401–410 of 807 posts
In the spirit of trying to learn something from the community: while I can certainly understand the rationale and goals behind DEI programs (many of which I agree with, others not), I honestly can't understand these "DEI statements" at all. They always seemed very "1984" to me, and almost designed to engender resentment in a way that would ultimately backfire. So perhaps I'm in a like-minded echo chamber, but is ther…
In the spirit of trying to learn something from the community: while I can certainly understand the rationale and goals behind DEI programs (many of which I agree with, others not), I honestly can't understand these "DEI statements" at all. They always seemed very "1984" to me, and almost designed to engender resentment in a way that would ultimately backfire. So perhaps I'm in a like-minded echo chamber, but is ther…
I don't know if it's just DEI, or other types of politics, but there seems to be a recent trend towards "you must say you agree with us, otherwise you are ostracized". My personal opinion/observation is that as corporate and academic has trended towards less direct confrontation/arguments, this has resulted in a lot more passive aggressive behavior such as statements like these, some debatable "codes of conduct", etc…
The original sin of this country was slavery. We continue to try to find ways to ameliorate the long term harm which it did to our national culture. DEI is one of those attempts. And likewise, there is a desire to treat all people as individuals with equal opportunity. For the most part, this country has not lived up to that ideal.
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> There are outstanding systemic inequities at every level of American society. I think this needs to be backed up with evidence rather than merely asserted. I've been reading through a number of books by Thomas Sowell lately and he presents enough statistical evidence to explain disparities without any hint of racism, sexism, etc. Regardless of if you agree with him or not, the mere fact that alternate theories exis…
> many women voluntarily take time off of their career to raise children Expect there is evidence to suggest that women that earn a higher income are less likely to leave the workforce, which is further influenced by access to affordable childcare and dual incomes. The point is that when you control for these factors, a woman with the same title and responsibilities as a man will earn less for the same work.
That can't possibly be true, because in a market economy, the more-expensive workers (men) would be laid off and replaced by less-expensive, equally-capable "same title and responsibilities" workers (women). This doesn't seem to be the case on a grand scale, which means it's more deep/complex than the "men get paid more than women" headline we're all used to seeing.
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Perhaps you were simply evaluated against your noggin and not your skin? Edit: what are the arguments against this?
they very well might have been evaluated based entirely on their abilities alone. A toxic element of DEI is that now they have to always wonder (as does everyone else) if it was done because of their skin color/gender/race, regardless of what their mentor says. Because it very well may be true as well.
DEI is a strange issue in that nearly everybody agrees that it's a good target to aim for yet any action taken to get there is discrimination. I frankly see it as a cheap shortcut that some very privileged people want to take to try to wash away the sins of our racist past, not to help people, but to make ourselves feel better- or attempt to.
I think the modern-day conflation of the philosophical notion of diversity with “diversity of skin color” / “racial diversity” is actually harmful. When we speak of diversity today we often imply a sort of supposed-deserved reparations toward the “minorities.” Obviously there are so many incorrect aspects of these assumptions, but many people in power, perhaps all, have accumulated guilt that needs an outlet. Diversi…
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Cultural differences exist. For example, colors have different meanings in different cultures: https://blog.grio.com/2020/06/uxui-design-across-cultures-us... Ethnicity is then being used as a proxy for culture, even though it's a bad one, because it's a visible one. It's basically starting from the premise that cultural diversity is valuable and then applying Goodhart's Law to the thing most easily measured. Whereas…
UI colors can be racist? This is ideological tea-leaf reading.
Slightly better reporting:
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mit-scraps-diversity-sta...
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If there are a fixed number of slots, actually filtering without considering those criteria and yet ending up with a ‘good’ set of numbers based on those criteria is actually impossible. Regardless of any additional outreach being performed. It’s basic analysis.
> actually filtering without considering those criteria and yet ending up with a ‘good’ set of numbers based on those criteria is actually impossible If there is an underlying difference in quality, yes. If it’s people from one group not getting applications in, no. There are a lot of smart people gate kept from opportunities due to trivial things like application fees.
Because if that is the issue, that sounds pretty cheap and easy to fix.
One thing I've found useful in parsing modern news is to remember: A pile of extreme occurrences does not an argument make. Because there's insane stuff happening somewhere, to someone, all the time. With the benefit of digitized news we've enabled lazy trawls to create a pile of "Look at how extreme and crazy ____ is!" to support any viewpoint on any topic. Anti-gun? Here's some insane gun owners. Pro-gun? Here's so…
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> is there anyone that actually defends these DEI statements with a coherent argument When Richard Dawkins spoke at UC Berkeley in 2008, he argued that "raising awareness" about feminism by changing how we speak and think has changed society for the better. (In the same discussion, he seeks to do the same for children's freedom from their parents' religion.) There is no doubt that Western society has changed how it t…
> That said, Dawkins has in more recent years found himself opposing identity politics as they seek to change language usage and perceptions of gender. Correction: Dawkins doesn't care one whit about gender, and he has literally said so. He only cares when people cross into talking about sex, make incorrect claims about the nature of sex (spectrums and such), conflate sex with gender, and make unscientific claims abo…
> making a confusing mess of things.
Which seems to be the prevailing state of discourse about the matter of DEI. If I may add a reflection, maybe it was just relatively easier sociologically to recognise the injustices and inequalities that feminism decried.