Comment by nhchris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nhchris | Hacker News Reader

Science is incidental. The purpose is to select candidates that will produce ammunition in the form of research (e.g. various marginalization studies) for your side, and exclude candidates that might produce research useful to your opponents. This has been the case for a while in social sciences [1], now it's taking over all fields, and being made explicit and open [2,3,4]. The result of "just stick to your research, they won't bother STEM" attitudes.

[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...

IMO, your second link is the scariest thing. It's basically saying that Nature is going to censor (i.e., refuse to publish) any facts that conflict with their preferred political opinions.

> research may — inadvertently — stigmatize individuals or human groups. It may be discriminatory, racist, sexist, ableist or homophobic.

Sexist research, racist facts.

Hate facts.

> This has been the case for a while in social sciences

“Oh, the humanities!”

It’s the biology department!

I still think biology is on a collision course with DEI. At the core of DEI there is the belief that 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. There is a remote possibly that our genes have zero influence on our brain and behaviour, but I wouldn't bet on that. And that is an unacceptable outcome to DEI.

Seems like it. Professor Paige Harden, who is a progressive herself, has gotten into all sorts of controversy by arguing that genetics do play a role in outcomes and society would be better off recognizing where genes matter for student outcomes and what not instead of pretending they don't. Then you can tailor your approach accordingly. The thing is she isn't arguing for genetic supremacy over environment, only that they play some percentage of a role. Which seems entirely reasonable. It's an interplay with genes and environment.

I think the pushback is more about adopting a passive predictive approach than an interventionist approach, and about the stigma that genetic-based approaches create when they don't predict beyond past behavior very well.

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.

Well, once you know which genes are causal for which adverse social outcomes, you could use CRISPR to address the problem. Unfortunately, genome-wide association studies are famous for yielding poor results wrt. these things. So a good default guess is that the effect of various social, institutional, cultural etc. factors is being misidentified as primarily genetic.

Pretty sure that's called Eugenics my guy. Let's not do that.

It's probably as inevitable as every other technological advance that some warned us to avoid. Even if banned in some Western countries, I don't see every advanced nation willingly cooperating.

How about fixing stuff like hemophilia or sickle cell?

"Eugenics" or nah?

Unless you provide genetic modification services 110% free to everyone and anyone regardless of literally anything, gene modification inevitably will result in an underclass that can't afford it.

You've heard of "Medicaid"? Also, that didn't actually answer my question.

Is using CRISPR (or similar) to fix hemophilia "eugenics" or not?

Almost everyone on the planet supports eugenics: "You're probably a eugenicist"

https://dissentient.substack.com/p/eugenicist

Ironically, the same crowd that insists that it's racist and absolutely off limits to suggest genetics play a role in student outcomes, no matter what the studies say, do a complete 180 if you start talking about obesity. The lack of logical consistency says it all - you can't have it both ways! Unfortunately, these people view everything through the distorted lens of "race" (an arbitrary, ill-defined social construct), which necessarily results in having a distorted view of objective reality.

Sure, there are some DEI types who believe that. There are also some anti-DEI types who believe that whites are a superior race, and DEI is a conspiracy to subjugate them. (If you don't believe me, just keep reading the comments.)

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".

The group of people who believe (or claim) that any demographic discrepancy is due to discrimination includes Ibram Kendi and other intersectionalists / critical race theorists.

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.

to take that further, whenever you see a dichotomy like this, it should be a signal to turn your brain on, not to conform to a side, which is turning your brain off. it's crucial for democracy that we do so.

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.

>Sure, there are some DEI types who believe that. There are also some anti-DEI types who believe that whites are a superior race, and DEI is a conspiracy to subjugate them. (If you don't believe me, just keep reading the comments.)

>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.

Woah buddy, cool it with the WV hatred. You know we broke off from Virginia specifically in opposition to slavery and the secession from the Union, right? Ain't no way we were gonna go off to die for some rich plantation slavers in Richmond.

Montani Semper Liberi

I don’t believe this is true. I think it’s much more nuanced. While some culture war things exist in the context of academia, like DEI, other culture war topics like abortion and qualified immunity have institutional power in the courts. We should definitely avoid black and white cultural notions and over expansion of analysis that confirms existing bias…

I agree, we should definitely avoid binary "culture war" positions because, like everything else, the "culture war" is not a binary issue. Many of the hundreds of millions of people in the country (myself included) hold nuanced views of many issues (like abortion and QI) that don't neatly align with the binary left vs right nonsense en vogue with political partisans and legacy media. All that being said, objective reality has nothing to do with the "culture war". How far along in a pregnancy a woman should be allowed to have an abortion is a matter of legal and political opinion. On the contrary, that genetics play a role in the developments and attributes of human beings is not. It is a scientific fact that you have genetic traits that you inherited from your parents, can be scientifically quantified and measured, and will have an influence on how you develop as a human being. This isn't a legal or political point to be debated, it is a matter of objective reality. There is still much to learn about how much influence genetics have on our various attributes, but there is no debate that the effect exists. We can (or should be) all be able to argue about politics and law without rejecting bits of objective reality that don't jive with what we wish was true.

You’re trying to debate reality of the culture war issues but I’m literally just commenting that the idea that one political extreme have captured all institutions is an extremist view, because multiple institutions have arguably been captured by multiple different political perspectives. Please don’t try to drag me into which political perspective is valid or not.

On this one particular point (DEI and outcome-based metrics), one extreme has captured virtually all of the institutional power.

Whoah... whoah... whoah... how dare you insult whiskey like that!

Though much less culturally prominent, there does seem to be a lot of people who are preoccupied with correlating race and IQ.

"Race" does not exist - it is a completely arbitrary, social construct. Genetics do exist. Different people are going to have different sets of abilities that are grounded in genetics. This is a very uncomfortable idea, for a variety of reasons, even without viewing it through the false, distorted lens of "race". Many people would rather keep their heads in the sand, simply because they wish it to be true that all people are created "equal". Indeed, this is the foundation for of the DEI movement, which puts forth that outcomes are based purely on oppression, systemic discrimination, a lack of opportunities, and so forth. This is not to say that all of those things are not issues, but it is to say that if we want a world in which everyone has an opportunity to succeed and thrive, it is not useful to keep our collective head in the sand about the reality of genetics.

No institutional power? No institutional power. They got their man into the White House. With dank memes.

Those "fringe" racists make up a large amount of whites in the USA. Likely some of your friends, bosses or partners hold those same beliefs, would act in the same way as they would, and feel just as attacked as they do.

> whichever way you cut the population

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).

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.

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.

In DEI's defense, SHRM generic policy is very generic indeed[1] and is unlikely to cause controversy. Just more corporate bureaucracy most people ignore.

<< 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...

> 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.

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.

Every ideology is all flowers and rainbows until it gets put into practice.

That’s kind of my point: the work is mainly vulnerable one-on-one conversations, listening to people who are struggling, and then advocating for them in an environment that isn’t terribly concerned with worker happiness (corporate America).

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.

Biologists are very good at handling political controversy.

A big reason is that biology is a very nuanced science.

That collision already happened in 2020 when "it's dangerous and illegal for people to meet even in small groups" turned overnight into "protests/riots are OK as long as they're for DEI reasons" and the only thing coming out of the public sector biology world was open letters of support.

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.

You're accusing mild opinionism by being even more opionated.

What? Can you break your perspective down more into the context of the comment you're replying to?

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