson was guilty of this?

her issue with use of the word 'colonies' was presumably because of the colonial connotations, and implied racist intent of same - which is silly IMHO
 
That’s your take - to call them ignorant of basic science is a stretch. Poorly worded and very politicised yes
Sci American is a magazine - not a peer reviewed journal
I'm saying the author is ignorant of basic science, not that Sci Am is, and I really don't think it's a stretch. I don't see how you can misconstrue "normal distribution" like this unless you don't have a clue what it means

I think yiz might be onto something with the naturalistic fallacy. Wilson's work describes the natural world. If you read it while conflating "nature" with "good" then maybe you could misinterpret descriptions as moral proclamations and disagree with them?
 
I'm saying the author is ignorant of basic science, not that Sci Am is, and I really don't think it's a stretch. I don't see how you can misconstrue "normal distribution" like this unless you don't have a clue what it means

I think yiz might be onto something with the naturalistic fallacy. Wilson's work describes the natural world. If you read it while conflating "nature" with "good" then maybe you could misinterpret descriptions as moral proclamations and disagree with them?
Might it be that you are ignorant of the real world impact of using something like 'normal distribution' to set policy/targets/goals for entire populations when these will not align with certain sections of that society (usually marginalised/under-represented groups). To me reading the article, it is not so much the 'dry' science that is being called into question but it's impact on real-world groups of people
 
I'm saying the author is ignorant of basic science, not that Sci Am is, and I really don't think it's a stretch. I don't see how you can misconstrue "normal distribution" like this unless you don't have a clue what it means

I think yiz might be onto something with the naturalistic fallacy. Wilson's work describes the natural world. If you read it while conflating "nature" with "good" then maybe you could misinterpret descriptions as moral proclamations and disagree with them?
and I'm disagreeing. Authors full UCSF profile: Monica McLemore | UCSF Profiles
Might it be that you are ignorant of the real world impact of using something like 'normal distribution' to set policy/targets/goals for entire populations when these will not align with certain sections of that society (usually marginalised/under-represented groups). To me reading the article, it is not so much the 'dry' science that is being called into question but it's impact on real-world groups of people
exactly.
 
Might it be that you are ignorant of the real world impact of using something like 'normal distribution' to set policy/targets/goals for entire populations when these will not align with certain sections of that society (usually marginalised/under-represented groups).
was this what wilson was doing? genuine question; was he straying out of the natural world into the human world in that sense?
 
was this what wilson was doing? genuine question; was he straying out of the natural world into the human world in that sense?

Honestly I don't know enough about the guy to answer that. Reading the article, alot of the critique seems to be about the legacy of these ideas as opposed to the 'pure science'. Having said that- pure science can be as much driven by the ideologies of the day as social policy...
 
was this what wilson was doing? genuine question; was he straying out of the natural world into the human world in that sense?

Not Wilson specifically - although he did attract controversy for postulating the same genetic/evolutionally basis for a wide range human behaviors as he observed in ants IIRC.

For someone working with, say social determinants of health or socioeconomic inequality, this is very problematic, as you can stray into the conclusion that 'black people are genetically predisposed to be violent/poor/lazy etc' (not claiming that Wilson did btw).

If then the 'norm' for measurement of a range of things in medicine and society at is drawn from a white, less marginalized community, then this can further disadvantage, or misrepresent the minority community.

the article mixes in a lot of stuff, and arguably uses Wilson as a window to get in other discussion points. But these are all very live topics - particularly in the context of race issues in the US.
 
how so? (honest question) was she not saying wilson was guilty of this?
speculating, but it's possible she read that if wilson used the phrase 'normal distribution' that she implied he meant it was 'normal' in the 'proper' sense, where he just meant it in the dry statistical sense.
big caveat - i haven't read the book she's using for the foundation of her criticism. but her comment about normal distribution seems to stand on its own, whereas the comment about ant colonies may be much more couched in a context i'm not familiar with.
 
Not Wilson specifically - although he did attract controversy for postulating the same genetic/evolutionally basis for a wide range human behaviors as he observed in ants IIRC.

For someone working with, say social determinants of health or socioeconomic inequality, this is very problematic, as you can stray into the conclusion that 'black people are genetically predisposed to be violent/poor/lazy etc' (not claiming that Wilson did btw).
She definitely uses Wilson as a jumping-off point for what she wants to say.

But c'mere, I think what you've said here is the crux of the whole thing. I'm getting the impression that there a school of thought that studying the biological/evolutionary basis of human behaviour is immoral/dangerous/"problematic". Is that the case? And if so - why?
 
and it's obviously true that normal distribution is abused in many contexts - i guess more familiar to joe soap as the bell curve; even my manager has to distribute our performance ratings to a bell curve, even if he doesn't have anyone who's performed badly or well in that year.

but it's an interesting justaposition - in that sense, the bell curve is being used for the opposite of the assumption of a default. it's being used to presume the outliers *do* exist and forcing those outliers *to* exist.
 

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