[huml] PC-33 -Section 4.4.6-race

This specific Issue has evolved From Dennis Hamilton's Weblog:

"Repeat after me: Race is not a physical characteristic. Skin color, complexion, stature, all kinds of things are physical characteristics. Race is not one of them. I am not sure that tattoos and distinguishing marks should be considered physical characteristics either, but I am not so concerned about that. And this is not about the assumption of "race" as a concept about something physical. It is about the illusion of not taking anything for granted. That conceit is what really scares me. The inclusion of race as an identifiable physical characteristic that can be embraced with some kind of discrete coding system is just the most dramatic symptom that I found in this material.

By the way, if you want to argue about whether or not race is an objective physical characteristic, fine. What are the distinct qualities and how are they identified? Remember to include yourself and all the people in your immediate acquaintance as demonstration and evidence for the reliability and objectivity of your proposed classification."

This is not to say that his objections are confined to race and the alleged conceit/illusion of "not taking anything for granted." I am confining this specific reply to messages I have received related to race and which fit into the huml attribute of physicalDescriptors.

However, before I focus on race, I want to answer the observation that the alleged conceit/illusion of saying that: "we require better fundamental descriptions that take nothing for granted," is at best ingenuous.

This objectionable phrase occurs in Section 4.2.13 in the textual description of HumanGroup following upon the description of Human. The objection seems to imply that there should be criteria for establishing who or what qualifies as Human and thence HumanGroup (being two or more Humans gathered in an environment by our definition). This is at best ingenuous?

My answer is simply that is necessarily so. That is quite different from assuming that it is possible to "take nothing for granted." It is stated as a requirement that we adopt no a priori exclusionary conditions. To think otherwise would be to hypothesize that some acceptable test could be constructed to establish the qualification of an identity of Human and then of HumanGroup.

Anyone who wishes to do so is certainly free to attempt that. If Dennis or anyone else returns with a suitable test in hand, we will give up our naivete and impose it, if it is shown to achieve adequate reliability and can be proven NOT to disallow any valid Human, or Human-authorized, interaction-capable software agent. THAT is an important part of what we mean by taking nothing for granted. The criticism implies that we somehow SHOULD take something for granted (in this case the universal reliability and applicabiity of some test). I submit that this tendency to make such assumptions (not this particular assumption) is exactly the root cause of much miscommunication and misunderstanding. That people do take too much for granted is exactly why we must do our utmost to avoid that.

race-

As I said in my reply to Dennis, we included race because the term is used in the arena of public safety and, I will add now, law enforcement.

We also argued about it in terms of cultural anthropology and included in that discussion were viewpoints and opinions such as Dennis is expressing.

We did not include it because we agreed with the use of it, or because we were asserting it as a valid physical characteristic. As shorthand for genetic derivation or ethnic derivation the term is also inadequate. As a cultural descriptor it is also both obsolete and inaccurate.

We did not include it for any reason of our own, but because we are attempting to deal with objective world the way the objective world is, rather than how we would prefer it to be. In this case, the term and the associated concept of racism, as discredited as they are, are also indisputably operant in our human world.

I don't think we can claim any measure of objectivity if we start to exclude terms of which we do not approve. The temptation here is to attempt one of two basically flawed methods of eliminating an objectionable concept. Both of these arguments have been put forward separately in messages to me privately.

1--It is bad public relations to maintain the term because it will always engender controversy and conflict. Thus it creates a disagreeable association with our work which might cause public disapproval.

I agree that the concept of race itself is a misogynistic anachronism. It is compounded of religion and colonialism in our western historical context. It was born of completely flawed reasoning in a self-justifying system that provided great economic advantages through slavery and appealed to some of the worst aspects of human nature such as greed, cruelty, willful ignorance and unreasoning fear of the unknown. It produced disgusting and horrible abuses. It has also, arguably, been with us in one form or another from blood feud to crusade, since prehistoric times, explaining the extermination of neanderthals by our cro--magnon forebearers.

It is an odious, odoriferous and totally disgusting concept and it is alive and well in our world right now.

We will have to vote on it, I'm afraid. I will go along with the majority, of course.

It will also occur time and again in any honest description of cultural groups. Cultural Xenophobia, fear of the outsider, may be one of the most universal characteristics of humanity, or perhaps it might be better termed inhumanity, but that it is the fact, like it or not, is, I have to say, indisputable.

However, one may also hope that we can further the process of retiring this inaccurate and flawed concept as a concept.

2--If we don't use it, we will help it disappear. This is never stated, because anyone who actually comes out and says it will immediate see how immature and naive it truly is. This is the unnamed and unacknowledged sibling of the Big Lie, of which the propaganda of Nazi domination in Germany in the 30s and 40s is the prime example. The Big Lie says that if you repeat a lie often enough and loudly enough, it will become reality. This implied argument might best be termed the Ostrich Effect, and be characterized by a belief that if we refuse to see it, it isn't there.

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