Here’s another example of over-representation:
I’m an immigrant and I don’t murder anybody. Most of my friends are immigrants, and nobody is remotely violent. But this is massive over-representation. Really striking.
The taboo on noticing over-representation is that, supposedly, once people notice it, they will do terrible things to the over-represented group. The theory makes no sense because everybody already notices. The prohibition on saying it aloud doesn’t prevent anybody from knowing. All that happens is that people get mad at the efforts to protect them from observing reality.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’d hazard autism-spectrum folks are over-represented among mass shooters. And yeah… most of us wouldn’t dream of doing anything of the sort. But maybe for some of us, stable families, limited screentime, and solid religious grounding are even more important than for normies. Important for us, and important for the normies around us, eh?
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Another example of over representation you’ll see here, and with any violent crime: it’s overwhelmingly men.
Funnily enough, the far right doesn’t seem to make anything of this (sensibly realizing that most men aren’t violent criminals), whereas the comparatively small effect of race is supposedly proof that all black people are bad. I wish more people could discuss these facts without being idiots about it.
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Absolutely.
We have great examples in this thread. Over-representation is real in many very different spheres. Look at the photos of the US math Olympiad team. That’s clear over-representation. It should be ok to mention it without people getting weird.
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Shoot, look at any olympic games. Certain countries dominate certain events. South Korea is way overrepresented (particularly given its size) in archery. We all know about Kenyan marathoners, Jamaican sprinters… and if you look at the international rankings for fencing Italy and Hungary are in there way more often than you’d expect from some random sampling. This is not at all controversial. We’re allowed to celebrate it, even.
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“whereas the comparatively small effect of race is supposedly proof that all black people are bad”
This is such a non-sensical strawman argument that I feel embarrassed for you. Nobody does this. In fact the males in prisons argument is often used on the right. There’s no lib discourse doing the rounds that the disproportionate number of males in prison is proof that the justice system is sexist. Nobody in their right mind would say that, because everyone understands that the number of people in prison reflects the rates of criminal offending. But the disproportionate number of black people in prison is somehow proof that we live in a white supremacist justice system, that police are nothing but modern slave catchers (Michelle Alexander) .
“comparatively small effect of race”
Black people in the highest quartile of income offend at the same rates as white people in the lowest quartile. Black women offend at higher rates than white man, which is an insane stat, come to think of it. This is precisely what Clarissa has been posting about: the war on noticing.
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I’m not claiming anyone on the right denies this fact. Are you dense? I’m just arguing that nobody on the right uses this fact to generalize about every individual man, whereas a small segment of the right does use broad statistics to generalize about every individual black person. If you have not encountered this segment of the right, I’m glad for you.
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“Generalize about every individual man” is a contradiction in terms. You generalize over groups. You seem to be confused.
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Noting patterns is fine.
As the great Patrice O’Neal joked, “Because if I see five bald white dudes walking towards me, I ain’t gonna wonder if they got cancer. I’mma go”
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You certainly can generalize about all individuals within a group, which is what I’m suggesting here. But I don’t see any point engaging with you further. You’ve had a nasty attitude from the very beginning of this interaction.
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I’m talking about homicide, btw. lol
Black people accounted for ~58% of all murders in 2022. And that’s, what, 14% of the population? Compare that with your “overwhelmingly men” strawman. Even if you assume that men (50% of the population) commit 100% of all crimes, the rate of overrepresentation is 100/50 = 2. Now compare that with 58/14. Which is larger?
Numerical illiteracy is a sad thing. 😦
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Go to YouTube and search: “infomercial from multicultural Sweden” by user “det pekande fingret”.
It’s 1:38 of “noticing” what is going on in Sweden, set to the tune of “Blue” by Eiffel 65, with attractive presumably Swedish people “dancing” around the issues.
Some of the numbers will be considerably more surprising than what you already expect.
Brought to the Swedish public’s attention by a conservative political party.
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@Post Alley Crackpot
Glad to see you are back and thank you for the wonderful recommendation!
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Been back for a while.
The super short version: the antibiotics that killed Bobby Caldwell fucked up my memory by “Swiss cheesing” it, and I’m still recovering.
And so I make a few errors here and there, such as writing John Searle when I really meant Saul Kripke.
But Clarissa, just wait, they’ll turn Professor Balochkina into a modal ontology yet! 🙂
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