Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Woman’s Story

raganwald.posterous.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 210 posts

Re: A Woman’s Story

#61

Post by tomjen3 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #28

The biggest lesson I see here is how much family solidarity and positive expectations makes in a childs education and life. Without her male tribe, and presumably the female tribe who sent the male tribe along, Reg's mum would have taken a different path. As a father of a young family with a spotty family past I wanted to focus on things I knew for my children. Perhaps I need to focus more on building that kind of su…

If you want to raise your child to be successful look at the mars-mellow experiment. Unlike IQ they could come up with a really strong correlation to school performance and later success and it seems (at least partially) to be something the family has some influence over.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#62

Post by roguecoder »

lambda wrote: post #39
mhartl wrote: post #9

There were a lot of questions about numbers such as guessing the next number in a sequence. There were some logic puzzles, the kind where you have to figure out that it’s the baker who rides a bicycle and the mechanic who lives in the house with a red door. There were some strange questions where she was given a sketch of a three dimensional figure such as a cube with some missing pieces, and she had to guess which s…

> Nowadays, it is illegal in the U.S. to give IQ tests to job applicants Citation needed. It is legal (at least based on the guidelines provided by the US Department of Labor: http://www.onetcenter.org/dl_files/empTestAsse.pdf ) to give people all kinds of tests as long as (a) they do not select against certain protected traditionally disadvantaged classes more than it does for the average applicant or (b) if it does…

We still give IQ tests, they are just IQ tests that have a cultural background required. When we ask an applicant to solve a problem we do not expect them to have seen before, we are testing their intelligence, even if we then proceed to expect them to turn this into code. Even then, plenty of the Google interview questions aren't really any different from the test she received. IQ tests have sections that it doesn't sound like that test included, such as analogy tests or word memorization. The test she received was tailored to the logical, computational thinking required for programming, not generically designed to measure "intelligence".

The major difference between then and now is that they were willing to train people with no prior experience.

Even in this story, I note they were screening a very limited pool of applicants. I wonder what would happen if we went into high schools and conducted universal tests of potential: could we find (and possibly hire) large numbers of people with enormous aptitude who had never considered programming?

Re: A Woman’s Story

#63

Post by jberryman »

kahirsch wrote: post #42
rmc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially an IQ test, and what they discovered was that Gwen was highly intelligent. They then did the smart thing and judged her based on her demonstrated aptitude rather than on the prevailing prejudices of the day Actually, if you read the whole thing, they didn't believe her "demonstrated aptitude" because of their "prevailing prejedices". She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude. M…

> That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people (which will be mostly black in the USA). This isn't true at all. They haven't been shown to be biased, merely that blacks score lower. Extensive research has show that IQ tests have equal predictive power for blacks and whites. "Disparate impact" merely means that blacks…

> Extensive research has show that IQ tests have equal predictive power for blacks and whites.

This says nothing about whether an IQ test is biased when used for other purposes than predicting future achievement (such as a job interview), and a supposedly-but-not-actually-objective test is a very dangerous thing; there's a lot of ugly historical baggage where science has met race in the past.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#64

Post by roguecoder »

tomjen3 wrote: post #58
jbooth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unfounded prejudice is unstable in a competitive market for labor." Did you ever see that study in France where they submitted the same exact resumes with Christian names and Arab names? I'll let you guess as to the results.

Assuming this isn't a trick... There are two likely scenarios: 1) The employers are racist biggots based on things that don't correlate with job performance. In this case betting against them is a winning strategy. 2) The employers are racist based on observed data from previous hires. Based on that they assume that a person with an Arab name is less able to perform. This may not be fair for the individual, but may b…

It isn't a trick: the same thing happens in the US with African-American names on resumes and is trivially repeatable on your own if you are so inclined. It has nothing to do with job performance either: measured job performance isn't variable.

It does have to do with cultural comfort, and the fact humans make hiring decisions instead of machines. In any case where human judgement has been replaced by measurement or judgement blind to demographics diversity has increased.

I know it's annoying when reality is non-optimized, but it doesn't take twisting ourselves into knots to explain why: humans make predictably bad decisions.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#65

Post by rmc »

moldbug wrote: post #35
rmc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially an IQ test, and what they discovered was that Gwen was highly intelligent. They then did the smart thing and judged her based on her demonstrated aptitude rather than on the prevailing prejudices of the day Actually, if you read the whole thing, they didn't believe her "demonstrated aptitude" because of their "prevailing prejedices". She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude. M…

That's because in the past, the IQ tests were not fair, objective and colour-blind, but were set up in such a way as to bias against poorer people (which will be mostly black in the USA). Is this a conspiracy theory? It sounds a lot like a conspiracy theory to me. Just sayin'. Conspiracies do happen. However, when you're trying to persuade me of a conspiracy theory, the burden of proof is high. I expect links - lots…

For many IQ tests there is a correlation between wealth and high IQ results (and conversely, poverty and low IQ tests). IQ tests, do no measure 'innate intelligence' (mostly because no-one really knows what that even is or how to measure it). As a result if you have more, and better education and schooling, you more more likely to have a higher IQ. So if you're in a group that has worse and less education, you're more likely to have lower IQ.

As an example of how IQ test results aren't too reliable: IQ tests have been rising year on year for decades (the Flynn effect). Either we're all a pile of geniuses (which makes you wonder what score people in the middle ages got), or IQ test is inflenced by external things.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#66

Post by roguecoder »

barrkel wrote: post #36
moldbug wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note also that the methods of 60 years ago (a) discovered Gwen's ability, (b) promoted her to a commensurate position, (c) gave a productive citizen a genuine sense of achievement and accomplishment. All in a period which was universally racist and sexist by today's progressive standards. Now? Gwen's intelligence would probably also be detected, if by less straightforward and reliable methods. Because her African X c…

So, in essence, black people today are "likely" incompetent at their jobs because of affirmative action? That seems to be what you're writing. And it doesn't look good.

It's also not how affirmative action works, even if it was still broadly used (which it's not): http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/02/granting-women-a...

Aggregate performance was either unaffected or improved in the presence of affirmative action. This fits with history: until 1972 almost no women were admitted to MIT, but it didn't make the men perform less well for all the affirmative action they received nor cheapen their accomplishments.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#67

Post by jbooth »

tomjen3 wrote: post #58
jbooth wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"unfounded prejudice is unstable in a competitive market for labor." Did you ever see that study in France where they submitted the same exact resumes with Christian names and Arab names? I'll let you guess as to the results.

Assuming this isn't a trick... There are two likely scenarios: 1) The employers are racist biggots based on things that don't correlate with job performance. In this case betting against them is a winning strategy. 2) The employers are racist based on observed data from previous hires. Based on that they assume that a person with an Arab name is less able to perform. This may not be fair for the individual, but may b…

You can be subconsciously mildly racist without being a screaming bigot. In fact, pretty much all of us are that, to varying extents.

Your second line of thought seems to approach "I'm not racist, arabs just actually are unenlightened bastards".

Re: A Woman’s Story

#68

Post by blasdel »

raganwald wrote: post #50
moldbug wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Set up in such a way as to" is a deliberately ambiguous construction. It allows the reader to believe that there is, or is not, a conspiracy. If I say, "Harvard admissions are set up in such a way as to admit large numbers of Jews," someone believing in a Jewish conspiracy will hear my dog-whistle and agree with me. But to someone not believing in a Jewish conspiracy, I can deny everything. A highly useful and malig…

I am often deliberately ambiguous about the motives of people I don’t know well. For example, you may or may not be deliberately grinding your pet axe about race and IQ tests in a story which is not really about intelligence but actually about overcoming obstacles. And I choose to believe that you are capable of adding more signal and less noise. On very poor evidence, so far.

He is capable of adding extraordinary quantities of both signal and noise, as evidenced by his collected writings: http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/

Re: A Woman’s Story

#69

Post by moldbug »

raganwald wrote: post #50
moldbug wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Set up in such a way as to" is a deliberately ambiguous construction. It allows the reader to believe that there is, or is not, a conspiracy. If I say, "Harvard admissions are set up in such a way as to admit large numbers of Jews," someone believing in a Jewish conspiracy will hear my dog-whistle and agree with me. But to someone not believing in a Jewish conspiracy, I can deny everything. A highly useful and malig…

I am often deliberately ambiguous about the motives of people I don’t know well. For example, you may or may not be deliberately grinding your pet axe about race and IQ tests in a story which is not really about intelligence but actually about overcoming obstacles. And I choose to believe that you are capable of adding more signal and less noise. On very poor evidence, so far.

I wasn't responding to the original story, but to a comment which I felt made unfair and scurrilous accusations about scientists of the past whom I respect.

It's true that these charges are conventional in our society. Most people would let them pass without notice. However, most people would not endorse letting the unacceptable pass without notice - so I don't think I'm being antisocial.

Re: A Woman’s Story

#70

Post by rmc »

mhartl wrote: post #46
rmc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is essentially an IQ test, and what they discovered was that Gwen was highly intelligent. They then did the smart thing and judged her based on her demonstrated aptitude rather than on the prevailing prejudices of the day Actually, if you read the whole thing, they didn't believe her "demonstrated aptitude" because of their "prevailing prejedices". She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude. M…

Actually, if you read the whole thing... She had to fight to get them to see her demonstrated aptitude. I did read the whole thing. She "fought" by answering more questions demonstrating her aptitude, and her interviewers eventually conceded the point: They tried various other questions, questions from other tests, questions they used for more advanced candidates. Gwen answered as best she could. The men were amazed.…

Yes, and she wouldn't have to fight if she

Let's pretend there was another black women who wasn't in the 99th percentile, but only the 85th. Let's pretend they would hire anyone over 80th percentile. They might, again, think she was cheating, and hence ask her more, harder, questions, like Gwen here. And since this person is in the 85th percentile, she might not have gotten all the questions right. The examainers would then take this as "proof" that she cheated and she'd be sent home.

We should be worried about the people we don't hear about.

Post reply on HN