Well, if you are trying to argue evolutionary psychology is impossible (the thesis of the article you presented), yet has value nonetheless, you certainly are being very opaque in going about it.

I think it is worthless, but not using the logic you stated. I think I've been abundantly clear why I think so, over the span of multiple posts.

But you seem to be arguing it is worthless because it isn't falsifiable, but you seem to have no problems finding value in frameworks that are even more non falsifiable (eg. white privilege) so hard to reconcile the dichotomy.

Why is white privilege unfalsifiable?

We have had both wookie and an army of socially ******ed leftists argue about the gender wage gap. They made a bunch of stupid claims about oppression, patriarchy, social construction etc. Those idiotic blank slate leaning theories were.... drum roll.. falsified

Just a single example would be

Wookie: juan is a sexist dumb dumb who probably thinks women choose lower paying jobs

Juan the sexist: Oh look the village idiot is demonstrating their social ******ation and attaching insulting labels to people for not being as socially ******ed as the never-ending clown we've grown to love

We can rank order countries by how egalitarian they are. We can then look at womens CHOICES. We can then reference the rank order and see a clear pattern of differences between the sexes and how the differ in more egalitarian countries. It turns out women do chose lower paying jobs. Its not just some blank slate leaning theory of oppression causing this. Falsified

Random socially ******ed dolt who is happy the socially ******ed mod bans people for sexism based on their ignorant theories: But but but we socialize girls and boys differently and that's what makes them behave differently

Juan the sexist: Actually that doesn't even come close to telling the whole story. We can look at other research that measures prenatal testosterone in both sexes for example. Then they can measure male and female typical behavior and... drum roll.... Falsify claims that go way to far in using socialization to explain behavior

wookie: Ok women might choose lower paying jobs but not for the reason you think and its obviously because you are evil and not because I'm socially ******ed

Juan the sexist: you never disappoint

Someone sure likes using the word "******ed."

That someone has a fan club

Can someone post a hypothesis concerning white privilege that has yet to be disproved?

Well, white privilege (and other tenants of progressive orthodoxy) can certainly be challenged with rational arguments, experiments and data. But there is certainly no evidence that such techniques are effective in causing their adherents to question their beliefs, so it certainly seems unfalsifiable in practice for most.

This is generally what "falsifiable" means.

Sure. White people smoke pot at rates comparable to black people, but black people get prosecuted for it at a far higher frequency.

Cnn global town hall "coronavirus facts and fears" featuring greta thunberg! LOL

She's a grassroots legend sticking it to the man.

You seem to be working under an assumption that black and white people are smoking pot under equal circumstances that would result in prosecution at equal rates independent of skin color. Is your worldview based on data from controlled experiments under such conditions, or are these assumptions just a leap of faith on your part?

Ironically, I don't even necessarily disagree that the concept of "white privilege" has utility in theory. I just think the way it is utilized in the real world, it is meant to be offensive, divisive and pejorative. WN has stated before something to the effect of, maybe that isn't the best name. But as far as I can see the actual goal of the concept of white privilege it to use it as a weapon to create offense and division, so in that sense the name seems to be working very well.

That you find the term offensive doesn't mean the people who coined it or write about it intended it that way.

If you think there are other explanatory variables, you're welcome to put them forth.

Well, as an extreme example someone driving a car erratically while in possession of marijuana is more likely to be prosecuted for marijuana possession than someone doing it in their bedroom.

It seems you are making an assumption of racism/privilege without even attempting to control for an endless possibility of confounding variables.

I was asked for a falsifiable hypothesis, and I supplied one. If you can demonstrate that the entirety of the discrepancy between black and white pot arrest rates is due to frequencies of driving under the influence (not merely DUI charges), then I would have to retract that hypothesis.

I would have said that the entire point is that they are not equal circumstances. That's really the whole idea of "privilege" (which you could read as just "relative advantage"). The point is supposed to be to draw attention to unequal circumstances which are taken to constitute a social problem we should want to address.

Really though, privilege isn't a very fundamentally important concept in social science. I'd say (and I tried to argue this once before, but I don't think I started enough at the beginning) that social location is the fundamental concept. Both the idea that people's lives are shaped in really important ways by their social location (differences in drug arrest and incarceration rates being an example) and also that what people know from experience is similarly conditioned.

The idea of "privilege" is really no more than the observation that some social locations are at an advantage in various ways. As I've said before, I think you have no objection to this concept when it is being applied to differences in social class or cultural capital (e.g. when you're criticizing elites and the media).

As far as knowledge and experience, one of the more interesting applications of "privilege" as an idea is actually that part of the advantage comes from not even having to be aware of your relative position. So one of the ideas behind the concept as an explanatory tool was supposed to be that it can be used to answer questions like "why do black Americans perceive a larger problem with the criminal justice system than white Americans?" As you mentioned, I'm not generally the biggest fan of "check your privilege" as a political slogan, but that's really the idea: to point out that what seems intuitive from one (relatively advantaged) vantage point will seem different from another, and that it's worth your time to take that into consideration.

So, it's a privilege to pay for unjust prosecutions....don't think that hypothesis proves racial privilege, especially when factoring in non-pot smokers.

Wat

Well, specifically in reference to the concept of white privilege, I would argue that "white" is not a very accurate or useful frame of social location, in the same way that "black" may be. And that the people who use it the most are aware of this at some level, and use it cynically.

For example if you read arguments against race based "affirmative action" policies in colleges, stats like the one below pop up a lot, with the implication that framing things in terms of race based privilege is cynically used as a means to perpetuate more relevant social locations, eg. class privilege.



-Similarly I mentioned before that Sam Harris did a podcast with an high school admissions officer for an elite prep high school and she mentioned that in her empirical experience being a middle-class white male with nothing else under the hood (eg money, family connections, sports prowess) was the least privileged "social location" to be in as far as admittance to elite universities.

--That is just one example. I could keep going. I am sure all of us can think of ways in which "white" is not a very useful social location to use, unless of course your aims are sinister.

It's not a privilege for a person to pay for something they don't want, such as prosecuting people for smoking pot. and also, China. The point is, your hypothesis suffers from the same issues as what you wrote about evolutionary psychology, but the most critical problem is, the reliance on assumptions to reach conclusions, i.e. that's its a privilege to white people that a black person (or anyone) gets prosecuted for smoking pot.

The prosecutions are wanted, and they're funded by taxation.

OH WAIT OMG CHINA THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING