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A math professor who objects to diversity statements

theatlantic.com

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Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#301

Post by nvm0n2 »

dfe wrote: post #278
nvm0n2 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keynes has been discredited in recent years, it's odd that you think he's established anything. The Austrians were proven right and recent monetary policy reflects their view - you don't see much discussion of Keynes anymore. If you don't understand Keynes maybe that's why you don't realise that? To recap Keynes: his core idea was countercyclical monetary policy, i.e. to issue debt (print money) when times are bad an…

I've been lurking on HN for years, and I just created an account to thank you for this post. I always had this gut feeling that the Keynesianism in the aftermath of 2008 was a really bad idea but economics isn't my space and I don't care to argue with politicos about economics. This explains it really well. So... now what?

You're welcome!

What now? Well, economics isn't really that complex.

Rule 1. Don't print money - it distorts the natural flow of information and incentives through the market, leading to misallocations.

Rule 2. Get rid of fractional reserve banking. It's an unnatural privilege that other companies would be forbidden from engaging in (it's considered fraud if you don't have a banking license). This forces all interest bearing investment to take place through funds that expose their actual risks and liquidity constraints to investors.

When it's possible to save money risk free because banks can't loan it out and there's no monetary inflation, the moral hazard evaporates and you can allow funds to collapse if they make persistently bad investments. There is no longer any need for bank bailouts.

Recessions can still happen in such a world, because mass hysteria and utopian thinking is a part of human nature. There's no law you can pass to stop people getting over-excited about dotComs or AI startups. You just have to let people work out the true value of these things themselves.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#302

Post by Slava_Propanei »

roenxi wrote: post #110
ilaksh wrote: post #41

I hope more people will pick up on the danger of this slippery slope. Part of the problem though is that we seem to have a tendency towards polar vortices of worldviews that suck in various issues that aren't even necessarily strongly connected, just to make them more effective in opposing the other side in an excessively concentrated way. So there is this tendency of social activists towards conformance and centrali…

Well, 'slippery slope' is a logical fallacy. The issue here, more precisely, is that without something to push against the US is inculcating ideas into the next generation of leaders that make ex-Soviets think "wait a second, this looks like home!". It isn't a slope, this is literally rebuilding the dangerous parts of authoritarian bureaucracy - people who can't think and are then given unearned and easily abusable p…

[dead]

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#303

Post by jrex »

dfe wrote: post #278
nvm0n2 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keynes has been discredited in recent years, it's odd that you think he's established anything. The Austrians were proven right and recent monetary policy reflects their view - you don't see much discussion of Keynes anymore. If you don't understand Keynes maybe that's why you don't realise that? To recap Keynes: his core idea was countercyclical monetary policy, i.e. to issue debt (print money) when times are bad an…

I've been lurking on HN for years, and I just created an account to thank you for this post. I always had this gut feeling that the Keynesianism in the aftermath of 2008 was a really bad idea but economics isn't my space and I don't care to argue with politicos about economics. This explains it really well. So... now what?

You’re gonna love this https://youtu.be/d0nERTFo-Sk

And this

https://youtu.be/GTQnarzmTOc

:-)

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#304

Post by graemep »

ninkendo wrote: post #277
graemep wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are evidence for the argument made by the comment you replied to. You think it is more important that the right (in your opinion) decision is made than the decision the electorate prefers is made. This is actually a general argument in favour of rule by an oligarchy of experts rather than democracy.

An oligarchy of elected experts is precisely what representative democracy is. Giving every decision directly to the voters is not something you see in any democracy today. We elect people to make these decisions on our behalf.

Experts in what? They are only expert in getting elected. Few of them have any expertise relevant to the position they are elected to.

A lot of decisions are also subjective - not how best to achieve an objective, but what what your objectives are.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#305

Post by cjohnson318 »

amluto wrote: post #234
cjohnson318 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! But the GP was stating that unprivileged white males were applying, but being filtered out. There's a difference between being underrepresented due to a bias, and underrepresented because your cohort has opted out. Frankly, with the rising cost of a college education and the stagnation of income in a lot of fields, people should think long and hard about where they go to school and what they major in.

I interpreted “filtered out” to mean that they weren’t making it from childhood to college due to any of a number of factors, not necessarily that they applied and were rejected.

I see that now. Sorry, they might have meant that.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#306

Post by ninkendo »

graemep wrote: post #304
ninkendo wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An oligarchy of elected experts is precisely what representative democracy is. Giving every decision directly to the voters is not something you see in any democracy today. We elect people to make these decisions on our behalf.

Experts in what? They are only expert in getting elected. Few of them have any expertise relevant to the position they are elected to. A lot of decisions are also subjective - not how best to achieve an objective, but what what your objectives are.

Hopefully experts in lawmaking. Of course you’re right that we as an electorate do terrible job of electing good lawmakers, but that’s on us, not the lawmakers. You’re absolutely right that this system sucks because of this. In fact, it’s the worst system of government in the world, except for all the others.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#307

Post by sudosysgen »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #298
sudosysgen wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is literally just false. That quote comes from "Critique of the Gotha Programme", and what it really means is that people have unequal capabilities and unequal needs, so that what people should receive cannot be equal, instead, it should follow from needs and abilities. In that text, Marx explains it by saying: "one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Th…

This is deeply confusing. I said: > because everyone's "need" is the same. Maybe adjusted by a few exceptions like family size And the parts of Marx you quote say literally that exact thing: that people's needs vary only depending on whether they are married, how many children they have "and so on and so forth". In other words Marx didn't recognize any connection between quantity or quality of work and what you get b…

It really doesn't do that. He was giving examples of how people's needs changed, to critique people who said that everyone's needs are the same. As I said, this where he disagreed with many leftists, and the name of the text is "Critique of..."

The next quote literally says that some are better or work more and therefore the right to one's work is a right to unequality.

If you want the full context, read the full text. It's not so long. Otherwise, you have to trust me for the context and not imagine one.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#308

Post by therealdrag0 »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #134
bawolff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks,i agree its best to look at it directly. But i do wonder what lines like "Clearly formulates new ideas for advancing equity and inclusion at Berkeley and within their field, through their research,..." mean What does it mean for a math professor to advance diversity through their research? Like i could maybe get it for the arts or even some social sciences, but what does that look like for math?

Not only that, but it presupposes that diversity is a good in and of itself, which I think is quite false when it comes to diversity of physical characteristics (which is all that these initiatives ever care about). Diversity is neutral . It is just as erroneous to think that a group is enhanced by adding people just for their race (or gender, etc) as it is to think that a group is enhanced by excluding people just f…

Some may presuppose that, others may suppose instead that physical diversity is a proxy indicator for other diversities of experience and culture. Sometimes proxies are good enough, other times they’re not.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#309

Post by thiagoharry »

nvm0n2 wrote: post #298
sudosysgen wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is literally just false. That quote comes from "Critique of the Gotha Programme", and what it really means is that people have unequal capabilities and unequal needs, so that what people should receive cannot be equal, instead, it should follow from needs and abilities. In that text, Marx explains it by saying: "one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Th…

This is deeply confusing. I said: > because everyone's "need" is the same. Maybe adjusted by a few exceptions like family size And the parts of Marx you quote say literally that exact thing: that people's needs vary only depending on whether they are married, how many children they have "and so on and so forth". In other words Marx didn't recognize any connection between quantity or quality of work and what you get b…

You are wrong. Even in Das Capital Marx comments that there are simpler labor and complex labor. You could think in a complex labor producing more value than a simpler one, in exchange of the worker needing more salary for compensating more time needed for its education and fomation. However, this changes almost nothing for the model and main argument presented in Das Capital, therefore, for most part he just simplified the model assuming that all labor was a simple one.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#310

Post by huytersd »

christiangenco wrote: post #8

For two excellent books on the topic of how the woke ideology corrodes societies (academia in particular) check out "What's Our Problem?" by Tim Urban and "The Coddling of the American Mind" by by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt.

Aren’t you the guy that asks “innocent” questions about why black women should be on Bluesky.
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