this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
94 points (98.0% liked)
TeCHnology
112 readers
1 users here now
Technology discussion for Switzerland. This community shall discuss various topics of technology in and around Switzerland.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I once got told that if I even tried to defend or discuss my point of view (after the first and only comment on that thread), I'll be banned. Because I said that if you randomly pick out someone from a random population, you're less likely to pick a minority, because they're a minority. And that's how statistics works.
Beside the point, but maybe still worthmentioning: if the "majority" is in truth just another minority, but the biggest one, with, say, 15% of the population, and therefore by default calls itself the majority, you're still more likely to pick an individual of one of the 24 other minorities. What you're unlikely to do, is to pick an individual of a specific minority, no matter which one. The "least unlikely" is an individual of said "majority", because it's the biggest minority. It's still relatively unlikely, though, and likelier to pick an individual of some other minority, just not any specific one.
yes, but you still have a higher probability of picking one of those than any other individual one of the others. you do have a higher probability of picking any other than that single one, but that's not saying much. If you pick a random sample, the biggest minority will still be the biggest minority.
Correct, you have the highest probability of picking an individual from the biggest minority.
It's pretty easy to be the aggressor in a situation when trying to make a point like that. What was the actual context for that point to even be raised the first place, and was it even the main point of the comment you replied to or was it nitpicking?
The point was about proportional representation in media. The key word there was proportional.
If I picked all my actors by picking names out of a hat (meaning it's impossible to discriminate), there is a high chance that there won't be a lot of asians in my result. But that's not because I have anything against asians, but simply because I live in a mediterranean country, and there are far fewer asians here than you'd find in asia. So even if I ended up with 19 mediterranean people, and one asian person, that'd be a proportional representation.
But I was the aggressor for not agreeing that "biasing the results but only if you personally don't like them" is good proportional representation.
And calling me the aggressor for stating an objective, undisputable mathematical fact in a relevant discussion is exactly why it's a toxic echo chamber. The truth there is decided by majority. Not by the real world.