As a long time fan of your comments on Quillette, I was delighted to see you started writing regularly on Substack.
My concern with this article though is I am not sure everyone would agree with the way you are defining fairness. The point is that insurance or interest rates should be set blind to race, not blind to hypertension or income. The fact that some racial groups have better and some have worse health or lending records is just a statistical artifact, not an example of some kind of higher level racism. The point of a fair system is to take our thumb off the scale, not to change which side we are pressing on.
From a fairness standpoint, I do not believe we should lower basketball shooting standards to ensure we get a sufficient proportion of Asian females or dwarves on NBA teams. Fairness is using impartial standards applied equally to all, and disparate impact is not proof to the contrary.
From a practical standpoint, I could go into depth on the unintended adverse impacts of forcing statistical equality after the fact on insurance or lending. Perverse results are virtually guaranteed. This will probably be off topic though, so I will refrain doing so.
As a long time fan of your comments on Quillette, I was delighted to see you started writing regularly on Substack.
My concern with this article though is I am not sure everyone would agree with the way you are defining fairness. The point is that insurance or interest rates should be set blind to race, not blind to hypertension or income. The fact that some racial groups have better and some have worse health or lending records is just a statistical artifact, not an example of some kind of higher level racism. The point of a fair system is to take our thumb off the scale, not to change which side we are pressing on.
From a fairness standpoint, I do not believe we should lower basketball shooting standards to ensure we get a sufficient proportion of Asian females or dwarves on NBA teams. Fairness is using impartial standards applied equally to all, and disparate impact is not proof to the contrary.
From a practical standpoint, I could go into depth on the unintended adverse impacts of forcing statistical equality after the fact on insurance or lending. Perverse results are virtually guaranteed. This will probably be off topic though, so I will refrain doing so.
Great article!