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What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

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Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#51

Post by Yizahi »

digitaltrees wrote: post #49
az226 wrote: post #16

Pretty much the whole thing in a nutshell is the one chart showing the same student as Asian, 25%, White, 36%, Hispanic 77%, and Black 95%. This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past to kickstart the disproportionate enrollment demographics, but it was past due to get rid of it. The most interesting part following SCOTUS' ruling is that Harvard said it wouldn't change their wa…

You didn't think the 50% admit rate for athletes, 40% admit rate for deans interest ie large cash donors, and 35% legacy admit rate were "the whole think"?

Honestly, the combination of extremely discriminatory, extremely corrupt, extremely predatory and then again discriminated differently by the fact if they are a sportsball player or not is rather amusing and at the same time baffling when observed from the other side of the globe.

Of course it is too late by now, by have Americans considered maybe abolishing all that and admitting students only based on the exam results, with preference given to the kids with better results (or no preference)? And replacing professional sportsball with a 1 lesson/week of general fitness? Maybe then they won't need to get so much debt to study too.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#52

Post by steveBK123 »

dastbe wrote: post #29
steveBK123 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legacy SATs were about 30pts lower per Harvard Crimson in 2023 https://features.thecrimson.com/2023/freshman-survey/academi...

"The average SAT score among legacy students was 1543, while it was 1515 for non-legacy students."

Thanks my reading comprehension was low last night it would appear

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#53

Post by rayiner »

dahart wrote: post #45
rayiner wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a "platitude" it's an aphorism. It reflects the principle--already ancient to Plato 2,400 years ago--that we don't solve injustice by shifting that injustice onto innocent third parties. If you can prove wrongdoing by specific people then you can punish it. But if you define treating someone differently based on skin color as a moral crime—which I think is necessary for a multi-ethnic society to function—the…

It feels like a platitudinal aphorism to me, it’s trite and cliche and overused and was delivered as if it’s insightful in hopes of ending the debate. Google appears to agree vigorously that “two wrongs don’t make a right” is a platitude. One problem with that platitude is that there are plenty of ways that two negative things can balance each other out or become positive in some way. Aren’t you making deep cultural…

An aphorism is an expression of a general principle. This one seems cliched because it reflects a principle deeply ingrained in our society. We reject “an eye for an eye” and instead say “two wrongs don’t make a right.” We have since Plato’s day. You don’t disregard core principles merely because a particular social problem is difficult to solve.

Affirmative action is wrong because we have defined treating an individual differently based on their race as a moral wrong. The act is wrong, regardless of your motivations. It’s like how stealing is wrong even if you’re doing it because someone else stole from you first.

I’m not ignoring your point that third parties may not be innocent. I said above that if you can prove wrongdoing by specific individuals, you can punish them.

> acknowledgement of a problem, and reflection and self-improvement as a group

There are no “groups,” just individuals who must be treated according to their individual merits, without regard to their group membership. That was the whole principle of the civil rights era.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#54

Post by rayiner »

BrenBarn wrote: post #48
rayiner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of problems in society that are hard to fix. But there's nowhere else in society where our solution to a problem is to subject people who had nothing to do with the problem to unfair treatment. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a good general principle.

It depends how you conceptualize fairness. If you believe that some people have a pre-existing unfair bias in their favor, then applying a countermeasure is indeed fair.

No, because two wrongs don’t make a right. Where else in our society do we justify imposing a moral wrong on a specific individual on the premise that moral wrongs may have been committed against other individuals?

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#55

Post by dahart »

armchairhacker wrote: post #50
dahart wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past Affirmative Action is institutionalized discrimination, at least when used to promote some groups over others. (Though it didn’t start that way; it started as a call to be purely race-blind in hiring.) I wouldn’t call it racism though, because it’s not based on any belief that races have different capability, it is purely intended t…

Except preferential treatment backfires. People will think “if XYZ group has a handicap maybe it’s because XYZ group is genetically inferior?” XYZ members themselves will think that and it will subconsciously affect them. People around them will think that and it will subconsciously affect their opinions towards them. If you point out that XYZ group is only handicapped because they’re statistically environmentally di…

Yes this is true, that can and has happened. I don’t think it’s true as rule, but it’s a valid point. Still, the most important question is what is the alternative?

We are closer to ending sexism and racism than we were 70 years ago before any affirmative action existed, right? Who’s to say that all the backfiring and unintended consequences that have happened aren’t better than the parallel universe in which maybe slavery still exists? Would it have happened faster with no quotas or boosts for groups that were historically discriminated against? Maybe yes, that’s possible, but we can’t know. What we do know is that we’ve made forward progress, even if imperfectly.

The thing that tends to be forgotten when people talk about affirmative action being preferential treatment is that the previous ‘in’ group was already getting preferential treatment, and maybe still is. We did not start from a level playing field. The core idea is to try to balance the pre-existing preferential treatment out. Unless you can resolve the cause of that, an easier way to attempt to handle it is to try to artificially make the preferences equal. The idea is not to give preferential treatment as an outcome, it’s to remove preferential treatment. This is related to how discrimination is not racism, and why positive discrimination is different from negative discrimination.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#56

Post by dahart »

BrenBarn wrote: post #48
rayiner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of problems in society that are hard to fix. But there's nowhere else in society where our solution to a problem is to subject people who had nothing to do with the problem to unfair treatment. "Two wrongs don't make a right" is a good general principle.

It depends how you conceptualize fairness. If you believe that some people have a pre-existing unfair bias in their favor, then applying a countermeasure is indeed fair.

Yep. Maybe a little bit like a sports handicap, you’re not trying to give someone a better chance of winning than everyone else, you’re trying to give them equal chances based on historical data.

Gemini gave me an okay analogy: “If a pendulum is knocked permanently off-center by a structural bend or a magnetic field, the only way to center it again is to apply an equal and opposite force. Affirmative action policies attempt to apply this counter-weight to straighten the broader societal scale.”

I’m not sure but is there a question about whether we actually had pre-existing unfairness? Blacks got the legal right to vote in 1965. Before that was effectively institutionalized racism, fully entrenched cultural bias, right?

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#57

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dahart wrote: post #56
BrenBarn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends how you conceptualize fairness. If you believe that some people have a pre-existing unfair bias in their favor, then applying a countermeasure is indeed fair.

Yep. Maybe a little bit like a sports handicap, you’re not trying to give someone a better chance of winning than everyone else, you’re trying to give them equal chances based on historical data. Gemini gave me an okay analogy: “If a pendulum is knocked permanently off-center by a structural bend or a magnetic field, the only way to center it again is to apply an equal and opposite force. Affirmative action policies…

There were things like redlining, where blacks could only buy housing in certain areas. Those areas also tended to have worse schools, so the next generation of blacks was less well educated than whites of equivalent intelligence. That led to worse jobs, which led to worse financial outcomes, which led to living in worse parts of town, which led to the next generation having less education...

So, yes, there was pre-existing... "unfairness" may be too strong for some of it; it wasn't all unfairness. Some of it was the effects of past unfairness, even if the (deliberate) unfairness was no longer present. The pendulum was in fact bent, to at least some degree.

But I like the analogy, because you only apply the counterforce until the pendulum is straight. Then you stop. Things were bent enough that affirmative action may in fact have been necessary. But it should not be necessary forever. Even if it was the right thing to do, there comes a time when the right thing to do is to stop.

(Then you get into "is now the right time", and things get a whole lot murkier...)

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#58

Post by rayiner »

dahart wrote: post #56
BrenBarn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends how you conceptualize fairness. If you believe that some people have a pre-existing unfair bias in their favor, then applying a countermeasure is indeed fair.

Yep. Maybe a little bit like a sports handicap, you’re not trying to give someone a better chance of winning than everyone else, you’re trying to give them equal chances based on historical data. Gemini gave me an okay analogy: “If a pendulum is knocked permanently off-center by a structural bend or a magnetic field, the only way to center it again is to apply an equal and opposite force. Affirmative action policies…

Discriminating against an individual based on their race is a moral wrong, unlike applying pressure to a pendulum. So your example doesn’t work because it doesn’t raise the disputed moral question.

Our system of morality and justice operates on individuals, not groups. It’s fundamentally mistaken to view the issue in terms of a pendulum that represents group outcomes.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#59

Post by dahart »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #57
dahart wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Maybe a little bit like a sports handicap, you’re not trying to give someone a better chance of winning than everyone else, you’re trying to give them equal chances based on historical data. Gemini gave me an okay analogy: “If a pendulum is knocked permanently off-center by a structural bend or a magnetic field, the only way to center it again is to apply an equal and opposite force. Affirmative action policies…

There were things like redlining, where blacks could only buy housing in certain areas. Those areas also tended to have worse schools, so the next generation of blacks was less well educated than whites of equivalent intelligence. That led to worse jobs, which led to worse financial outcomes, which led to living in worse parts of town, which led to the next generation having less education... So, yes, there was pre-e…

Yes! Exactly. Affirmative action should naturally end itself if it works. The goal is to equalize opportunity and stop preferential treatment, not to hang on to preferential treatment.

Well said, it does need to stop eventually. Now might be the right time, even if we’re not all the way there, given all the problems and unintended consequences and all the backlash.

Re: What did SFFA vs. Harvard reveal about admissions?

#60

Post by dahart »

rayiner wrote: post #53
dahart wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like a platitudinal aphorism to me, it’s trite and cliche and overused and was delivered as if it’s insightful in hopes of ending the debate. Google appears to agree vigorously that “two wrongs don’t make a right” is a platitude. One problem with that platitude is that there are plenty of ways that two negative things can balance each other out or become positive in some way. Aren’t you making deep cultural…

An aphorism is an expression of a general principle. This one seems cliched because it reflects a principle deeply ingrained in our society. We reject “an eye for an eye” and instead say “two wrongs don’t make a right.” We have since Plato’s day. You don’t disregard core principles merely because a particular social problem is difficult to solve. Affirmative action is wrong because we have defined treating an individ…

> we have defined treating an individual differently based on their race as a moral wrong. The act is wrong, regardless of your motivations

No, I don’t think so, You’re conflating racism with discrimination. We humans discriminate positively and negatively all the time. People discriminate based on race and gender and age for the purposes of picking a life mate or sexual partner, and society has exactly zero problem with that. Discriminating based on race is absolutely not a morally wrong act regardless of motivations. Intent matters, and the situation matters.

This talking point about all discrimination being wrong is fairly popular, and there are a lot of people who can’t see the difference between positive discrimination and negative discrimination. This is one reason I think affirmative action should end; it’s too subtle of a distinction and we were too successful at planting the idea that discrimination is bad.

You’re also conflating law with mores in your example. There are cases where stealing something is moral, regardless of whether it’s legal. There are also cases where stealing something is legal too, for example you can legally take back something stolen from you if you do it non-violently.

> There are no “groups”

I was referring to humanity, to all of us.

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