What on earth is happening at American universities that makes anyone think for a second that light/dark as used in psychology has anything to do with skin color and not, as is the case, with probably one of humanities oldest existing metaphors, namely darkness and light.

You're assuming I picked up such ideas at a university, but that's not the case. Nor do I avidly consume ethnic studies or other stereotypically 'social justice' papers/books etc. I am interested in criminal justice issues and rigorous data-driven approaches to measuring the effectiveness of institutions.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3834710

Perhaps you should make fewer assumptions and follow the data where it leads.

After scrolling through an entire 40 page paper on the risks of using machine learning in criminal justice systems I have absolutely no idea how that is related to psychology terminology in Northern Europe.

Is there a name for a strategy in debate where you just throw a random paper at people and hope they don't click on it?

Nice dodge. If you had spent some time reading it instead of just scrolling you might have noticed the numerous references to racial disparities in parole hearings and the effort to assess outcomes in rigorous fashion.

The sad reality is you tried to hang a lame trope about 'American universities' on me and when that failed you switched to a disingenuous posture of being too cool to engage with an example of a statistically rigorous paper. While you're moaning about humanity's oldest metaphors I'm pointing out that such metaphors are often vehicles for bias which have measurable real world outcomes, deliberate or not.

Hi anigbrowl, I really enjoy this community. I don't think anyone likes to read things like:

> The sad reality is you tried to

> While you're moaning about

Let's follow the guidelines:

> Be kind. Don't be snarky.

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

I spent about 15 minutes looking over that paper you linked and it looks like the researchers are discussing systemic problems and biases in the American legal system. Race is one of the variables they studied in their model. Their results show that Non-Black candidates are treated more favorably than Black candidates in the legal system. Am I understanding the part you wanted to highlight? The paper and results makes sense to me but I don't understand how that directly relates to Barrin92's original point.

I understand that someone could see Black people being discriminated against and connect that to the word "dark" being used to describe a negative trait. I get that using the same word to describe someone's race and describe something as negative can be bad. Is that what's happening here though? How do we determine which of the following examples from marriam-webster.com [0] are OK to use?

- They walked into the dark room, it was devoid of light.

- They are wearing dark clothing.

- They prefer/dislike dark rum.

- There were dark powers that lead to war.

- They have a dark view of the future.

- They had a dark period of history.

- They enjoy dark humor.

- Most of their dealings were done in the dark.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dark

Perhaps you could address your reminder about guidelines to the person who replied to a tactful comment with 'What on earth is happening at American universities [...]'. The only original point of that comment was to generate an emotional reaction.

I replied by pointing out that said trope doesn't apply to me and citing my preference for a data driven approach, a polite rejoinder which was rudely rebuffed.

Let's follow another guideline [0]:

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Barrin92 brought up American universities where it wasn't necessary. I get it. Let's not dismiss their comment because they brought that up. I looked past that and I am trying to keep this on topic by discussing the point they made.

Does the paper you linked say anything about using the words "light" and "dark"?

How do we determine which definitions of "dark" we should use in a professional context?

I think this topic is important to discuss and I am genuinely curious how you and others would address the points in my previous comment.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please take it up with them.

> Is there a name for a strategy in debate where you just throw a random paper at people and hope they don't click on it?

The Internet argument.

Similarly, you can also use the same term when someone's defense is the first google result for the keywords in the argument you're having, but they didn't actually read the article they linked.

'dark' has been used in psychology forever to refer to such traits. There's no evidence these terms were used in the actual construction of the test, so not sure what your point is - it's an online test, mostly for fun as far as i can tell

Please don't try to pull the woke card here. It's simply not acceptable.

Humans, like all diurnal animals, fear the dark.

Most horror films don’t take place at 2pm in broad daylight.

Dark-skinned people fear the dark no less than light-skinned people do.

Virtue signaling gets upvotes on Twitter/Reddit.

Maybe someone should tell American universities that not everything revolves around race.

Or at least that America's specific, very real race issues are not global or even universal across all English-speaking cultures.

It's a common response on Reddit that Europe is far more racist than America because they're blind to their own problems.

The trouble with engaging in good faith with that kind of ideology is that it's often used, deliberately or otherwise, to obscure class conflict. Because racial tensions are seen as both more personal and more impossible to solve than class tensions, it tends to drag the conversation out of the realm where solutions could even be proposed. Funnily enough that bit of obfuscation seems to mostly benefit people with enough family wealth to afford a degree at an American university[1].

I had a very off-putting exchange with a redditor in which I argued that the class interests of the working poor and those dependent on welfare were quite different, and that this explained much of the demographic fault-lines in the 2016 election. He immediately accused me of equating ethnic minorities with the welfare class, despite the fact the Trump administration was at the time very publicly talking about the recent drop in black unemployment. For all of the Reddit community's talk about acknowledging one's own problems, the fact that he personally was equating black people with unemployment and his political enemies were doing the opposite wasn't something he could consciously engage with. "America has a racism problem, but only the half I don't identify with". I don't doubt that kind of projection is present all over the place where this subject comes up.

[1]I wouldn't be surprised if the fact much of Europe subsidises post secondary education contributes to the fact that the debate is different there - not enough of a class marker if you don't need a private tutor to make it over the line.

Not everything does, but it seems like you're suggesting they throw out a lot of good data indicating that many things do. It's an issue because disparities in areas like criminal justice tend to be self-perpetuating and mutually reinforcing.

America's racism issues is not the same as the racism issues in other countries, and it's frustratingly racist of americans to assume that it basically is, the world over.

You'll be surprised to find that in some countries, everyone's skin color and look is the same and they still have their own unique twist on racism that has lasted for hundreds of years. In other countries, skin color is the not racism focus point, even though there is skin color variation and other things are!

Nobody is making such an assumption. But you might like to think about what is the largest market for English language clinical instruments that purport to measure moral factors in objective terms

Presumably the so-called 'dark personality traits' have nothing to do with skin color but the adjective 'dark' as something that is threatening is because the night is dark which is ultimately derived from the fact that we are day animals. The so-called 'woke' crowd is not there because anything they say is beneficial but because they enjoy being holier-than-thou and policing the utterings of everyone.

We really shouldn't be sacrificing whole words just to appease cranks who won't be satisfied anyway. The English language has subtleties and people should stop trying to conflate meanings just to feed the outrage.

Agreed. I'm all for inclusivity, but everybody knows (by and large) what a one's "dark side" means, and that it has nothing to do with ethnicity (which is what the GP is hinting at).. Viewers don't assume Dexter's *dark passenger" is a representation of a Black person, nor Dar(k|th) Vader (despite being dressed all in black, and coincidentally, even dubbed by a Black actor). Darkness is a well established idiom in psychology, and if there's any confusion about it, I wouldn't say it's "unwanted" - more like deliberately assumed, explicitly suggested, intended.

You're talking about a situation where priming is relevant. Your objection doesn't address the problem.

Personal attacks will get you banned here. No more of this, please.

Also, we've already asked you not to do ideological flamewars on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please also don't take HN threads further into flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

thanks

I agree with you, I was raised in a religious tradition where this distinction between light and dark was institutionally overplayed, went right into covert traditions & pronouncements around race and to this day it's basically an issue that everybody in the org with a brain is racing to put behind them.

We can be creative and do better with the terminology, bring something new and improved forward for those who follow. It shouldn't be a big deal.