USA Politics (redux)

[71 dB]

My home is +30°C and my brain is melting. Sorry. Back when summer over.

[Herman]

To be precise he was saying that women aren't physically qualified to be firefighters,  and that 'giving' them a 'quota' of jobs takes opportunities away from men,  who are certainly stronger.  I first heard this argument 10 years before Greg was born.  It didn't hold water then,  either.

And also, you're going to die in your house on fire.
Because of them women quota.

[Karl Henning]

And also, you're going to die in your house on fire.
Because of them women quota.

Holy cats, guys! How  can you be so cavalier when greg's life is at risk?!!

[Fëanor]

To be precise he was saying that women aren't physically qualified to be firefighters,  and that 'giving' them a 'quota' of jobs takes opportunities away from men,  who are certainly stronger.  I first heard this argument 10 years before Greg was born.  It didn't hold water then,  either.

A Canadian naval officer I spoke to a few years back made the point that made the point that accommodating women in the service.  It often results in situation, e.g., where four men could be counted on to haul a cable, they had to a allow five if a couple were women.  Increasing a ship's complement by 25% isn't a trivial matter.

[Fëanor]

It's not discriminatory in a legal sense. Discrimination involves taking irrelevant considerations into account. That someone is from a group that has been persistently under-represented is a relevant consideration.

So are you saying that a higher academic achievement isn't a relevant consideration when filling class sized at high-standard universities?

You can't have it both ways. Either people from different races are, at a population level, equally likely to have the necessary skills, or white people are inherently better at something and hence that's why more of them are 'better qualified'.

But if race is not really a determiner of the skills, then the skew in who is "better qualified" is a reflection of other advantages. Advantages that you are explicitly refusing to do anything about.

Sure, all very enlighten ... unless it's your son who loses out going to Harvard or Stanford because the slot goes to a "qualified" black girl with much lower marks.

[Madiel]

Here's your quote:

You can't have it both ways. Either people from different races are, at a population level, equally likely to have the necessary skills, or white people are inherently better at something and hence that's why more of them are 'better qualified'.

It could be that poverty, schools, crime, parenting, lack of parenting, cultural forces, leaded paint, social policy, drugs, racism, etc. lead to deficiencies that have nothing to do with anything inherent, if I'm understanding what exactly you mean the word. I came across something somewhere recently about Asian families and how family honor played a big part in how well their children did in academia. I'm not even saying this is a good thing because I'm not teaching my kids that they have to do well in school to honor the family. To me, it's nuts. But I digress.
I think there are a lot of reasons to put the breaks on this fad of Equity (which is a code word for quotas). One reason is that it pits people against each other, and I'm not talking about white kids. Another reason is that it demeans the groups of people it is targeting. Also, it's a bandaid. Instead of fixing the broken education and social systems that are likely the cause of poor academic performances, it just accepts it cannot do better and promotes or admits people who may do better elsewhere.
I wouldn't rule out all affirmative action programs. It seems to have worked in the military, for example. But I worry it's creating an untenable situation in the States.

Right, so you didn't understand what I said, because you're agreeing with my basic point. I didn't set up a "false dichotomy".

It's just that you don't agree with a method of fixing the problem. I mean, you eventually say that it WORKS in the military, but then you don't want to use it.

[Madiel]

So are you saying that a higher academic achievement isn't a relevant consideration when filling class sized at high-standard universities?

I'm saying that ignoring the reasons why someone has a higher achievement - reasons BESIDES innate ability - is discriminatory.

Honestly, if you're going to insist that one number is the determiner of entry, you are being wilfully blind to how that number actually came about.

Plus, there is ample evidence that a score like that, on its own, is NOT a good predictor of success at university.

Nor is having gone to the "right" school a great predictor of real world ability. Honestly, I feel like I could send you off to listen to about half a dozen episodes of the Revisionist History podcast just for starters...

The whole idea of people who are "more qualified" is fundamentally problematic. Qualified is like pregnant or married, in that either you've cleared the bar or you haven't. You're upset that black people who have just cleared the bar might get accepted ahead of white people who have soared over the bar, to which my response is that you are wilfully refusing to even ASK whether the black person had lead weight in their pockets and the white person had a fucking trampoline.

[SimonNZ]

Well said.

[milk]

Right, so you didn't understand what I said, because you're agreeing with my basic point. I didn't set up a "false dichotomy".

It's just that you don't agree with a method of fixing the problem. I mean, you eventually say that it WORKS in the military, but then you don't want to use it.

I'm moderate. I don't say affirmative action is always bad and I definitely don't believe that any ethnic groups are inherently better. Yes, I agree that many things may play a part in hindering people from developing their full potential. Where we disagree is that quotas are always or often a good solution. I'm skeptical that they are. In Harvard, you my be pitting Asian individuals against other individuals who haven't worked as hard for whatever reason. There's plenty of data to argue over. Why are fewer black students passing the bar these days? I'm not claiming to know. There is an argument to be made on both side and there are books written. Have you read "Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It's Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won't Admit It" by law professor Richard Sander and legal journalist Stuart Taylor? I haven't! Nor have I read books defending affirmative action. I'm not an expert in this topic.

"The average African-American first-year law student has a grade-point average in the bottom 10% of his or her class. And while undergraduate GPAs for affirmative-action beneficiaries aren't quite as disappointing, that is in part because, as explained below, affirmative-action beneficiaries tend to shy away from subjects like science and engineering, which are graded on a tougher curve than other subjects."
https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-sad-irony-of-affirmative-action

I don't know if that's right. National affairs is a conservative publication but I doubt they're making it up. What is the reason that Asians are the top performers? I've no idea. I pretty much hate this topic but I do think the woke answer to these things is just driving people in the wrong direction. The answers to the problem are not easy. I used to just go with the left on everything. Now, I'm not so sure. I think in the military, affirmative action was probably a good idea. At Harvard, probably not. The critical idea, including oppression and intersectionality, driving equity quotas is irrational. I think it's going to end up hurting everyone.

Back to the idea of disparities. Quotas are a bandaid. Fix education. Improve poverty. Maybe that's a better solution. I understood what you said. You said that either one is racist or one thinks everyone is ready for Harvard or MIT or brain surgery. No.

[milk]

I'm saying that ignoring the reasons why someone has a higher achievement - reasons BESIDES innate ability - is discriminatory.

Honestly, if you're going to insist that one number is the determiner of entry, you are being wilfully blind to how that number actually came about.

Plus, there is ample evidence that a score like that, on its own, is NOT a good predictor of success at university.

Nor is having gone to the "right" school a great predictor of real world ability. Honestly, I feel like I could send you off to listen to about half a dozen episodes of the Revisionist History podcast just for starters...

The whole idea of people who are "more qualified" is fundamentally problematic. Qualified is like pregnant or married, in that either you've cleared the bar or you haven't. You're upset that black people who have just cleared the bar might get accepted ahead of white people who have soared over the bar, to which my response is that you are wilfully refusing to even ASK whether the black person had lead weight in their pockets and the white person had a fucking trampoline.

I think there is plenty of evidence that SAT scores do predict GPA.

BTW: I'm open to changing my mind on this topic. What would change yours?

[Fëanor]

...
The whole idea of people who are "more qualified" is fundamentally problematic. Qualified is like pregnant or married, in that either you've cleared the bar or you haven't. You're upset that black people who have just cleared the bar might get accepted ahead of white people who have soared over the bar, to which my response is that you are wilfully refusing to even ASK whether the black person had lead weight in their pockets and the white person had a fucking trampoline.

... Boloney.

In any case if Americans really care about Blacks, Hispanics, or poor people regardless of race, they would ensure that all children had equal opportunity to attend high quality public schools.  As it is the better off, rather than pay taxes, would rather spend the money to send their kids to private or so-called charter schools to given them an advantage over kid in public schools  -- there at least we can perhaps agree.

[milk]

... Boloney.

In any case if Americans really care about Blacks, Hispanics, or poor people regardless of race, they would ensure that all children had equal opportunity to attend high quality public schools.  As it is the better off, rather than pay taxes, would rather spend the money to send their kids to private or so-called charter schools to given them an advantage over kid in public schools  -- there at least we can perhaps agree.

According to University of Texas Statistics, the credentials students enter with do predict their academic performance. Madiel is on weak ground. If he could show otherwise, I'd be happy. Really. Then, the problem would vanish and the whole thing would just be a matter of making university student numbers match the identity ratio they're looking for. I guess that'd work. Or, they could just skew it towards some intersectional oppression matrix - which is what some people really want. That seems more sinister to me, more divisive. This brings us away from any "liberal" logic to what critical academic theorists really want: they don't care about any of these real world measures of ability. They don't believe any of it anyway. It wouldn't matter what achievements or accomplishments are reached because it's all part of a structure of power and oppression. In the critical view, we don't judge by the "liberal" views which are inherently skewed towards white supremacy and capitalist oppression. We should really be judging by narratives of oppression in all fields, including mathematics and sciences.

[Madiel]

I understood what you said. You said that either one is racist or one thinks everyone is ready for Harvard or MIT or brain surgery. No.

Well you clearly did NOT understand it. I never suggested that "everyone" is ready for brain surgery. The question is whether race is a predictor of readiness for brain surgery.

And I was referencing someone else's previous acknowledgement that race was not a predictor of ability to be a brain surgeon, while simultaneously not acknowledging what that logically means in terms of who is admitted to brain surgery school.

We see this all the time: an intellectual statement that race or gender is not in itself a predictor of talent or skill, coupled with a refusal to examine why real world results don't match up with that intellectual statement.

If you believe that men and women have equal capacity to perform a job (which I think is true for the great majority of jobs), but observe that the number of men and women being employed to do that job is not equal, then you ought to ask yourself what's going on. Then maybe you find that the rate of hiring is actually roughly equal but the number of CANDIDATES is not equal, and you ask yourself what is going on there.

Recently I heard someone saying that the number of men and women studying computer science is now roughly equal, but the number being hired in Silicon Valley is still heavily skewed, whereas the number being hired by other sorts of large companies like banks is now roughly equal.

Either gender is a relevant predictor of ability in computer science or it isn't. This isn't a statement that every woman is good at computer science. It's a statement that being a woman might not reduce the chance that you're good at computer science. And if that's the case, it's necessary to find a different explanation as to why women aren't being hired as computer scientists.

[Madiel]

As to the whole scores question, I might have had in mind "test scores" not "grades". I don't know all your American terminology. A number you're using to decide who gets to go to universities that isn't a good predictor of success.

[milk]

Well you clearly did NOT understand it. I never suggested that "everyone" is ready for brain surgery. The question is whether race is a predictor of readiness for brain surgery.

And I was referencing someone else's previous acknowledgement that race was not a predictor of ability to be a brain surgeon, while simultaneously not acknowledging what that logically means in terms of who is admitted to brain surgery school.

We see this all the time: an intellectual statement that race or gender is not in itself a predictor of talent or skill, coupled with a refusal to examine why real world results don't match up with that intellectual statement.

If you believe that men and women have equal capacity to perform a job (which I think is true for the great majority of jobs), but observe that the number of men and women being employed to do that job is not equal, then you ought to ask yourself what's going on. Then maybe you find that the rate of hiring is actually roughly equal but the number of CANDIDATES is not equal, and you ask yourself what is going on there.

Recently I heard someone saying that the number of men and women studying computer science is now roughly equal, but the number being hired in Silicon Valley is still heavily skewed, whereas the number being hired by other sorts of large companies like banks is now roughly equal.

Either gender is a relevant predictor of ability in computer science or it isn't. This isn't a statement that every woman is good at computer science. It's a statement that being a woman might not reduce the chance that you're good at computer science.

It is hard to track the context of everyone's comments so I'm sorry if I misunderstood.
I'm not sure I buy your statistics here. Maybe. Why do more women go into certain medical fields? Is it because men are facing discrimination in those fields? Why are there more men in prison? Is it because men are being picked on?

Don't take these last comments too seriously. My children are out of control !

[SimonNZ]

A Canadian naval officer I spoke to a few years back made the point that made the point that accommodating women in the service.  It often results in situation, e.g., where four men could be counted on to haul a cable, they had to a allow five if a couple were women.  Increasing a ship's complement by 25% isn't a trivial matter.

How often? I don't buy this. How many jobs on a ship would require this "25% increase" even if, which I doubt, the women really were remarkably weak?

It also assumes that all men are big and strong. I assume that the same officer seeing four weedy guys hauling a cable would add a fifth without thinking it represented a crisis.

[Madiel]

It also assumes that all men are big and strong. I assume that the same officer seeing four weedy guys hauling a cable would add a fifth without thinking it represented a crisis.

No no no. All men on ships are big manly men. Who bunk together. Just like The Village People sang about.

[Karl Henning]

I'm a lumberjack, and I'm okay!

[Madiel]

 

[SimonNZ]

I would think work ethic a more important factor in number of staff required.

Anyone here want to argue that women are lazier than men?