How ‘Diversity’ Policing Fails Science
wsj.com
wsj.com
[1] The authors also submitted different test studies to different peer-review boards. The methodology was identical, and the variable was that the purported findings either went for, or against, the liberal worldview (for example, one found evidence of discrimination against minority groups, and another found evidence of "reverse discrimination" against straight white males). Despite equal methodological strengths, the studies that went against the liberal worldview were criticized and rejected, and those that went with it were not. - https://theweek.com/articles/441474/how-academias-liberal-bi...
[2] Advancing knowledge and understanding is a fundamental public good. In some cases, however, potential harms to the populations studied may outweigh the benefit of publication. - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01443-2
[3] Science Must Not Be Used to Foster White Supremacy - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/science-must-not-...
[4] Study: Diversity Statements Required for One-Fifth of Academic Jobs - https://freebeacon.com/campus/study-diversity-statements-req...
It's unclear what using genes to predict educational outcomes adds beyond just trying to provide the best possible opportunities over and over again. It doesn't really matter if it's genes or some fixed environmental history.
"Eugenics" or nah?
Is using CRISPR (or similar) to fix hemophilia "eugenics" or not?
Judging a movement by its fringe is unhelpful.
> if there is any discrepency in outcome between two groups (whichever way you cut the population), it is the result of discriminations and power struggles
A more accurate way to frame this would be "If there is any discrepancy... it is likely influenced by discriminations and power struggles, and we should be paying very close attention to the societal factors at play in an effort to reduce their impact."
You end up in looney tunes land pretty quick if you swing too far in either direction with absolute conviction. Too far in favor of DEI, you wind up with things like "actually, women are only physically weaker because they're oppressed". Too far in the other direction, you wind up with things like "actually, crime is genetic".
Claiming that these people are somehow at the fringe of the DEI movement is ridiculous. These sorts of beliefs are openly professed and put into action with actual discriminatory policies.
Walking it back to "influenced by factors" is just a classic motte and bailey defense. These people don't act like these factors need to be carefully investigated, they have a fucking checklist and it's all based on race, sex and sexuality.
Then, you try to somehow equate the idea of white supremacy with the idea that DEI is an anti-white movement: as if any defense of white people requires belief in racial superiority. This is ridiculous.
The irony is that it is exactly this sort of biased, sloppy reasoning that has allowed the looney tunes land of DEI to proliferate.
Even if you can point to hard evidence of well recognized figures holding extremist views which are put into practice, there is always some eager nelly standing by to carefully explain why that's actually totally normal and the real worry is those scary right wingers over there.
Absolutely nuts.
the best response to a dichotomy is rarely centrism (taking the middle position). that's just implicitly accepting the framework of the dichotomy. critical thinking requires moving laterally among multiple dimensions to uncover the crux of the dichotomy itself (the power interests that form the dichotomy) and to reason yourself into a better framing.
with respect to DEI, the term DEI itself is now political, so that slides us right into the false dichotomy. if we want to talk reasonably about the issue, we should probably leave that term aside.
>Judging a movement by its fringe is unhelpful.
The difference is that the "fringe" DEI types who believe this are the ones running our universities and most of our most powerful institutions, while the "fringe" racists wearing white hoods sipping whiskey around a campfire in West Virginia have no institutional power whatsoever.
Montani Semper Liberi
Not so sure about the “whichever” part here - you can cut the population a lot of ways that prove that current DEI efforts are focusing on the wrong subset(s).
Critics, execs trying to CYA, and incompetent practitioners of DEI work focus obsessively on simplistic guidelines around race, gender, and sexuality, but legitimate DEI work aims to support everyone in the areas where prevailing attitudes are letting them down.
You’re never going to hear about all the DEI professionals capably doing that work because it’s uncontroversial and often very private, but it’s happening all the same and it materially improves employees’ lives every day.
<< This just isn’t true. At the core of DEI is the understanding that negative cultural biases make life worse for everyone. These cultural biases (which differ individually based on a million factors) are an unavoidable part of the human experience and impact all of us in different ways, so DEI initiatives encourage being mindful of them in order to limit their harm.
Hmm. I am currently participating in a group that uses a more, lets say aggressive, interpretation ( white supremacy is pervasive and all that ). It gets old fast.
<<You’re never going to hear about all the DEI professionals capably doing that work because it’s uncontroversial and often very private, but it’s happening all the same and it materially improves employees’ lives every day.
Maybe, but then good actors have some responsibility to denounce bad actors.
[1]https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/pol...
Go read my reply again, I namedrop the kind of people who fixate on this stuff. DEI is way, way more than "white supremacy is bad"; if that's all you're getting, they're letting you down.
> Maybe, but then good actors have some responsibility to denounce bad actors.
And they do, sometimes publicly, sometimes privately to the CEO who hired a grifter "DEI" consultant for a year-long engagement that only delivers experiences like yours.
There aren’t simple answers or one-size-fits-all solutions. Picking a representation metric for one demographic and pushing it up won’t fix things, even for that population. Many people are, at minimum, skeptical of DEI, and are inundated with clickbait news reinforcing their skepticism.
The people doing the real work understand all this and still show up every day trying to making things better for people.
A big reason is that biology is a very nuanced science.
A lot of the so-called anti vax or misinformation wars are really just conflicts between the people who already realized that academia prefers collectivist ideology to the scientific method, and people who still talk about public sector expertise as if it's platonic ideal rendered real.
“Oh, the humanities!”
Sexist research, racist facts.
I suppose this sort of meaningless act lets some people feel like they are “allies” of native people without having to actually help native people. It’s like, “thoughts and prayers”. There will be a backlash and these dumb requirements are an obstacle to progress toward racial equality.
1. Forget about it and do nothing. 2. Remember it and do nothing.
While both of these are pretty poor, the second, I'd argue, is marginally better. Forgetting history isn't usually the best plan.
I know the culture war is now being fought openly, but this is such a disappointingly shallow reading - especially on HN. Companies are not being "woke" to be cool, they provide training as a legal shield so that when the next racist shithead employee does what racist shitheads do and the company gets sued, a company rep will take the stand in court and testify that it is not company policy and refer to the training that was provided. Companies have not stopped being capitalist, DEI is clearly legal CYA but the culture warriors will miss that. Next rime you take DEI training, count the number of times they mention laws and statutes pertaining to protected classes and discrimination.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-is-j...
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/wokeness-as-saddam-sta...
They don't see politics as a series of intellectual debates between sides with opposing experiences and views, resolved via votes. They think they're perfect angels and their opponents are an evil that should not exist at all. If they thought they could force you to vote Democrat as part of your job contract they'd do it in a heartbeat. If they thought they had a way to eliminate the Republicans forever and then ban it from ever re-emerging, they wouldn't even hesitate.
If you think that's extreme or flamebait, well, it's what US academia is now actually doing via these loyalty pledges and openly politically biased hiring practices: systematically erase the non-left from academic existence. It's what happened to James Damore, it's what your HR department would do to you in an instant if you complained about the inappropriateness of forcing employees to sit through left wing political material. They would love you to complain so they can identify you and eliminate you because that's just how they roll.
At some point, our society is going to have to face the fact that this is how it always goes with the left. It has happened throughout history, going back to the French Revolution. Having a left that doesn't try and take over to impose a dictatorship the moment it spies an opportunity to do so is very difficult. In Europe there is a similar problem except it's being done via encoding leftist worldviews into the European Union, instead of by trying to take over universities and corporations, and is arguably more advanced.
It's a really big problem and it's very unclear what to do about it. Society needs to (re)develop norms and taboos about allowing anything to do with politics into the workplace. Or it needs to radically shift towards the libertarian right, as a way to mitigate the risk of a left wing violent uprising.
NB for any lefties who never got the memo at the end of the 20th century, "the left" doesn't refer to anti-war anti-capitalists anymore. It refers to middle class culture and eco warriors - the sort of people the WSJ article is about.
This article is creating that same debacle I would imagine.
Even if you ignore DEI ideology entirely, the amount of low quality pseudo-science coming out of universities is a crisis all by itself. The biology world seems especially hard hit but social sciences, humanities and economics also have major reputational issues due to a proliferation of shoddy papers.
The questions are really, are universities as valuable as people currently assume? And if so, should they be?
What makes it worse is DEI leaders are essentially given unlimited power. They can say anything and if you say anything to contradict them you are a racist and your career is destroyed.
Article reminds me of this:
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1608188826291167242/phot...
It’s not exhaustive but gives some touchstones for further reading
If you present a neutral, non-judgmental, position, it has been surprising me to how so many people will share all their racist views.
Nor are black people are oppressors because of lack of numbers in that particular case.
These people are antisemitics though they experience very similar to what Jews feel in Germany today.
1) It's commonly taken as a simple fact that overrepresentation of white people among e.g. the top hedge fund managers is evidence of society being structured in those people's favor
2) Jews are way more overrepresented among top hedge fund managers than non-Jewish whites
3) ...
Obviously the missing piece here is that (taken as a whole; obviously "Jews" comprises many different groups) Jewish people, on average, are culturally and genetically predisposed to success in intellectual fields. However, if you notice this but grow up in a climate where cultural and genetic reasons for group success are verboten, the nefarious explanations are the ones left.
But it was also a function of group dynamics and attempting to preserve cohesion (perhaps more commonly, I think actively hating people you don't know has always been regarded as odd). Outsiders were discriminated against in order to maintain the values of the group (ignoring for a second whether these values were good or bad).
And this kind of collective thinking is something that is more typical of the left. So you are seeing more and more of this reverse discrimination. And will continue to do so because this instinct towards group cohesion is overwhelming.
You also see this outside the US with left-wing nationalist groups. I think there a tacit assumption today that left-wing and nationalism cannot go together. But nationalism has often been a key source of group cohesion for left-wing movements, and that has (unfortunately) often been defined exclusively.
To say this another way: this has to end up with more discrimination. Everything that you do as an adult today is set against your record of "privilege". Why do people pretend to be poor? Why do people pretend to be a different race? And the people doing this are apparently privileged ones? It makes no sense.
I have no idea what DEI is (not the acronym, the movement behind it) and what it’s cultural setting is, and if it is different from other systems or movements that promote equality.
I would love to see a neutral toned third party observer insight into the mechanics of this topic.
> if it is different from other systems or movements that promote equality.
DEI promotes equity, not equality. As Kamala Harris said, equity means "we all end up at the same place". It is a pipe dream that people will achieve equity in all regards. This mindset is applied unevenly to areas where DEI proponents want to hold back the high achievers. There is no push for height equity in the NBA.
As a member of the Black and Asian community (and others), first I'd like to say. What? Since when did Black people (en masse) begin assigning any manner of blame to the Jewish community as the "real enemies?" Aside from a one particular prominent rap artist and one very fringe religious group, no one I know or any of the Black online communities I frequent have ever said such. If there was a newsletter, I sure as hell didn't get it.
Regarding the Black on Asian violence we saw in the US. It was and is a damned shame. Again, as a member of those communities, it hurts. However, I know I walk the fine line of whataboutism here, but I have to make it known. The increase in Asian hate was not led by Black Americans (but the reporting of it sure as hell made it look that way). I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which group was the number one culprit of such vile acts -- from simple assault to mass murder. Regardless, no matter the culprit, any act of violence based on race is absolutely and utterly reprehensible.
We don't need a designated "bad guy" in order to address these horrible events. We all need to do better.
[Edit] I seemed to have ruffled some feathers here.
Also:
> I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which group was the number one culprit of such vile acts
I think everyone hates to see this on HN. Implying that your "and we know which race is responsible" is unbiased is...something else.
As far as African Americans holding anti semitic views, nearly a quarter of African Americans hold antisemitic views as opposed to 14% of the general population.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...
What have I said that is not "rational, open, and unbiased"? I was very clear that the DEI director experience was something I saw and I provided the context of when it occurred. Take your accusations elsewhere.
I admit, I was unaware of the skewed anti-Semitic views. Definitely will do further research.
Also, you know exactly the rhetoric I am speaking of.
"I was commenting on your comment about Black Americans being the leading culprits of Asian hate crimes."
Please reread my original post. I said nothing of the sort. I was referring to a single string of highly publicized events in the context of a DEI experience I was relaying.
Edit: I actually want to soften this response. I think you are probably coming from a genuine place and took offense in some way to what I wrote. I'm not going to apologize for my post as I see nothing wrong with it and it was not intended to confer bias against any race. With that said, you still took offence though which is your right. While I'm human and as such obviously have biases, none were intended in the post I was just relaying factual events that I experienced regarding DEI initiatives. Either way I wish you well.
Best wishes to you as well.
Let us have that open discussion and actually make it known, not just alluding to it. I don't know the answer. Which group is it?
Please make sure 1) to control for population ratios, 2) to control for additional factors potentially influencing the outcome where the groups differ, e.g., degree of urbanisation, 3) to include a procedure how the groups are classified.
You indicate to know the answer so I trust confounding factors have been excluded and it is transparent how the group labels were assigned. Thanks in advance!
Yes it was.
>I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine which group was the number one culprit of such vile acts -- from simple assault to mass murder.
Let's look at the objective facts backed by data: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv18.pdf
Table 14
Asians were the only group more likely to be attacked by someone of a different race. Blacks were the most frequent aggressors. 27% of attacks were from Black aggressors. 24% were from White aggressors. Blacks make up 13% of the population, so they are WAY more likely per capita to attack Asians than Whites. QED.
inb4 this is from 2018. If you have numbers from a latter reputable study, please provide them here, but the facts are facts. Blacks are the number one perpetrators of crime against Asians.
[Edit] No feathers rustled here, you're just projecting after being called out. I simply enjoy being a data driven adult.
Also, your comment history shows a definite bias.
>Also, your comment history shows a definite bias.
"You said something that goes against the narrative so I'm going to dig through your history to find something I dislike so I can commit an ad hominem against the heretic."
Yes, I have a penchant for being fact driven. I'm biased towards reality.
The truth is that people who say this overwhelmingly externalize their own biases as reality and then divorce themselves from the idea that they did so in the first place. They aren't capable of behaving otherwise and see themselves as beyond reproach. It's a thought limiting cliche and signals the participant is unwilling to consider anything other than their own point of view.
Since you present an opinion that is directly against the reporting, it would make sense to back it up rather than make some vague suggestions.
Also I'm a sucker for anything involving Lego people
Did my Korean friend growing up who spent his every afternoon and weekend studying while I was playing videogames deserve to get into a better university than me and make more money than me? I say he did. DEI says he didn't.
But why was your friend able to spend his every afternoon and weekend studying?
Because he was raised in a supportive, nurturing environment. Probably with grandparents and aunts/uncles to help take care of him. He probably had older relatives in professional careers to aspire to and mentor him. He probably never had to work a job in high school to help support his family, or raise his younger siblings while mom worked night shift. His parents were probably married and able to hold decent jobs to provide a stable home, good nutrition, and a lack of stress. They probably were able to make sure he went to preschool, and had reliable transportation to get him to/from there and kindergarten, and drilled into him the importance of education from a young age. All of these things are what DEI tries to correct for. The people who had none of that never get a shot at redemption otherwise.
The cards are stacked from birth.
We can trade anecdotes all day long, but the general point stands. And yes, things were different 20 years ago. But the average asian family today in the US is actually better off than the average white family:
https://home.treasury.gov/news/featured-stories/racial-inequ...
Exactly. Why is that? It isn't because they came over to America and enslaved people, or won a war, or placed themselves at the head of a religion that all the white people believed in. They excelled because they worked harder than everyone else. One can argue that the majority white population discriminated against asians less than african-americans or latinos and that's why asian people are more successful than them, but that falls apart once asian people are more successful than the majority ethnic group.
This is ofcourse an exaggeration but you get the idea.
> lack of stress
As an immigrant Asian child I can tell you usually we had none of these things.
What drove me and my friends was pressure. I knew what my parents gave up to give me this chance. I knew they probably wouldn’t have enough savings to ever retire without me helping them out later. I knew I didn’t want to disappoint them.
Why must countless Asian parents’ sacrifices and kids effort be swept away under DEI? Of course I get that it helps to create a society where no one would have to go such lengths to provide opportunity for their children. But man, it just rubs me the wrong way.
"Diversity" is supposedly all about "helping minorities", except when those minorities are too successful for the narrative. Can't have success, oh no! Minorities are supposed to be oppressed and victims in need of saving by the good diversifiers!
And so asians quite often get rounded up with whites.
Fuck that noise. Meritocracy is by far the best system we have to figure out the good people from the bad. Judging by the quality of one's character rather than the color of one's skin. We are all humans, race literally doesn't and shouldn't matter.
Latin@s are going through this development right now. A growing number of them are choosing to identify as white and reject the whole framing of racial grievance mongering.
He who controls language controls thought. He who controls thought wields absolute power.
What is it about being a minority that is important?
What makes you say 'rich minority'? Can you really treat a group of millions of people as a monolith and say they're all rich and don't need help?
I'm not claiming all minorities are rich, I'm saying a few are and yet their kids get advantages that others don't have beyond their advantage of being born rich.
I'm saying I know poor white people who have all the same problems as the black and Hispanic families living in the same area, but they get less help.
(note to the repliers - the assumption given by the parent is, we live in a pure meritocracy and the reason people achieve less is strictly because "they're lazy". I did not say I believe that. )
Wait until you find high disparity between Latinos themselves. Ever heard of Severo Ochoa? Ramon y Cajal? Torres Quevedo?
Not every Latino it's lazy. Not every American rides a walking device and it's overwight. Not every Brit/Irish it's deeply drunk at pubs.
Why would laziness be the only possible reason?
I grew up in a fundamental religious cult. The culture within that bubble instills a world view that does not value learning, and from the earliest age, kids in that environment are indoctrinated to believe certain things about the nature of the world that if true, would legitimately make “worldly” pursuits a bad use of time.
I escaped the bubble, but plenty (most) of the people I grew up with did not. They work hard, provide for their families, and are absolutely not lazy.
When a meaningfully large portion of your worldview is shaped and informed by those around you in childhood, there’s a lot more working against you than some notion of laziness.
I’m well into my 30s and still work hard in therapy to undo the damage. I don’t think most people who haven’t experienced a broken upbringing can understand its impact.
And for every “but so and so was fine despite everything”, there are 100 who were not.
If you expand that question a bit to include a concrete scenario, the problem quickly becomes apparent:
“Are people who had no choice but to be indoctrinated that pianos are evil less deserving of the award for best emerging pianist?”
That question would depend entirely on whether or not that person learned to play the piano at an advanced level.
We might marvel that someone with such early beliefs about pianos could overcome those beliefs (and this might even increase “merit” in the minds of some), but at no point does it make sense to invert the argument and conclude that children of the anti-piano cult are any more or less deserving of the award regardless of whether or not they ever pursued piano. It’s simply an irrelevant point.
We might draw other conclusions like: anti-piano cults threaten equal opportunity, because they lead some to believe that they shouldn’t try the piano to begin with.
Meritocracy is an equalizing force in that it allows people from all backgrounds to reach success regardless of background. I never finished a degree, but still acquired the skills to succeed, got accepted by a major employer and that’s all that matters. Meritocracy is the thing that actually allowed me to succeed despite my upbringing.
Breaking out of the bubble to begin with is a separate problem entirely, and one that still needs solving.
It seems unsurprising (but tragic) that the enslavement of a race over hundreds of years would leave deep imprints about the nature of meaning on the resulting culture.
Does this fully account for the discrepancy you mention? I’m sure there are other factors that play a part, and the fact that racism is still alive and well almost certainly is one of those factors - and another cultural artifact that hasn’t been fully addressed.
No more than the average Southern white American is inherently more racist. Your culture is an influence, an advantage or disadvantage for any particular endeavor. If the endeavor in question is academic and economic success in the academic and economic environment of early 21st century America and Western Europe, growing up in most Asian immigrant cultures will confer upon you an advantage in the form of habits, behaviors, and attitudes.
Also, Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Absolutely.
Right now DEI is trying to solve a problem at the finish line that should be solved before the job race starts?
Kinda. DEI is trying to address an outcome that is in large part caused by disadvantage and discrimination. The outcome itself, in this case the ethnic makeup of academic and business positions not precisely reflecting the ethnic makeup of the country, is not by itself bad or good, just as it isn't "evil" that most nail techs are women. It's an indicator, not a disease. Artificially manipulating the racial makeup of a company or university is like dunking your head in ice water and saying "look, no fever!"
If so, how do we do so without considering race?
You address disadvantages that include those stemming from race without counting race itself. If your admissions process, for example, gives X points for coming from a single parent household, then those points will be distributed to each race in exact proportion that race experiences disadvantage from having single-parent households. Same for poverty and other factors.
The focus here is on race, but what about culture? In my region of the world, there are many Indian immigrants. For whatever reason, the boys are treated like princes and given a ton of freedom, while the girls are given a lot more responsibility and pressured to succeed academically.
As a result, at the local highschool only about 70% of the Indian males are graduating, while the females have close to 100%, higher than ANY other ethnic group.
In my class, a disproportionate amount of the Indian women I grew up with are now doctors and scientists (this is especially impressive as the area is very rural and low SES).
I'm pretty sure I've seen American research on how much pressure and resources different ethnic groups put towards the academic success of their children. You can quantify this in a bunch of different ways, including making sure homework is done, helping them with it, reading with them, etc.
There were pretty stark difference, with black families dedicating a lot less, and Asian ones dedicating a lot more.
Why does that need to boil down to useless concepts like "laziness" or proto-racist bullshit about genes we barely understand?
Maybe populations should have these things measured, and resources should be poured into helping them correct it. Eg, after school programs dedicated for groups that are lagging behind. Extra time and resources in school to bolster reading time for groups that might not be getting it at home.
I'll use the relatively non-controversial example of the Chinese. In Malaysia, they're a small minority of the population yet totally dominate business.
Why? Because they are extremely entrepreneurial, work crazy hours, and do this consistently up and down, from the tiny boutique in the streets to the multinational.
Why? I have no idea. But somehow its ingrained in their culture. I don't believe they have a special gene that uniquely benefits them. They're simply culturally centered around business and productivity.
On the opposite end there's the culture of apathy. To live by the day, accept one's state even if bad, and to make zero effort to improve it, even if opportunities present themselves.
These cultural differences very much exist and are plain to see and replicable, and lead to drastically different outcomes. But I guess simple truths are too controversial now, so let's go with the "systemic" nonsense.
There's a whole strain of academic sociological research that asks why efforts to fix this always fail. I read one of the papers once, it got linked to from somewhere and it was interesting. It described the cultural issues reasonably well but bent over backwards to paint the problems as mere differences, not something they should fix but as things others should just learn to somehow work around (they had no suggestions for how). The possibility that the aboriginals are fine as they are and don't care about getting richer didn't really come up either which was interesting.
The major problem is timekeeping. Apparently you can't say to an aboriginal, "let's meet at 10am" because they might just turn up at 2pm instead and not see anything wrong with that. Or they might go walkabout and you don't see them for days. In turn it means they can't be integrated into any kind of team-based workforce, which in turn means they can't hold down any kind of job (like mining).
Another issue is the cultural fixation with funerals. They're expected to travel back to attend a funeral for almost anyone in their village, at any time, at short notice, and they always do it even if it conflicts with work commitments. They don't care if they lose their job as a consequence.
The sociologists have a neat way to describe this cultural feature - they say aboriginals view time as circular and endless, vs the linear time that everyone else uses. To what extent this is a rationalization of western academics vs something real is a bit of a open question.
I see instead:
"People with a cultural background that fosters academic achievement"
"Korean friend growing up who spent his every afternoon and weekend studying while I was playing videogames"
Also, as an aside, as someone with a recognisable name, I'm surprised you are using your regular account for these controversial political topics.
Meritocracy is a myth. participants have too much variability on starting points and environment for the concept to have any usefulness.
That being said, the "nihilistic" attitude of DEI towards meritocracy is as unsatisfactory as that "naive" attitude of pretending it exists. The right attitude is to recognise that the concept is meaningless in a society of staggering (and rising) inequality, and take steps to correct that.
Say you are deciding who gets into a college. To simplify say you have only one metric, GPA/test scores. What do you do?
- You might have a student from a wealthy family, comfortable upbringing, two loving parents invested in his well-being and education, with money to spend on extracurriculars, and a nice school with all the trimmings. He has 3.8/4 GPA.
- You might have another student from a lower-class family, with, say, trouble at home, parents shouting, no money for extracurriculars like music or sport, studying in a shitty dilapidated school. He has 3.5/4 GPA.
Whom do you choose? It's definitely not so simple! In fact, remember that you are choosing people to come to college: an environment where they will all have equal access to resources, including professors, study materials, facilities, etc. I argue that you should choose the student which is more likely to make the most out of those resources.
In this situation, wouldn't a better predictor of success in higher education be, instead of overall GPA, the difference in GPA compared to students in the same cohort? Wouldn't that be (a) a better measure of "merit" and (b) a better practical investment in someone who is more likely to excel and make the best out of the resources/opportunity invested?
Just an example to illustrate that one dismissive sentence cannot possible solve this issue.
The guy who performs better.
>I argue that you should choose the student which is more likely to make the most out of those resources. ... the difference in GPA compared to students in the same cohort?
The entire point of equality is that we are all one cohort: Regardless your race, gender, background, or creed you will be treated the same as the next guy in line; and there is only one line.
To treat otherwise is discrimination.
Did you read what I wrote?
> The entire point of equality is that we are all one cohort
Well but we aren't. One of the strongest predictors of academic performance is parental income. Burying your head in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist is not a satisfactory answer.
I did.
If you aren't rewarding effort, skill, and talent there is no incentive to be successful. You pick the 3.8 GPA, aka the guy who performs better.
>Well but we aren't. One of the strongest predictors of academic performance is parental income. Burying your head in the sand and pretending the problem doesn't exist is not a satisfactory answer.
If the objective is to further equality, then the answer is to treat everyone the same with no arbitrary separators because that is the entire point of equality.
With regards to university admissions, the performance measure in question is one's GPA or whatever objective measure the university wants to use.
Income brackets can become a consideration if we are discussing financial assistance programs, but that is tangent to admission.
Any program that favors people of a certain race or gender, either minority or otherwise, is literally racist and/or sexist and should not be tolerated.
If however you want to make GPA weighted by household income instead of identity I say knock yourself out, because that would still greatly reduce discrimination compared to the status quo. It will never happen though because DEI is designed to fuck over the Asian working class while leaving the privileged classes alone. The whole point is to fuck over poor Asians , that’s the reality and truth of the system you apologize for.
> If however you want to make GPA weighted by household income instead of identity I say knock yourself out
It was more along these lines that I was thinking, yes.
Not to mention the second half: is it acceptable to reward merit with 10x salaries? 100x?
So it's extremely complex and a politically charged topic.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Meritocracy: "the notion of a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people based on talent, effort, and achievement, rather than wealth or social class", as per wikipedia.
> If you don't like the distribution of who's at the top, then you can address that elsewhere, such as providing more educational opportunities, or promoting qualities like hard work
Isn't this exactly what I said?
I would point out that responding to the strongest possible interpretation of someone's argument is also in the HN guidelines.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Unfortunately, you've been breaking them in other places too, and posting a lot of flamewar and ideological battle-style comments. This isn't allowed on HN, regardless of which ideology you're for or against. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules in the future? Note these:
"Eschew flamebait."
"Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."
"Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Depends on what you mean by starting point.
If my neighbor is genetically advantaged from the start to perform in a particular task then that may be "unfair", it's still best to let that person win. Dragging down top performers is the worst we can do nor should we boost non-performers in artificial ways.
If the unequal starting point is socio-economic, say a genius going to waste because they have no access to education, then I agree that this is bad. The solution is accessible/affordable schooling. Importantly though, that gives access, not outcomes. You still need to pass the test and prove (and improve) your capability.
Any system that does not manage that issue cannot be a meritocracy, because people who would be the best WILL be passed over for someone who had a luckier start.
Why must this be "combatted" at all?
It's not about determinism at all, and pointing to people born in shitty situations who managed through luck and hard-work to overcome those difficulties does not mean everything is all-right, that is just silly.
In fact, especially for disadvantaged people merit is the dream maker.
But it doesn't, and this can be easily measured. Are you saying this is how you wished things were? Then I agree with you, that's what we should strive for. Are you saying this is how things are? That's just false (hilariously so).
What you can do is to offer a baseline equal chance, in the form of an accessible/affordable high quality public schooling system. It's one of the most sound investments any society can make.
Those that are able (capable, talented, willing) then have a fighting chance. Some will have to grind a little harder than others, but that's life. The point is that you get a chance to perform, and then you perform to your ability. You don't have to match the luckiest and most talented out there.
I myself was born in the lower working class, with no studying peers in my entire network, and dysfunctional parents. Yet, lucky to live in a country with a pretty decent public schooling system.
You know what shocked me most? How stupidly easy it is. The bar really is absurdly low. All I did was to consistently show up and pay attention in class. To take the education serious, which supposedly is a tall order nowadays.
Next, in my follow-up education I was advised to take the middle road, and to not aim too high. I dismissed the school director's advise and said that I will aim high. I'll simply cope by grinding through it. I'll study day and night if needed to match my superior peers.
Guess what? No such grinding was needed. Again I simply consistently showed up and paid attention, whilst my peers were drunk and couldn't bother to even show up. It was so stupendously easy that I could work so much on the side that I graduated debt-free.
If you don't do well on a test, do better. The world shouldn't give you an easier test because that's not the point of a test.
You know who scores well on test? Girls. Consistently better than boys. Why? They take the education more serious. They pay attention, ask questions, take notes, do their homework. Consistently and with discipline.
Sounds almost like...merit.
That makes no sense. Ranking people by their merit in some dimensions doesn't stop being useful even if their merit would be different if they had been born into different circumstances.
I'm reminded of the saying "if things were different then things would be different." Well, things aren't different, and it's useful to use merit to judge who would be best to do a job.
I like to think about it from the stand point of star trek. When Gene Roddenberry was asked "would a starship really have a bald captain? Wouldn't they have invented a cure for baldness in the 24th century?" Gene Roddenberry replied, "In the 24th century nobody cares if you are bald or not."
That is a rather innocuous example, but the point remains, the future should be a place where it doesn't much matter who you are, only what you do. The future should be a place where everyone is accepted as they are and there are no personal difficulties due to being different. A blind man can be the pilot of a ship, a black woman a deck officer, a person with a handicap (like the alien going to starfleet academy that doesn't breathe oxygen) isn't kept back from their job. All that is expected that you want to be there and you want to work towards being where you want to be. And if some things are more difficult for you, society will help you out. You will get a VISOR if you are blind, or a device to help you breathe.
The argument that often comes from post-modernist DEI advocates is that the world I'm describing is an ideal and doesn't exist. Well that is true. Ideals don't exist. That doesn't keep us from seeking them. We cannot reject DEI on face value or because some activists see change needing methods we disagree with (e.g., top down approaches that refuse to have the system accept responsibility and force the individual to account for the inequities and injustices). the internal ideals of DEI are good, differences cannot be simply tolerated, they must be accepted and accounted for.
I agree. DEI and a true meritocracy are not at odds with each other. In fact, a true meritocracy can't exist without DEI.
Also, the authoritarian method of labeling people with an -ism for questioning* DEI initiatives/principles, doesn't seem to be the kind of thing that will inspire the positive change you describe. It feels more like drawing lines in the stand to setup the coming culture war.
> You will get a VISOR if you are blind
Then you are no longer blind, hence there was no actual change. In comparison, maybe LGBT can serve in the forces without change, via the political visor that is the "don't say gay" policy.
For instance consider two students:
Student A: Lived in a comfortable middle-class home in which parents worked in professional jobs and went to the best schools
Student B: Grew up in a deprived area to single parent who worked menial jobs. Had to work at weekends as well as study.
If both students apply to a job or college, should their final academic grades be treated equally? If both students got the same grade, who would you think was "smarter"?
Yes. Grades reflect what the student did, which is a distinct question from why they were able to do it.
> when it's the universal condition of humanity everywhere, and at all times?
Doesn't it make sense to question or try to change these assumptions? Or are things fine the way they are?
> Doesn't it make sense to question or try to change these assumptions? Or are things fine the way they are?
Pretty much every new government since the US or French revolutions have tried, and the outcomes have been less than ideal. Inequality is a constant feature of human society that cannot be engineered away.
> Pretty much every new government since the US or French revolutions have tried, and the outcomes have been less than ideal.
Are you saying that people in the United States were less free? Or just the same as they were before?
In general, meet the new boss -- same as the old boss, and for the most part, upheavals swap one ruling class for another. The children of the revolutionaries become the new privileged ruling elite. This is as inevitable as bureaucracy, regardless of whatever glowing utopian rhetoric the activists had used to mobilize the masses for the revolution.
You cool with that too?
Is it "shit" that Liza Minelli had a great head-start in her entertainment career by being Judy Garland's daughter?
Of course it is. Same goes for all the other nepo babies.
This has nothing to do with (and is antithetical to) DEI initiatives.
I think that is an example of where we wind up.
Like, this sub-thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/ATC/comments/10u0zvl/disaster_avert...
I should point out that this is all, like, third hand.
No, not that this is its purpose. But it may be the effect of how it's being implemented. Fealty to the gods of Equity prevent anyone from admitting that EEO claims can be a tool to unjustly shield bad workers.
IF it's not obvious, I don't mean that no EEO claims are justified. But on the other side of the coin, many of them are unjustified.
If this dude wasn't any good then he probably got shit-canned rapidly and played EEOC to CYA.
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2021/07/63-workers-who-fil...
Anyone who says this is the reason a person isn’t fired is probably lying or doesn’t know the facts on the ground.
Every time my brother brought the person in question in to talk about issues the person ran to an EEOC complaint.
I don't think you meant it that way, but your claim is false. It's saying that if you file an EEOC claim, you'll probably get fired.
The question we should be asking is, "how much crap are companies willing to put up with because the employee in question belongs to a protected group and the company fears EEOC claims even when those claims are unjustified?"
I didn't mean that, but that may be the reality of the situation. In any case, it doesn't appear that filing an EEOC claim provides much protection. And as also noted in the article, the results are rarely favorable to the filer.
Again, in my experience, we assume anyone who is getting fired will file a claim of some sort. A claim has never stopped any firing that I know of.
Power and control for those that advanced it, power and control for those who join in to advocate for it.
Where here, I would agree there is a problem around biases, systems which favour certain people unfairly. Disagree with me on that point if you want but I claim the motivation is/was largely rooted in sincere recognition of injustice.
But does the typical DEI implementation actually address that injustice? Or is it just a new evolutionary force for sociopaths and abusers to adapt to and subvert for their own power, most likely aided by a mass of well-intentioned people along the way. (This is an anecdotal personal opinion based on experience, not double blind randomized trials.)
"History never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme"
I think that is genuinely the intended endgame that most proponents seek.
Unfortunately they do not grasp that their methods are counterproductive and will probably achieve the opposite.
The monster though has now escaped its creator and is a threat to meritocracy and what makes America great. If I was an enemy country with patience I would just fund and promote the movement from the shadows and wait for the fall.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe in genetics. I do believe that certain groups of people form genetic clusters. Nevertheless, I don't think that "race" the genetic cluster and "race" the social concept are that much intertwined. Of the 4 major racial groups in America, there are two that very obviously don't cluster (Asians and Hispanics): this somehow is ignored by both pro and anti DEI sides.
In a world in which DEI efforts are successful, the current races would just become non-sensical, in the same way in which considering Irish and Italians non-white has become non-sensical today.
If DEI had anything good in it, it would focus on what all races and sexes have in common. Instead DEI is fixated on differences.
> Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!
—George Wallace, 1963
> The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.
—Ibram X. Kendi, 2019
and the same applies to societies too
Just look at how Google is doing lately...
Sorry; I know HN isn't kind to sass. But, sass aside, look at the details and it's obvious this is propaganda. Yes colleges (and life) have a liberal bias. That doesn't mean asking people to promise not to be racist (with a signature) is a fascist plot to indoctrinate orthodoxy. It just means that if you can't even promise to not be racist, there's a high likelihood there will be problems in your tenure, vis a vis how you respond to reasonable assurances of common ground.
Turns out, well-written articles get input from all interested parties and include any opposition research so that readers can look at the information presented and decide what the report means. Please note that Mr. Sailer elided all of that and, instead, used a singular study (which he plainly admits) to attack a philosophy that he and his funders are on record trying to dismantle. This isn't complicated, it's just barely disguised.
You do realize this is an opinion piece, and not a news article, right?
I have a problem with propaganda disguised as a news article, but that is not what is going on here.
Identifying it is a matter of contextualization. You don't have to employ it, if you don't want to. But if it gives even one person pause, I'm satisfied with that.
Your whining is amusing, though! So I hope that can bring you as much satisfaction as it is bringing me, at the moment.
prŏp″ə-găn′də
noun
1. The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.
2. Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause.
Nothing in the definition about how "thoughtful" it is
National Association of Scholars: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/22/education/22conservative....
For people who are willing to look critically at the information, and discern what the sum of it indicates about the subject piece.
The culture war makes them famous; the beneficiaries of the culture war make them rich. It's just a business, and that's how they treat it. It's why shame doesn't work, and logic doesn't work. It's about an agenda, and not even one they particularly support. It's just the one that pays the bills.
Life doesn't have a liberal bias. If you think so, then either you are surrounding yourself by too many people that think exactly the same way you do (which kind of misses the point on diversity), or you have created an environment in which there are people who think differently than you, but are reluctant to actually speak their mind.
In any case, the thing you ommitted from your quote - where the guy said DEI isn't important (because he "treats students equally") - is the problem area. Just like it would be if you said "Oh, I don't need to keep my gun unloaded. I practice trigger safety." It's not that trigger safety is bad; but any gun enthusiast would be very unsatisfied with that answer.
But see, it isn't. You've got an axe to grind; I get it. I just don't care that you don't like DEI for these slippery-slope, made-up reasons you have, in your head.
Learn what DEI is actually about. Then learn what the interviews actually produced (read: get your information from as many different sources as you can; not "one", even if it supports your bias). Then learn how the interview results correspond to the associated DEI standards. THEN you can speak constructively about what points are being misconstrued, which ones are being purposefully distorted, which ones are being ignored, and which other actions are unrelated to DEI and are only using it as a way to cover for politically-motivated actions.
OR, just go on believing that this "confirmation" doesn't have anything to do with your "bias", and believe it wholesale. Whatever floats your boat, dog.
How does the commenter you're responding to have it wrong and what is DEI really about if it doesn't include equity?
I know it's not the common pronouns, and I'm happy to use whatever "xe", "they", or [insert] anyone wants me to use, about them. But when I'm making the editorial decisions based on ignorance (don't know the person's pronouns and have no reasonable way to get them before publishing), I prefer the "ne" pronouns because they don't have the plural confusions* that "they" does, nor do they turn your mouth to mush when you try to pronounce them, like "ze"/"xe".
*(heading this off at the pass) yes, "they" is often used singularly. But where "they" can, in contrived instances, be confusing as to whether you mean a group or not, "ne" simply doesn't have that problem. "ne" removes one more complication and I'm all for that. I also prefer plain JS to typescript; I'm aware that "simplicity" is a vice of mine.
"The original poster said that their dog bit their cat, and then barked at their TV."
I'm not trying to convince you, or anyone else, to write or speak the way I do. And I'm amenable to any specific person or group of persons representing their (<- there's one!) own interests telling me how to describe them. But I'm not particularly interested in etymological diatribes; I've seen them all and understand the arguments. I have made my decisions, and will continue to make my decisions, with all of those arguments in mind. Rest assured that you have nothing to gain by advocating them to me, as a third-party trying to police writing. I use "they" singularly, all the time, just like everyone else. And I use "ne" when I'm specifically acknowledging that I don't know the preferred pronouns, and have been left to fill them in using my own standards.
This isn’t about you. We speak English on this forum, in fact it’s a requirement, please use it.
What is equity then? Everything I've read on the subject defines it as being equality of outcome. Every definition I find contrasts it to equality being the equality of opportunity and that the focus of equity is a focus on equality of outcome. You're saying it doesn't mean what every source definition I can find says.
So what does it mean if I can't even trust the first page of Google results?
Do you have evidence to support or refute the claims being made? Is DEI productive for academia?
Can I take a look at this Minimum Credible Commitment to Not Being Racist? Are there standard terms? Are there standard reciprocal commitments? For example, I would want any counter-party to commit to not treating me worse on race-related grounds than anyone else signing the same commitment. (That excludes any kind of rank-system, by the way, apologies if that's obvious to you.)
If liberal US colleges just want to filter for people who aren't so racist that they can't even be professional, then it's clear, to me at least, that there must be some other process that's frustrating their aim and making them expend a lot more resources than they would want to, to achieve a much worse result. In that case ISTM that what would be good for them is for some sort of overriding power to impose a Minimum Credible Commitment standard on them.
> I can tell you, from experience, it's a lot easier when you drop the "Okay, if I have to put up with it, let's get some strict definitions!" bullshit.
My experience is that if you take that attitude into a serious negotiation you have a great chance of being fucked over by people who "tell you things from experience".
There's no "rule" that can stop that kind of thing. People have to be reasonable and understand that it's just about "comfort". And silly people made up rules about "making people uncomfortable" and, predictably, people set about testing that rule because that's what people will always do. "Well, why is THIS creepy, but not THAT?!"
Nobody can tell you, Gene. We just all fucking know it. It's pretty obvious if you're not being obtuse about it.
An the other note: I'm sorry you seem to find yourself in situations where you are consistently (or with a great possibility) are getting fucked over by people. Might say something about your adherence to obtuseness, but I suppose I'll take your point here that you don't care what my experience says. Duly noted. I won't bring it up again.
None of which resembles the rank-system self-report antiracist-in-a-particular-way bollocks that is under discussion. That is not in fact a wonderful innovation. It's actually a lot closer to tribal politics than your excellent suggestion of a "promise not to be racist". Specifically in that it's something that "everyone knows" but you nevertheless get ranked on it; which is to say, it's not something everyone knows how to do but rather something everyone important knows about you, it's about your social status, it's a popularity contest.
Thank you for your concern about the situations I've found myself in! I did find myself in much better situations once I learned to treat business more seriously than high school.
You can spend forever, drowning yourself in the "what ifs" trying to appease a type of person that will always be tilting at their preferred windmills, with their only point appearing to be "look! it's not PERFECT, so it's not worth doing."
Alternatively, you can understand why we - as a society - appreciate adjudication by other people (not an ironclad set of rules; the law leaves a lot of leeway for judges and juries to decide), and embrace that kind of governance even within your companies and other social structures. Rules to measure against, not rules to adhere to blindly.
You can pretend it's not the case all day long, but it's an observable state of the world that some people refuse the idea of "institutional racism". Some people refuse the idea that certain actions can be "racist" or "microaggressions". Some people vehemently REFUSE to understand the things that "everybody knows" because they are contrarian.
Writing rules around these people is an effort in futility. It's best to just identify those kinds of people and treat them accordingly. But! If you disagree, feel free to write any sort of policy that you'd like, and ask reddit to try to abuse it. I eagerly await seeing your ironclad policies that take everything into account such that they can be listed as commitments to achieve said policy goals.
Alternatively, you could admit that not everything needs to be codified into a specific rule and that, sometimes, people are going to have to use judgement which, while not perfect, is not necessarily malicious or even harmful.
And hey - glad you found better situations! Sorry you weren't able to treat things seriously, in high school, but better late than never!
Because the immediate problem you're trying to solve as an employer isn't writing a commitment satisfying all situations, it's having a valuable association with your employees, and if employees know under what conditions they will be fired your problem is easier to solve than if they don't. Gene's rules-lawyering is not relevant. Refusal of an idea is not relevant, why would you try to make a window into men's souls that way, are you a better administrator than Elizabeth I? No.