Comment by tomrod | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomrod | Hacker News Reader

I didn't realize college admissions' affirmative action had reached SCOTUS. I wonder what the outcome will be.

Key summary:

> "Today Yale joined peer institutions in stating emphatically that student diversity is essential to the missions of American universities and promotes educational excellence for all students,” President Peter Salovey said. “Our amicus curiae brief makes clear that the way we consider race and ethnicity as part of individualized applicant review is crucial to achieving a richly diverse academic environment that enhances students’ educational experiences and maximizes their future success. Yale stands firm in supporting universities’ established right to compose incoming classes that are diverse along many dimensions and in its commitment to enrolling students from all walks of life."

I wish I had more understanding of the topic. Diversity seems to have two dimensions to it: (1) diversity of thought, (2) diversity of background. Diversity of background would seem to encourage more diversity of thought, which I think is typically desirable, but has this been proven out/quantified? Conversely, governance seems to be a lot harder (i.e. require more authoritarian approaches to get goals accomplished) where there is diversity of thought. Please note I'm not making a normative statement here.

I recently listened to the 5-4 podcast episode "Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1" that covered the 2007 US Supreme Court decision. It discusses using race in public school choice and discusses two different interpretations of the 14th amendment. "If you take 14th Amendment, or have any sort of class that talks about desegregation in public schools, there are two different ways of thinking about the holding in Brown versus Board of Education. One is that Brown versus Board of Education is an anti-classification case, and the other is that it's an anti-subordination case." [1] As a member of the public with no background in law, I suspect that this distinction may be what SCOTUS will rule on in these upcoming cases. If you're interested in the topic and enjoy podcasts, I highly recommend this episode.

[1] https://www.fivefourpod.com/episodes/parents-involved-in-com...

Thanks for the reference!

The Ivy leagues today are anything but diverse in thought, this should be obvious. What actually exists is a repressive liberal orthodoxy, and no dissent is tolerated.

I ought to expand on this since this comment will surely be controversial. I make no comment on which view is right or wrong; but suppose the conservative view were favored, and any disagreement with the ideology got your fired from your job, publicly shamed, made a pariah, etc.? Would you feel comfortable sharing dissenting opinions? There is no open debate, no sense that truer speech will naturally win out over disfavored speech, no sense that people have the right to say and think unorthodox beliefs.

This is pretty far removed from my direct experience with Ivy League alumni and professors (coauthors, colleagues, coworkers). It is a common refrain though. Elements of conservatism are sometimes viewed as being eschewed when they are ideologically based and the evidence doesn't support claims. But this is true generally and a consequence of the academic incentive structure where there are never enough resources to fund.

On the other hand, academic malfeasance does occur (e.g. Alzheimers research in recent decades), so the system is far from perfect, but the risky/rewarding incentive is to absolutely decry the current state as being completely wrong. Consider Nassim Taleb's popularization after the Great Recession as a great example, or earlier Paul Krugman's transaction cost theories.

It is not at all removed from my direct experience. (And I am, in fact, an Ivy League alumnus.)

See https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/03/the_prevalence_1.ht... for the shocking level of acceptance of Marxist ideas in the social sciences, despite a lack of anything resembling evidence for it. And a tremendous amount of evidence that attempts at implementing Marxism have done insane amounts of damage to the world.

How is 18% Marxists in the social sciences evidence for "a repressive liberal orthodoxy, and no dissent is tolerated"?

Personal experience can be source of bias in evaluation, News @ 10! /s :)

It is evidence that academia doesn't require evidence for left-wing claims. So to the extent that they do that, insisting on evidence from conservatives is discrimination. (I'd prefer that everyone's claims require evidence.)

But https://www.johnlocke.org/academics-support-discrimination-a... speaks more directly to your question. Conservatives are discriminated against in academia for being conservative.

Doesn't this just mean that conservatives believe Marxism is an unacceptable worldview, since it exists?

Why would we police evidence-based thought in academia?

If the thought in academia which leads to Marxism was actually evidence-based, then it should be easy to cite evidence for Marxism. You'd just have to read what they say and quote their arguments.

But it is not. Evidence for Marxism that I've seen boils down to rhetoric. Evidence against Marxism involves mass famines, low economic productivity, failed predictions, and so on. Therefore a significant fraction of Marxists in academia must support it for reasons other than the evidence.

"Marxism" is a tricky term to use in an discussion because it means such different things to different people. The commonly understood meaning of "Marxism" differs significantly from the socioeconomic theories and models that Marx wrote about.

Even among academics, there are many different schools of Marxist thought.

The evidence against Marx's theories isn't "mass famines, low economic productivity" but his failed predictions of worldwide revolutions.

This may not be fair, but I am going to hazard a guess that you haven't read much of Marx's work and are instead operating off a pop cultural background understanding. That's not a bad thing, that's true of most people. One possible reason for the prevalence of "Marxism" in the social sciences is that I would suspect that they are more likely to have read his work and are probably self identifying as "Marxist" under a pretty different definition of the term than the one used in pop culture.

First, please note that "failed predictions" in my list of arguments against Marxism. My list was, "Evidence against Marxism involves mass famines, low economic productivity, failed predictions, and so on." In other words people who have attempted to apply Marx's theories have created disasters, places which follow his theories do poorly, academics who apply his theories to predicting stuff, get it wrong, and so on. As far as I can tell, any evidence-based assessment of Marxism comes up with a big fat zero.

Second, I wouldn't call myself particularly well-educated on Marxism, but I know somewhat more than the average person. And you're right that a Maoist is different than someone who studies Critical Race Theory, even though both may self-identify as Marxists. (And conversely both may NOT self-identify as Marxists even though Marxist thought has a deep impact on both.) However the "big fat zero" for Marxism includes, as far as I know, all derivative theories as well. But there are enough of them that I know little enough about that I won't recommend being particularly confident of that stronger statement.

Can’t you say the same for capitalism? Much of the support is rhetorical mentioning freedom and rational decision-making while the evidence against capitalism involves mass homelessness, poverty, poor healthcare, imperialism, militarism, bad predictions, and huge imbalances in the distribution of wealth and opportunity.

I'm reminded of https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1526975113597489154:

Yale is the epicenter of the woke mind virus attempting to destroy civilization.

Paul Graham's immediate chime of support shows it isn't just a piece of random silliness on Elon Musk's part. And other things I've seen (eg the harassment of Amy Chua) certainly fit.

This amicus brief speaking up for racism and discrimination (as long as it is against those funny looking Asians) is a minor piece of the general pattern.

How exactly does Amicus entail racism and discrimination against Asians?

The lawsuit that they are filing an Amicus in was brought by an Asian-American organization for the purpose of getting Harvard to stop specifically discriminating against Asian-Americans.

Therefore the brief is arguing for racism and discrimination against Asians.

What is particularly galling is that the argument in the brief is defending the university's ability to pick students who have been affected by their race. Thereby implicitly arguing that Asian-Americans have NOT been affected by their race.

Meanwhile, back in reality, hate crimes against Asian-Americans are up over 300% nationwide: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/anti-asian-hate-c....

The purpose of affirmative action policies is to help under-represented groups. Asians aren't under-represented at Yale, they are 19 percent of the student population, while only 6 percent of the American population.

So asian students are being punished because other asian students did too well? Back in the early-to-mid 20th century, universities had limits to how many jewish students could join each year, with the argument that if they didn't, jews would make up the entire university population. Are you in favor of bringing back that policy, as well?

There are other policies universities have established to create a student body that is somewhat reflective of America -- they discriminate based on geography(multi-regional), on socio-economics (first generation students preferred), on sex (males preferred), athletic ability (the strong and fast preferred), age (youth preferred), and on veteran status (veterans preferred). Conservatives, being who they are, chose to focus on race.

I will answer your question with a question:

If the Supreme Court requires universities select their student based solely on standardized tests, and consequently this results in our top universities being made up of primarily of foreign nationals (there are billions of Chinese and Indians, and it is illegal to discriminate based on national origin), would you favor that inevitable outcome?

I don't think it's possible to have meaningful diversity of thought without diversity of background. That spans many attributes—race, economic status, where you grew up, etc. Race is obviously an important one, given how much it changes many people's experiences and perceptions.

I think diverse racial representation is important, but is maybe better viewed as an indicator of success rather than a metric to optimize. Especially at a university, diversity of thought and academic talent should be the primary factors (imo).

I think I tend to agree. The place to put the thumb on the scales is pre-k-12, especially early on.

If we look at purely merit metrics at the bottom of the funnel at university, then based on the approach these universities are taking, Asians will have the best merit metrics, and Blacks the worst. I fail to see how this could possibly promote a good social outcome. People are going to notice and stereotyping is going to kick in.

If they are truly looking for diversity of background, they can do that without race. If Yale focused on admitting smart, low income students they would have a much better diversity of backgrounds.

> The median family income of a student from Yale is $192,600, and 69% come from the top 20 percent.

I would be interested in seeing what the percent of students are from the bottom 20% of incomes

People of the same background can vote for two very different political parties, which seems rather meaningful in term of diversity. Even people within the same house hold can vote for different parties, and its fairly common to hear people complain that other family members do not share their views about the world.

I would suggest to give this task of measuring diversity of thought to social scientists. If universities want to go by that metric then a rigorous and measurable definition should be the first step.

Allow the social science academics to determine the fairness of admissions into academics? Wouldn’t this just result in even less diversity?

Social science on a global scale determining a rigorous and measurable definition?

If you can't measure success then you can't evaluate it, and if you don't write it down then you can't critique it. Right now they use a few single bits of information, a person race, to determine diversity of thought. That would never be accepted in a scientific research looking at diversity of thought from a rigorous definition.

With this court? I don't wonder.

If a conservative Supreme Court were really drunk with power, don't you think the Ivy League institutions would have changed more than this?

Without threadjacking: both things are true here, else RvW would not have been overturned as the accomplishment of an explicit political goal.

RvW wouldn't have been established except as a political goal. 1973 wasn't Eden before Original Sin.

This point isn't really relevant to the identification of a "runaway Supreme court" overthrowing precedence with politically outcome-motivated reasoning.

It is if we only blow the "Foul!!!" whistle just after we get the precedent that we want, how we got there be damned.

I think the goal of using race in admissions is more about giving disadvantaged people an advantage rather than increasing "diversity of thought".

Assuming people are "disadvantaged" simply because of the color of their skin is a textbook example of "the soft bigotry of low expectations".

As well as "redlining existed in the lifetimes of the student's parent's generation, limiting intergenerational wealth and transfer to a degree that, all else equal, limited the opportunities for that group in many more ways that other groups did not experience."

Be sure to include the outcomes of racially motivated structural policies into your assessment and you will shortly recognize "the soft bigotry of low expectations" is a different metric altogether (one that PG has spoken on, where the average performance in-group is much higher than overall average, indicating you only hire cream of the crop from that group).

Yeah, but it leads to absurd results, where the black daughter of two doctors, with 500K+ in annual family income is given preferential treatment, while the Chinese-American son of a janitor is discriminated against.

But he has privilege, and she doesn't.

Yeah, but why are Chinese considered privileged now, when before they were not?

Because when they were mostly poor railroad workers, they were easily manipulated, and now that they're middle-class professionals, they aren't?

How did that happen if America is so systematically racist that races can't get ahead on their own without positive discrimination?

We're only racist with an eye toward particular races. Allegedly.

My understanding of people claiming privilege is that, under ceterus paribus ("all else equal") assumptions, certain groups have worse socioeconomic outcomes than others.

The hypothetical here doesn't match that.

Do you have any proof of that being the case? If the Chinese son makes it clear to the admission team about the hardships he overcame, surely that would be to his advantage.

Completely anecdotally, but I had two Asian colleagues from poor households. One got a full ride to Harvard and the other to MIT. Whereas, the smartest person I've ever personally known was accepted to Harvard but not given any financial aid. He was a white male with a drug-addicted mom raised by his grandma in the slums.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29964/w299...

You're advocating an arbitrary system over a rules system. Who decides whether the sob story the janitor's son tells is sufficient? Is having two drug-addled parents better than one?

In a rules based system, you get in or don't based on your qualifications and prerequisites. You can predict how the system will act in restricting you. It is fairer.

In a system where everyone must be judged, it leads to exercises in capriciousness, which is what we're seeing now. "We have too many that look like you, we need a different assortment of appearances." That's arbitrary. "Your story made me sadder than his story, you get in." That's an awful way to run a system.

That's how you get aristocracy with arbitrary power. It's what every monarch of the old systems lorded over the peasants. We're just recreating it in technicolor in all of our non-governmental systems, and it just seems so utterly foolish. The claims for why we're doing it seem noble, but they always seem that way. What this arbitrary mechanism always achieves is the opposite of its stated intent.

I think this was excellently reasoned. Wish there was something I could add, but it’s all there.

This has been my argument against “post modernism” and “my truth” nonsense. You can’t have a legal or social system that is selectively applied because of a story or your feelings.

“If the Chinese son makes it clear to the admission team about the hardships he overcame, surely that would be to his advantage.”

It is definitely not an advantage, since the janitor’s kid is unable to pay tuition and unlikely to donate money to the school. These schools are primarily focused on maintaining their huge endowments and their over-hyped reputations.

or perhaps the upper class seeks to divide and rule the working class and so therefore initiated racial discriminating in hiring and admissions in order to further the divide and rule strategy?

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