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Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

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Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#201
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rapidly evolving complexity of your arguments above and below suggests to me your appearance of cluelessness was no more than a rhetorical posture. I have more respect for people who make their strongest arguments up front.

Classic sealioning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

How did I troll? I started a conversation, it evolved in a way I didn't anticipate. I did write full answers, with both personal experience, data and articles? How is that "trollinhg by asking concerned questions"?

I did make my point and tried to support it with (some) data.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#202
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was stopped too by police and one time briefly searched, so what? Being stopped by the police is not a game changer. If you haven't done anything wrong you'll walk away and go to work and back home. Why is being stopped by police such a big deal? I think the police should do more of that in the US, it would reduce crime considerably.

Because one should have the freedom to continue about their day without being detained for no reason. Can you support your claim? In my city people who have outstanding warrants (arguably having met a standard of having committed a crime) are regularly released after being stopped by police. It seems to me that being stopped by the police doesn't result in the detention of people actually charged with crimes - so why…

I honestly don't understand this argument. Please help me do so, because I keep hearing it.

If you're doing crimes, you're paying for them. Now the police, the argument goes, lets white people walk away with warrants. In the same time, they let less black people walk away. Is that the argument?

This might be true, but my problem is the letting people walk away in the first place. I don't want the police to do that at all. If the crime is not too bad, then don't emit warrants to begin with. But if there is a warrant, then that should be enforced.

I don't see how not enforcing warrants for black people or criminals of any color will make things better. It won't make things better for the society at large or for the black community. I believe the hard working black people also want less crime on the streets.

There is a problem with longer sentencing for black people, from what I heard. That is not a police issue. Police violence is a police issue, for all races. But police trying to arrest based on a warrant is not an issue, even if it devolves in violence.

What am I getting wrong?

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#203
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wild how people with different assumptions about the world can read the same thing, focus on the same part, and walk away with opposite conclusions. I read that as them trying to control for other factors and get a clean signal to demonstrate their hypothesis as a testable, verifiable, and falsifiable phenomenon. But some people apparently think that the process of isolation IS the confounding factor that produc…

It’s simply invalid science. It’s equivalent to having variables x, y, z , setting x = 0 and then exploring the correlation between y and z . That’s a fair experiment, but you simply cannot generalise the conclusion outside of the tested range for x (i.e. for x != 0 ).

"It’s simply invalid science"

So the whole peer review comittee was asleep, but you are here to tell us

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if applicants from higher social classes actually are better fits for the job? What a perfect example of social class bias. Change "from higher social class" to "from purple descent" or "from a Pastafarian background" and you have racial or religious bias.

No, because higher social class = access to better learning resources, e.g. tutors, and given everything else equal, better learning resources will lead to higher proficiency at a particular skill, on average. Therefore, if you do not know anything else about a group of candidates, hiring the person from the highest social class is the only rational choice. This study was doomed from the beginning.

You could rephrase your sentence and replace "higher social class" with race, gender, religion, or member of my favorite club and you'd have the most base -ism ever. This sentence is the root of almost all discrimination.

"Therefore, if you do not know anything else about a group of candidates"

Then the solution is to know more. Often our stereotypes (higher class) mask deep incompetencies or stop us from a deeper evaluation of the talent. You substitute accent, mannerisms and fashion for evaluating skills, aptitude, experience for the false assumption that in general will rule over the specifics of the candidate pool... which leads to horrible hiring practices, dystopian culture and worse.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if applicants from higher social classes actually are better fits for the job? What a perfect example of social class bias. Change "from higher social class" to "from purple descent" or "from a Pastafarian background" and you have racial or religious bias.

No, because higher social class = access to better learning resources, e.g. tutors, and given everything else equal, better learning resources will lead to higher proficiency at a particular skill, on average. Therefore, if you do not know anything else about a group of candidates, hiring the person from the highest social class is the only rational choice. This study was doomed from the beginning.

Not necessarily. Some of the most brilliant and hardworking people I know have a background that is anything but "high social class".

They are like that because they have something to aspire to.

Meanwhile high social class people I've met are generally dependable, but that's about it. Perhaps because they never had an incentive to think outside the box.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What the study shows, I think, is that other things being equal the person who sounds to be from higher class is likely to get the job. In an interview where you're not allowed to evaluate "all other things". In other words, absent any other information, people believe those from a higher class are more likely to be competent. Is that true? The link says nothing about it. If it is true, the hiring managers did a go…

Do you have a hypothetical explanation for why, if people are only allowed to evaluate speech and accent, they prefer a certain group, but if allowed to evaluate lots of different more meaningful things, which all lead to the same conclusion about competence EXCEPT for speech and accent , that preference no longer applies? That seems like an extraordinary claim unless you have some evidentiary base for it.

Sure, it's very credible that a general tendency will remain if other sources of information are available. The unresolved question is what weight is assigned to each preference.

If a hiring decision is influenced to 0.01% by speech and accent and 99.99% by whatever you deem reasonable criteria, then what do you learn from filtering out the latter?

And of course, decisions like this need not have linear behavior in reality either. A gross mismatch between different indicators could result in significantly worse hiring manager opinions than the (weighted) sum of the individual aspects.

Imagine that a candidate shows moderate (but sufficient) aptitude but then tries to disguise it with "high brow" rhetoric. In isolation using such speech may be considered a positive, but in this case it will be probably be to their detriment.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#207
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was stopped too by police and one time briefly searched, so what? Being stopped by the police is not a game changer. If you haven't done anything wrong you'll walk away and go to work and back home. Why is being stopped by police such a big deal? I think the police should do more of that in the US, it would reduce crime considerably.

Because one should have the freedom to continue about their day without being detained for no reason. Can you support your claim? In my city people who have outstanding warrants (arguably having met a standard of having committed a crime) are regularly released after being stopped by police. It seems to me that being stopped by the police doesn't result in the detention of people actually charged with crimes - so why…

In my city (non US), the police block a bridge over the river, stop everyone, and check the levels of alcohol in their breath. I don't make a fuss about it, because it probably keeps me safer as a lot of idiots won't drink and drive because of this being done regularly.

Deal with it. The police stopping you is not them thinking you are a criminal necessarily.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#208
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s simply invalid science. It’s equivalent to having variables x, y, z , setting x = 0 and then exploring the correlation between y and z . That’s a fair experiment, but you simply cannot generalise the conclusion outside of the tested range for x (i.e. for x != 0 ).

"It’s simply invalid science" So the whole peer review comittee was asleep, but you are here to tell us

I don't think it's generally sound life advice to outsource thinking to others.

In addition, judging by the topic, this was a sociology department study. Social studies are hardly even science, and the practitioners aren't exactly renowned for their statistical skills. I'm much more confident about my Oxford Masters of Science degree in math.

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a white that grew up very very poor, I can't possibly understand why so many black people try to convince me that I'm guilty of white privilege, when most of them had many more resources growing up.

It isn't my argument, but as I try to understand all sides I'll do my best to explain the position anyway. The idea goes something like this. You have white privilege because you are visibly white. By being visibly white you gain an automatic differentiation from those who are non-white. The belief is that the system, being largely run by white people will extend courtesy and nicer treatment to those who look like it…

you may find this interesting - https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/20/the-invention-o...

Re: Study shows class bias in hiring based on few seconds of speech

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m familiar with these talking points and what influences you would have to regurgitate them. That talking point still assumes that the killings of armed people was necessary. It doesn't tell you if they were legal holders, responsible concealed carry holders, the type of weapon or anything. Supporting this frame of thought requires being too much of an apologist for an institution that just has too many options wit…

I don't think police should kill as many people as they do. They are way too trigger happy. I was making an argument that the police is about as shitty for whites and blacks. It's not a matter of racism, but of bad policing. I want police to be better to everyone, not just black people. If we don't address the root of the problem (and racism isn't it), you just end up with other Baltimores. For example just the other…

And in fact the solution is more money and training to the police. Police don't get trained, especially in high pressure situations, which creates even more mistakes.

People upset with the police should be asking for funding the police and more training, not defunding them.

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