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Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

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Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#211

Post by MR4D »

sizzle wrote: post #202
IvyAdmisions wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was an ivy league admissions officer for a few years after college. I promise you your application was viewed as "well, here's another really smart asian kid who's otherwise unremarkable from the other 1000 we'll see". Meanwhile, hers was treated like precious gold.

So what's the solution to the problem of not enough seats for x ethnicity when filtering out academic performance metrics?

Replace the name, ethnicity, and gender of the person with a number.

If admissions can never see that information they are much less likely to be able to discriminate against it.

Of course, if someone doesn't like the result, and not enough black/asian/jewish/white/whatever kids get in, then someone sues.

But to me, this is the only way of making it on the merits. As soon as you introduce that information into the process, bias takes over.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#212

Post by pkaye »

bruthafez wrote: post #199
pkaye wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factor parents income into the equation instead of race.

Even that would make little sense. Jeff Bezos' income is $0 (or maybe $1, can't remember) — you really think his kids would be disadvantaged tho? That just massively incentivizes financial trickery in order to reduce stated incomes. For example if I were a parent I would just give all my money to my siblings with the understanding that they provide it to my kids under my management, state my income as $0 or even nega…

Okay maybe combination of income and assets reported to the IRS for the past 5 years. Not perfect but it is better than current scheme that uses race.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#213

Post by bruthafez »

siosonel wrote: post #192
echaozh wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Asians are now systematically denied entry to the Academy and you are supporting it now.

I am an Asian. I am against systematic denial of anyone. I say let anyone attend the school of their choice, using online access to overcome space constraints. As an Asian who've experienced discrimination first hand, I am saddened that necessary differences in the gravity of error correction, as applied to group discrimination, is not obvious to everyone. Correcting the effects of slavery is much more important beca…

>Correcting the effects of slavery is much more important because its effects are much more pervasive.

Uh, source?

You're just making an arbitrary value judgement. Who are you to compare the effects of racism-against-blacks against the effects of racism-against-asians? You're making an arbitrary value judgement and then using that value judgement to justify systematic discriminations against Asians.

You're also ignoring the fact that Asians were enslaved too in Japanese internment camps -- and what's more that slavery was more recent than African-American slavery.

Weird to see you throw your own ethnicity under the bus in your haste to agree with the racist value judgements of elite bureaucrats tbh.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#214

Post by IvyAdmisions »

MR4D wrote: post #211
sizzle wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the solution to the problem of not enough seats for x ethnicity when filtering out academic performance metrics?

Replace the name, ethnicity, and gender of the person with a number. If admissions can never see that information they are much less likely to be able to discriminate against it. Of course, if someone doesn't like the result, and not enough black/asian/jewish/white/whatever kids get in, then someone sues. But to me, this is the only way of making it on the merits. As soon as you introduce that information into the pr…

The asians will still get rejected. They're not rejected for racial reasons. They're rejected because they submit uninspiring, cookie cutter applications en masse. This may be because of something in the asian culture. That's outside my expertise.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#215

Post by naveen99 »

IvyAdmisions wrote: post #214
MR4D wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replace the name, ethnicity, and gender of the person with a number. If admissions can never see that information they are much less likely to be able to discriminate against it. Of course, if someone doesn't like the result, and not enough black/asian/jewish/white/whatever kids get in, then someone sues. But to me, this is the only way of making it on the merits. As soon as you introduce that information into the pr…

The asians will still get rejected. They're not rejected for racial reasons. They're rejected because they submit uninspiring, cookie cutter applications en masse. This may be because of something in the asian culture. That's outside my expertise.

but asians are over represented at harvard...

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#216

Post by IvyAdmisions »

naveen99 wrote: post #215
IvyAdmisions wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The asians will still get rejected. They're not rejected for racial reasons. They're rejected because they submit uninspiring, cookie cutter applications en masse. This may be because of something in the asian culture. That's outside my expertise.

but asians are over represented at harvard...

And they'd be WAAAAAY more overrepresented if the "Great Academics, Boring eveything else" applicants got in.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#217

Post by gizmo686 »

brighteyes wrote: post #197
gizmo686 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider two children, Alice and Bob, who appear equal on objective measurements while applying to college. Alice comes from an environment that heavily values education; Bob comes from one that does not. Despite this, they both achieved equal academic results. Further, if admitted, they will both find themselves in the same education valuing environment (college). Since Bob came from an environment that did not valu…

Sure, if they are equal on all objective measurements, your theory may be valid. But Asian-American students etc. have far better objective measurements than other groups, on average. So if you just break ties, as you suggest, you're not going to move the needle much.

I was looking at the marginal case because it is the easiest to see. Once you accept that this is the case (which, as I pointed out in another comment is an empirical question; it is not a-priori obvious that I am correct), the question becomes how big is the effect. If it is sufficiently large, then it would be sufficient to overcome significant differences in objective measurements. Again, this is an empirical question.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#218

Post by bruthafez »

pkaye wrote: post #212
bruthafez wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even that would make little sense. Jeff Bezos' income is $0 (or maybe $1, can't remember) — you really think his kids would be disadvantaged tho? That just massively incentivizes financial trickery in order to reduce stated incomes. For example if I were a parent I would just give all my money to my siblings with the understanding that they provide it to my kids under my management, state my income as $0 or even nega…

Okay maybe combination of income and assets reported to the IRS for the past 5 years. Not perfect but it is better than current scheme that uses race.

Yes it's better but still so gameable it's essentially unusable. Also if you factor in assets reported to the IRS it would be damn near impossible not to be biased towards kids whose families have more assets and thus higher chances of contributing to your university's endowment via donations.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#219

Post by bruthafez »

dwaltrip wrote: post #210
bruthafez wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There aren't massive systematic factors working to negatively affect specific slices of those population groupings. It's not a good comparison. Yes there are massive systemic factors working against people disadvantaged in those factors, and yes it is a good comparison. Look up the average height of CEOs sometime and then tell me height discrimination isn't a thing.

Ah, good catch. I missed the height one. However, I think it's not even close in terms of magnitude. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember hearing something like that tall individuals earn, on average, something like $1000 more per year. That's pretty small compared to differences in the usual groups that people tend to focus on.

What differences?

Just saying that height, facial attractiveness/symmetry, weight etc all could (unquantifiably but obviously) easily outweigh race in terms of societal privilege and it's just absurd to cherry pick the issue of race as the determining factor of privilege rather than something even more basic such as height or facial symmetry.

And that's not even accounting for the fact that (according to many academics at schools that ironically factor race into admission) race doesn't even exist while height and facial symmetry inarguably do exist.

Re: Harvard discrimination lawsuit: data show penalization of Asian-Americans

#220

Post by pkaye »

bruthafez wrote: post #218
pkaye wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay maybe combination of income and assets reported to the IRS for the past 5 years. Not perfect but it is better than current scheme that uses race.

Yes it's better but still so gameable it's essentially unusable. Also if you factor in assets reported to the IRS it would be damn near impossible not to be biased towards kids whose families have more assets and thus higher chances of contributing to your university's endowment via donations.

I guess it depends what the priorities are. Are they trying to increase the university endowment, increase diversity, teach bright students, run a winning college sports team, etc.
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