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MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

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Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#751

Post by dang »

davidgerard wrote: post #732
dang wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if you're questioning whether the story was true or whether it was important or whether it was offtopic for HN. If it was untrue, then we will have made a bad moderation call and should have waited. However, today has brought more 3rd party reports on the story, albeit still from ideologically slanted publications (e.g. https://nypost.com/2024/05/06/us-news/mit-bans-controversial... ), so I think the odd…

Sorry, I just meant to the story itself. NY Post and Unherd are low-quality sources given to beatups they think are in favour of their ideology. I am specifically sceptical that this is any sort of significant thing, let alone a huge deal. I'm not saying Unherd falsified quotes or anything, but I'm not at all convinced that this passes e.g. the Wikipedia "reliable sources" test of being worth mentioning in general (w…

It looks like the mainstream sources were just lagging behind the ideological vanguard, which makes sense since the latter care about it more.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/us/mit-diversity-statemen...

I think you were right to be skeptical though—I had the same worry. Sometimes we wait until a story has had more independent verification, but in this case the community appetite to discuss it was so strong, I decided not to stand in front of the train.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#752

Post by tomnipotent »

Manuel_D wrote: post #749
tomnipotent wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "women make 77 cents on the dollar" meme So you've done more search than everyone else putting out data? Maybe you can share all your hard-earned discoveries on the subject, since so you're so confidently well-informed. Men account for 13% of nurses, but average $90k vs $76k for women. https://blog.carlow.edu/2022/12/29/how-the-gender-pay-gap-im... Female lawyers under 35 make 90% of their male counterparts, but th…

Then why don't they just hire women to do the exact same jobs as men and save a ton of money? You're still not offering a rationale for why companies aren't making use of an easy way to reduce labor costs. Which is more likely: that companies hate women so much that they're willing to ignore an opportunity to make a massive leap in profitability? Or perhaps you need to read your studies more closely and it's not the…

> You're still not offering a rationale

It's a fantasy world to believe that people operate purely on rational and logical long-term thinking. What's your rationale for slavery? Why couldn't women vote until recently? What's your rationale for why American women couldn't go to bars unattended as late as the 1970s? There's literally no shortage of examples showing the mistreatment of women, yet it's hard to believe that pay discrepancy remains till this day?

The entire premise if flawed if your operating under the assumption that people think in market and game theory. Prejudices and biases easily overcome rational thinking.

> Your study on nurses offers an explanation in the article:

The differences in hours doesn't account for the difference in pay.

> over 70% of anesthesiologists are male while in pediatrics it's the opposite

Show me a single study that reinforces the data that backs up your position that satisfies the level of granularity you're grasping at. Until then, the research and data that's in supports only one of our positions.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#753

Post by Manuel_D »

tomnipotent wrote: post #752
Manuel_D wrote: post #749

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why don't they just hire women to do the exact same jobs as men and save a ton of money? You're still not offering a rationale for why companies aren't making use of an easy way to reduce labor costs. Which is more likely: that companies hate women so much that they're willing to ignore an opportunity to make a massive leap in profitability? Or perhaps you need to read your studies more closely and it's not the…

> You're still not offering a rationale It's a fantasy world to believe that people operate purely on rational and logical long-term thinking. What's your rationale for slavery? Why couldn't women vote until recently? What's your rationale for why American women couldn't go to bars unattended as late as the 1970s? There's literally no shortage of examples showing the mistreatment of women, yet it's hard to believe th…

There's a vast difference between suboptimal decision making and ignoring a massive cost saving. The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread, it's inconceivable that executives haven't heard this line. And the profi gains from a 10-20% reduction in labor costs would be staggering. No, prejudice doesn't cut it as a rationale.

Slavery existed because preindustrial societies were heavily labor intensive and the returns on more skilled labor was marginal. The industrial revolution changed this, which is why abolition movements largely coincided with industrialization.

Restrictions of women's liberties stem from thousands of years of family dynamics where child mortality rates meant that women had to spend most of their fertile years bearing and caring for children. The replacement rate in preindustrial societies was something like 5-6 births per woman due to such high infant mortality rates.

> The differences in hours doesn't account for the difference in pay

It actually does, men work 2 more normal hours and 1 more overtime hour on average. Assuming overtime is paid at 2x normal wages this is about a 10% disparity in paid hours. And again, there's more than just hours worked there's travel nursing, different metro areas, and more.

> Show me a single study that reinforces the data that backs up your position that satisfies the level of granularity you're grasping at.

You're asking me to prove a negative. I don't doubt you can find individual instances of discrimination against women (and against men), my point is that the large disparities between men's and women's average wages overwhelmingly stem from differences in men and women's behavior rather than discrimination.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#754

Post by dgfitz »

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #709
faizan-ali wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the most ridiculous take I've seen all year. South Asia is an established geographical-cultural term that includes the two largest countries in Southern Asia - India and Pakistan.

It is not "established" at all. No one calls their restaurant "South Asian", it is always Indian/Pakistani. "South Asian" = > Racist and Hindu-phobic is the established norm.

[flagged]

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#756

Post by tomnipotent »

Manuel_D wrote: post #753
tomnipotent wrote: post #752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're still not offering a rationale It's a fantasy world to believe that people operate purely on rational and logical long-term thinking. What's your rationale for slavery? Why couldn't women vote until recently? What's your rationale for why American women couldn't go to bars unattended as late as the 1970s? There's literally no shortage of examples showing the mistreatment of women, yet it's hard to believe th…

There's a vast difference between suboptimal decision making and ignoring a massive cost saving. The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread, it's inconceivable that executives haven't heard this line. And the profi gains from a 10-20% reduction in labor costs would be staggering. No, prejudice doesn't cut it as a rationale. Slavery existed because preindustrial societies were heavily labor intensive…

> The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread

It's not "widely spread", it's widely researched. Show me a study that explains the pay gap as owing to mostly to behavior.

You've provided post-hoc academic rationale, rather than something the average person would have been operating under. People simply do not make decisions the way you seem to be under the impression of. I'm sure the average slave owner used your explanation rather than believing that subset of the population was sub-human chattel.

An example of a behavioral difference is salary negotiation, where assertive women are viewed negatively while a man chest-thumping is viewed positively. Tell that woman who took a lower salary because of cultural stigmas and traditions your rationale and see how far that goes. I've been in the room when a man waved off a woman because of such behavior.

> You're asking me to prove a negative.

I'm asking you to back up your claim with evidence, which you have thusly been unable to do. What you have done is nitpick specific details like that's a gotcha, rather than owing to statistics and population sampling.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#757

Post by [deleted] »

tomnipotent wrote: post #756
Manuel_D wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a vast difference between suboptimal decision making and ignoring a massive cost saving. The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread, it's inconceivable that executives haven't heard this line. And the profi gains from a 10-20% reduction in labor costs would be staggering. No, prejudice doesn't cut it as a rationale. Slavery existed because preindustrial societies were heavily labor intensive…

> The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread It's not "widely spread", it's widely researched. Show me a study that explains the pay gap as owing to mostly to behavior. You've provided post-hoc academic rationale, rather than something the average person would have been operating under. People simply do not make decisions the way you seem to be under the impression of. I'm sure the average slave own…

[deleted]

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#758

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ForHackernews wrote: post #644
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to hire academic staff who can leverage their own personal, intellectual and cultural background to help us become a "bigger tent", I think there are contradictory imperatives here. You ultimately can't become a bigger tent across demographics while also shrinking your tent in terms of admissions selectivity. At some point, if people really mean it about serving a larger public, you just have to make yourse…

> You ultimately can't become a bigger tent across demographics while also shrinking your tent in terms of admissions selectivity. Whether or not this is strictly true in a mathematical sense, assuming a static applicant pool (a faulty but common assumption), the fact that this is such a knee-jerk response even from commenters here on HN is really depressing. Are we so conditioned to think of disadvantaged groups as…

>Are we so conditioned to think of disadvantaged groups as inferior that the idea of expanding access to members of historically under-represented groups appears to you to be definitionally at odds with being a selective institution?

I was assuming that diversity and inclusion was not reducible to the proverbial "talented tenth" of various demographic groups but in fact entailed serving the 99%.

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#759

Post by Manuel_D »

tomnipotent wrote: post #756
Manuel_D wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a vast difference between suboptimal decision making and ignoring a massive cost saving. The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread, it's inconceivable that executives haven't heard this line. And the profi gains from a 10-20% reduction in labor costs would be staggering. No, prejudice doesn't cut it as a rationale. Slavery existed because preindustrial societies were heavily labor intensive…

> The line that "went make X% as much as men" is widely spread It's not "widely spread", it's widely researched. Show me a study that explains the pay gap as owing to mostly to behavior. You've provided post-hoc academic rationale, rather than something the average person would have been operating under. People simply do not make decisions the way you seem to be under the impression of. I'm sure the average slave own…

Noticing a pay disparity and concluding that it's due to discrimination is just as much of a post-hoc analysis.

And yes, when you account for experience, field, location, etc. the pay disparity effectively disappears (less than 1%)

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2017/08/01/are-wome...

Re: MIT abandons requirement of DEI statements for hiring and promotions

#760

Post by CyberDildonics »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #743
CyberDildonics wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post I replied to talked about websites and they didn't say different colors were used in some circumstances, they literally mean different things. Why does everyone have the same colors in traffic lights (except for japan's blue lights which comes from language, not cultural significance) https://www.rd.com/article/heres-japan-blue-traffic-lights/ It's funny that this person speaks multiple languages and actuall…

> The post I replied to talked about websites and they didn't say different colors were used in some circumstances, they literally mean different things. I'll quote it again. "UI colors can have different meanings in different cultures." And all the examples I gave have red meaning opposite things in user interfaces based on cultural assumptions. Off/danger. Number up/number down. Occupied/available. Websites were ju…

How do you know any of that is cultural and not just something due to arbitrary choices made a long time ago that became standards?

If it was cultural then newer designs like computer interfaces would be affected. Also you ignored traffic lights.

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