So I guess you're against trying to find a cure for cancer.

BTW, it's pretty funny that you call systematic bias a "label", yet bad luck is something that seems sufficiently explanatory to you. It seems to me that "bad luck" is a label that you apply to something that you don't wish to study because you just don't care. It's bad luck that humans can't fly. It's bad luck that people die of the flu. As pretty much everything humans do is try to eradicate things that could be labelled as bad luck, actually using that term is essentially yelling "I don't care about this! I like things as they are!"

I made a very specific claim. The parent poster applied a label to that claim as if it somehow refutes the claim - I was merely disagreeing with this.

I can easily provide reasoning for why study of flu (or other disease) is worth studying: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8369801

Can you do the same (or even provide a coherent definition of) systemic bias? If so, you may convince me it is worth studying. Im unconvinced it is even well defined, since I've never seen a definition that advocates of it consistently apply.

> Can you do the same (or even provide a coherent definition of) systemic bias?

Easily! But just as your reasoning is completely dependent on an axiomatic value (death is bad), so is mine: That many people's freedom to cultivate, explore and express their talents is hindered by those in power (positive claim) is bad because freedom is good (normative claim), therefore we should study how those restrictions work so we can remove them.

But don't get me wrong: the distribution of power will change (it always does), yet inequality will grow again (it always does; a dynamic system that is not perfectly balanced and that includes positive feedback loops will always go out of balance) and this process will be repeated. I know this because pretty much all of history has been this way: inequality grows; social strife grows; people demand change; others first politely and then less so explain to them that that is scientifically/theologically impossible or that things are best as the are; after a lot of struggle things change and power shifts; inequality grows and so on and so forth.

> Im unconvinced it is even well defined, since I've never seen a definition that advocates of it consistently apply.

You are right in the sense that "systemic bias" is a term invented to explain to laymen what "bias" is. To social researchers, it's clear that all social bias (where "social" means "not exploding volcano in one town and not in another") is "systemic" (whatever that means). It really means nothing more than "a result of social dynamics disproportionately directed by those with power", and even that is a definition for laymen because obviously, that's what power is, so it really means "a result of social dynamics". But even that is redundant because every social phenomenon is a result of social dynamics (that's what a social phenomenon means), so it really just means "bias". Personally, I hate the term "systemic bias" because "systemic" may suggest either a bureaucratic bias or something dictated by law or decree.

Have you read the Dune series?

I read Dune many years ago and I think I remember reading another book that may have taken place in the same world, but I'm not sure. Why?

The theme of the series is basically how societal power dynamics play out on a multi-millennial timescale. The author called the series Dune after he noticed that, from above, sand dunes form a wave pattern over the land, so suddenly something he had only thought about at a local level had much greater meaning from this higher perspective of time. Anyway I thought it seemed up your alley. The first novel is a classic but it just scrathes the surface thematically.