A Quora discussion on systemic racism

This is a comment by someone else on Quora: 

Systemic racism implies that the entire society as we know it today is built with a strive to some sort of skin color supremacy. If you really belive that, then you really don't understand the basic values that moved humanity forward from the stone age. A few rotten apples don't make the entire batch bad and it is racist to throw them all away lightly, considering you are living in a somewhat functioning society, with tons of written knowledge, philosophy and law structure. The fact that you know what is good and bad in the general sense proves that there is no “systemic” racism. There is racism and unfairness, but it's not systemic, huge difference

My reply:

Racism is a product of an interconnected system.. it does not happen in isolation. It's a subtle, aggregate effect which seems to vanish when taken independently, not a few bad people saying obviously hateful things (although this does happen). People who live these experiences do not have the privilege of framing the world in such a simplistic, localized, and individual-basis point of view. The systemic nature of the situation is painfully obvious to them and it behooves us to listen.

If it helps, no one is saying that being a racist makes you a bad person — more often than not systemic racism is perpetuated by ignorance rather than malice. It's just a word… one which is, unfortunately, laden with connotation through history and triggers defensiveness in people (understandably).

However it's our job to see past that and listen. It's arrogance to dismiss the hidden complexity behind what others say and why they say it. Too often we interpret the words of others within our own frameworks, as subsets of ideas we already know, instead of entertaining the possibility that it's an entirely new frame of mind you have to learn. The acceptance that others truly know and experience things you don't is a form of empathy and a generally a good skill to have. In my experience, it really takes a lot of “letting go”, and admitting that there's something of substance there which you could not possibly understand with your current way of seeing things.

Another reason for the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences

 Unreasonable effectiveness: Consider this from a statistical perspective... if you have to, imagine multiple universes that all work differently. 

By being surprised at this "unreasonable effectiveness", you're assuming that it's highly unlikely that mathematics would be effective in predicting things about the universe, creating an "isomorphic model", in other words.

However, isn't it quite feasible that a sub-system would arise under any particular universe, say, some lifeforms, and they might have "information processing" capabilities so as to survive and propagate within that universe's rules? After all, to have some staying power within the universe's rules (particularly if one of the rules is entropy), the lifeform must "care" somewhat for its rules and global properties. This itself is the definition of what it means to actually process information -- the capability to change in response to the data, dependency, responsiveness, non-constancy. 

So it also seems feasible that these creatures might do this in some fashion, perhaps even find a way to communicate information to each other, forming an information processing mesh... and they might do this with certain patterns, protocols. Perhaps the particular instances of information-sharing pertaining to deep concepts in how to survive and replicate -- i.e. information regarding the laws and properties of how their universe work -- could be called... mathematics? In fact, this seems more than just feasible... one might say reasonable, even.

In short, mathematics is reasonably effective because mathematics arises from a smart creature's very effective attempt to understand its universe via something like simulation, to live in it better. 

If you take a meta-universe view, it seems more obvious. You can even think about different example universes like Wolfram's different cellular automata rules. Within these universes you can create self-replicating sub-systems, like the lifeforms I described above. These sub-systems can more or less simulate the laws of their own cellular automata universe under their own paradigm. Kind of like building a Minecraft server within Minecraft itself?