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The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

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Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#121

Post by cratermoon »

s3r3nity wrote: post #92
justonceokay wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because it isn’t actually about qualification. It’s actually about a lack of accountability. Trump wants everyone to be able to hire their friends just like he does, optics be damned. I think a lot of people actually agree with this at a visceral level. Left leaning people are more concerned with power controlled by nepotism and “unfair” connections. To me that is a kind of sour grapes view fueled by too many…

>A government full of cronies sucks... >A meritocratic...government sounds like a dystopian novel. So nepotism + networking = bad, but meritocracy also = bad...? >...we can at least hope to get our own cronies in at some point. OR you reduce the risk vector and limit the size & scope of government. Most people agree with your earlier premises, so why would I support adding powers to a structure where folks I strongly…

> So nepotism + networking = bad, but meritocracy also = bad...?

The downsides of meritocracy invalidate the almost idolatrous worship of the idea seen in the tech field.

Tolstoy wrote “It is principally through this false idea of inequality, and the intoxication of power and of servility resulting from it, that men associated in a state organization are enabled to commit acts opposed to their conscience without the least scruple or remorse.”[1]

See also:

Sandel, Michael J. The Tyranny of Merit : What’s Become of the Common Good?. [S.l.]: Penguin Books, 2021.

Niebuhr, Reinhold. Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. https://archive.org/details/moralmanimmorals00nieb_0.

[1] Tolstoy, Leo,. 1894. “‘The kingdom of God is within you’ Christianity not as a mystic religion but as a new theory of life;” New York: Cassell Pub. Co. /z-wcorg/. 1894. http://catalog.hathitrust.org/api/volumes/oclc/3859761.html.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#122

Post by refurb »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #71

[flagged]

Least qualified according to who? The Democrats?

It’s politics. These are political roles. It’s organizational leading and having people in place who are aligned with your goals, not splicing DNA.

And we’ve had the qualified one who got 90 Senate votes in confirmation and what did that get us? The Iraq War and the Afghan departure with abandoned locals falling off airplanes.

It’s laughable when the idea of checking the same boxes that always get checked is “qualified”.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#123

Post by legitster »

s3r3nity wrote: post #85
legitster wrote: post #83

This is a fascinating read, but the thing that bugs me about this whole affair is that when this came to light many years ago it was treated as a cheating and recruitment scandal. But only recently has it been reframed as a DEI issue. Taking old, resolved scandals - slapping a coat of culture war paint on it - and then selling it as a new scandal is already a popular MO for state-sponsored propoganda, so we should be…

The cheating element is only _part_ of it, and the dominant regime at the time downplayed / ignored the DEI elements because that was supported by their ideology...like a sacred cow. Litigating "disparate impact" cases across any category became a successful attack vector against capitalist structures, and supported by Democratic leadership. This isn't "slapping a new coat of paint for propaganda," but rather exposin…

> and the dominant regime at the time downplayed / ignored the DEI elements because that was supported by their ideology

In the eye of the beholder. The current regime is upplaying the DEI elements because of their ideology.

The difference though is, unless everyone involved has a time machine, using current cultural agenda items and going back in time and attributing them to people is always going to be wild speculation.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#124

Post by Manuel_D »

itronitron wrote: post #82
wand3r wrote: post #3

> I know, I know. The evidence is unambiguous that the bar was lowered, deliberately, over many years and with direct knowledge. The evidence is unambiguous that a cheating scandal occurred. The whole thing is as explosive as any I’ve seen, and it touches on a lot of long-running frustrations. This is likely the most common complaint about DEI, it provides grounds for race based discrimination and lowers the bar. I a…

It's a myth that the bar is lowered for DEI hires.

There are methods of practicing DEI that don't lower the bar. There are methods of DEI that do lower the bar. There's no single answer to that question, it depends on how DEI is implemented in that particular case.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#125

Post by empath75 »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #119
empath75 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is heavily automated right now up to and including autopilot landings. The people are in the loop to cover the gaps where automation doesn't exist or when it fails. Everything is so tightly scheduled at airports now that any kind of failure in automation would pretty rapidly lead to catastrophic outcomes if humans weren't constantly involved in decision making. Even if you just had humans on "stand by" it…

Sort of. There’s like 5 conditions of automation commercial planes can be in. The automation mostly functions to make the pilots workload manageable, not to make their workload non existent. Commercial flights used to have a crew of 3, captain, first officer and flight engineer. The automation has reduced the workload to eliminate the flight engineer role and make flights operable by 2 people.

There's a lot of automation, but it's the same situation with "self driving" cars. Until you get to nearly 100% trustworthy full automation, you need people actively making decisions constantly, so automation is mostly in the form of assists rather than full automation.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#126

Post by cratermoon »

iamleppert wrote: post #97

Instead of bickering over who gets a job that fundamentally should be automated by now, they should focus on developing technology that doesn't rely on people. Or at least uses automation for 95% of the job and delegates to a person only when rare exceptions arise. ATC is ripe for disruption from AI, and now that we have LLMs and speech models on par with human ability, its a short walk in the park to imagine a fully…

We have an automated system to prevent mid-air collisions, it's called TCAS, Traffic collision avoidance system. For safety reasons, it is inhibited at 1000 feet AGL or below, to prevent dangerous descents into terrain.

How would your mythical ATC automation take that situation into account, if it even thought about that edge case.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#127

Post by baby_souffle »

sandworm101 wrote: post #100
iamleppert wrote: post #97

Instead of bickering over who gets a job that fundamentally should be automated by now, they should focus on developing technology that doesn't rely on people. Or at least uses automation for 95% of the job and delegates to a person only when rare exceptions arise. ATC is ripe for disruption from AI, and now that we have LLMs and speech models on par with human ability, its a short walk in the park to imagine a fully…

Sit in a tower for a day before talking about automation. Remember ten years ago when people said human-driven cars would soon be illegal? The number of fact-specific edge cases that happen every shift mean ATC is far far from automation.

> Remember ten years ago when people said human-driven cars would soon be illegal? The number of fact-specific edge cases that happen every shift mean ATC is far far from automation.

This. Commercial jets have had full auto taxi, take off, fly, land capability for a long time at supported airports. A human is still in the loop for parts of it due to the potential for something to deviate from nominal in a novel way at almost any time.

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#128

Post by a12k »

boohoo123 wrote: post #118

There's a simple fix to removing discrimination in hiring practices that no one seems to notice. Remove all demographic questions from the application. Hide the name and gender and attach a applicant ID. It's as easy as that. Every job should be looking for the most qualified individual regardless of race, nationality, religion, and sex. Demographics in the application are a recipe for disaster on both sides of the i…

So easy. Should we also remove college attended or extracurriculars to avoid flagging potential demographic details like attending an HBCU?

Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal

#129

Post by thot_experiment »

scott_w wrote: post #89
dbspin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind reviews (and even interviews) are great ways of making hiring more fair. They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches. DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background. That's the E and I part. The entire premise is that certain groups require special support (fair - e.g.: blind people, wheel chair users), and have been historically excluded because…

> They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches. This is essentially a No True Scotsman fallacy. If it's DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by definition, not part of DEI. > DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background. The first part of this is incorrect. Good DEI is about creating a level playing field (as you correctly point out for blind people…

These are really good points, it's depressing as hell to see the the quality of discussion around this stuff. Obviously DEI is great when it's trying to fix things on the input side.

Perhaps I can simplify this argument. If you have a lift heavy things job, which we can agree that women on average are worse at, you shouldn't hire more women by quota, but you could provide free weight training for women. Both things are DEI, the latter is the kind of DEI we want.

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