FAIR’s Pro-Human Pledge

I fully support the mission of the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR). That mission is expressed in "The Pro-Human Pledge" of FAIR:

Fairness. “I seek to treat everyone equally without regard to skin color or other immutable characteristics. I believe in applying the same rules to everyone, and reject disparagement of individuals based on the circumstances of their birth.”

Understanding. “I am open-minded. I seek to understand opinions or behavior that I do not necessarily agree with. I pursue objective truth through honest inquiry. I am tolerant and consider points of view that are in conflict with my convictions.”

Humanity. “I recognize that every person has a unique identity, that our shared humanity is precious, and that it is up to all of us to defend and protect the civic culture that unites us.”

For more information on FAIR and to sign the pledge, you are invited to visit FAIR.

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On Confusing Correlation for Causation

Matt Stoller offers this excellent presentation of the commonly used fallacy of confusing correlation for causation:

For years, we’ve been told that while drinking too much is bad for your health, having just a glass of wine with dinner, as the French do, can be good for your heart. And many studies do indeed show such an association. But what we’re discovering is that this correlation is an illusion. In fact people who drink a small amount of wine every night are healthier, but only because it means they aren’t drinking soda. Even small amounts of alcohol are bad for you, but as academics are coming to understand, if you drink a glass of wine every evening, you also tend to exercise, eat fruits and vegetables, and refrain from smoking. And it is those habits, not the wine, that improve health.

This logical fallacy is known as confusing correlation with causation, or assuming that because A happened and then B happened, that A caused B. The media loves these kinds of associations, because they seem correct, but they are often just coincidence, or a result of a variable that’s not being observed. Sometimes correlations are silly, like saying that “there are more sick people at hospitals, therefore hospitals cause sickness.” They can even be ridiculous; one famous study found that shark attacks are common on beaches with more ice cream sales, the theory being that sharks like to eat people full of ice cream.

Every aspiring law student encounters this fallacy; it’s fundamental in law to understand when something is causal vs coincidental or associative. It’s such a commonly taught error to avoid that it was the basis for one of the first episodes of the famous show The West Wing, an episode named “Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc” after the latin phrase describing this fallacy. Lawyers understand the difference between correlation and causation. So do academics. An entire generation of would-be lawyers who watched the West Wing understand it. It’s not a mystery.

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A Robust Defense of Color-Blindness by Coleman Hughes

Coleman Hughes warns that the claims of many activists that those of us who seek color-blindness are claiming that we don't see different shades of skin color. This argument is disingenuous. Given that I'm a photographer, I need to set my camera and lights to capture flattering portraits of all kinds of people and skin color can be a factor in how I set my equipment. Further, beautiful people come in all colors. Here are a few excerpts from Coleman's article, "Actually, Color-Blindness Isn't Racist."

"“Color-blind” is an expression like “warm-hearted”: it uses a physical metaphor to encapsulate an abstract idea. To describe a person as warm-hearted is not to say something about the temperature of that person’s heart, but about the kindness of his or her spirit. Similarly, to advocate for color-blindness is not to pretend you don’t notice color. It is to endorse a principle: we should strive to treat people without regard to race, in our public policy and our private lives.

. . .

In the early 1960s, there was an elite consensus that color-blindness was the goal of race politics. Then the race riots of the late 1960s led politicians and corporations to perform an about-face. They began implementing race-based policies as a hasty and pragmatic response to the riots—much like governments and corporations did in response to the riots of 2020. Today, you can scarcely find a professor in an elite institution who would defend color-blindness.

This is a grave mistake. Color-blindness is the best principle with which to govern a multiracial democracy. It is the best way to lower the temperature of racial conflict in the long run. It is the best way to fight the kind of racism that really matters. And it is the best way to orient your own attitude toward this nefarious concept we call race. We abandon color-blindness at our own peril."

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Why You Need to Invest in Independent News Media

From Michael Shellenberger's article: "Why A Shocking Number Of Crazy-Sounding Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories Turned About To Be True."

The World Economic Forum really does exercise a creepy influence over world leaders and it really does want “A Great Reset” whereby we’ll collectively move to living in low-energy, high-density, and low-privacy environments, having less physical wealth and, yes, eating insects for protein instead of meat.

The FBI really did spy on Donald Trump’s campaign, run brief-and-leak operations, and spread misinformation about the extent of Russian election interference in ways that led nearly all of the media, media platforms, and Democrats to believe that Hunter Biden’s laptop was fake and anyone who talked about it is a conspiracy theorist, and in a way that may have constituted election interference.

Facebook and Twitter really did censor accurate covid information at the behest of the White House and Twitter, and operate secret blacklists to censor and deplatform disfavored voices and opinions, even when their own internal teams said the people being censored had not actually broken any of the platform’s rules.

. . .

A growing number of people understand that they must pay for news and information from trustworthy and independent sources, ones without financials conflict of interest, and who make their values and beliefs explicit, rather than hide them. Ultimately, what threatens elites who are abusing their power, from WEF to the FBI to the White House, are not the people selling conspiracy theories but the ones exposing them.

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