A math professor who objects to diversity statements • Hacker News Board

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#311

Post by rayiner » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:17 AM UTC

bglazer wrote: post #266

rayiner wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We aren’t talking about “racial groups”—you shifted the conversation to “culture.” So defend your premise. What is the “culture” of Mexican Americans (or any other group of your choosing) and how does that make a team of Chinese programmers better? That’s the central premise of “diversity”—that individuals from different groups are materially different—so give me one concrete example.

Edit, sorry i think I misunderstood your post. Are you asking about how a hypothetical non-Chinese person would improve an all Chinese team? If so, I don’t presume to know. That would be up to the team members to find the ideas that best help them. This is the fundamental idea, put together different kinds of people and they’ll work out how to exhange cultural ideas in a way that works

If you don’t know, why are you so confident your idea is right? “Diversity” posits that, for example, an all Chinese team would be improved by adding Mexican people. Feel free to substitute any other groups, if you like. This is an idea you apparently subscribe to, so why can’t you provide a concrete example, and instead speak only in abstractions?

The fundamental problem with your reasoning is that you’re taking on faith the notion that differences are good ones. There is no reason to assume that. If differences between people can be good ones, they can just as easily be bad ones.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#312

Post by nvm0n2 » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:01 AM UTC

thiagoharry wrote: post #309

nvm0n2 wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 simplif…

Marxism is incoherent so debating it is largely pointless, but in the quotes above he clearly defines labor as a "standardized unit" which differs only in duration and intensity. This is nonsense so it's not surprising he later tried to walk it back a bit, but as you note, that was half-hearted at best and he usually treated labor as if it were something like coal.

In reality there's already a standardized unit which sums up the worth of a person's labor (money) and a standardized way to compute it (the market). Marx didn't like what that system computed and argued strongly that it all be swept away and replaced with some notion of "need" (family size) and "ability" (simple hours worked or intensity of those hours) which is drastically too simple to reflect reality. That's why his ideas led to collapse everywhere they were tried.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#313

Post by ddd000012 » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 1:32 PM UTC

bglazer wrote: post #262

rayiner wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, let’s be concrete. What’s the “culture” of say Mexican Americans, and how would those differences make a team of Chinese software developers more effective? Once you actually unpack this diversity idea it unravels. You can’t have it both ways. If you posit that people are basically the same regardless of identity group, then your notion of “diversity” being anything other than neutral makes no sense. But if you…

I’m not interested in doing a rank ordering of racial groups. You're setting up a false dichotomy: people are the same and diversity is neutral or some people are better and diversity is bad. You seem to be assuming that its perfectly knowable which groups are “best”, and that we should therefore assemble teams strictly out of those people. My contention is that this is hubris and instead we should bring together lot…

[dead]

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#314

Post by christiangenco » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 4:42 PM UTC

huytersd wrote: post #310

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.

That's me! I became more interested in the topic after the Bluesky question.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#315

Post by jrk » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 7:53 PM UTC

nvm0n2 wrote: post #259

psd1 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I support your railing against bureaucracy, but question your assertion that a specific quantity of public spending is bad. Firstly, government spending does not imply greater bureaucracy; compare and contrast healthcare in America with pretty much anywhere else. Secondly, fiscal policy should be dynamic and reactive to economic conditions. I don't pretend to understand Keynes, but I believe he established that princ…

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…

A warning to others: This is far more contested, and more nuanced, than this post makes it out to be. I believe this narrative as stated would not fly without lots of debate and pushback in any mainstream economics department today.

Among many other things, the recent history (of inflation, recession, and economic growth over the past 4 years) is completely wrong: stimulus was used during the COVID recession (early 2020), and the recession was very brief as a result. In the US we have had steady and strong growth continuously outside a short drop around March 2020. Inflation set in around a year later (due to many factors, not monetary or fiscal policy alone -- but again, this is complex and highly contested). Interest rates started being raised seriously two years later (spring 2022). Economic growth has continued throughout this process aside from the early-mid 2020 lockdown shock. There was never a time when "interest rates [were] hiked even though the economy was trashed by lockdowns."

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#316

Post by naveen99 » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:34 PM UTC

nvm0n2 wrote: post #301

dfe wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I like your analysis elsewhere. But you can’t avoid misallocations always. Some risk has to be taken by everyone. Even the private markets miscalculate roi.

You also can’t avoid debt (printing money). At the simplest, you can tell yourself you will postpone your own retirement to take the risk of misallocating resources yourself, for a gamble.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#317

Post by bglazer » Tue, Jan 16, 2024, 10:56 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #311

bglazer wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit, sorry i think I misunderstood your post. Are you asking about how a hypothetical non-Chinese person would improve an all Chinese team? If so, I don’t presume to know. That would be up to the team members to find the ideas that best help them. This is the fundamental idea, put together different kinds of people and they’ll work out how to exhange cultural ideas in a way that works

If you don’t know, why are you so confident your idea is right? “Diversity” posits that, for example, an all Chinese team would be improved by adding Mexican people. Feel free to substitute any other groups, if you like. This is an idea you apparently subscribe to, so why can’t you provide a concrete example, and instead speak only in abstractions? The fundamental problem with your reasoning is that you’re taking on…

So you just take for granted that cultural exchange is a net negative? Why do you think people won’t learn anything useful from another culture?

Since you insist, I can provide a personal example. My former boss is from Colombia. I’m from the US. He insisted I take more time than I would have chosen when my child was born. He said this was based on his cultural upbringing in which family takes precedence over work. I appreciated that and I feel that it prevented my burnout.

Here’s a well known case: Kaizen in manufacturing, which was originated in Japan based on a mix of American and Japanese ideas then reimported to America.

I base my more general and abstract belief that cultural exchange is good on many examples throughout human history. Cultures that don’t admit new ideas generally haven’t fared well in the long term.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#318

Post by smcin » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 1:01 AM UTC

crackercrews wrote: post #276

smcin wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SHSAT is an NYC-only HS thing, right? Are there any other US cities or regions doing similar at HS admissions level (ages 12-14)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialized_High_Schools_Admis...

I don't know. But it's well known that this test is based on academic achievement and that low-income Asians do very well.

only if you live in NYC. If you don't live in NYC you won't ever have heard of it.

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#319

Post by psd1 » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 9:17 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #297

psd1 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Dawkins' model of memes is helpful. I'm going to use freighted language and examples for brevity. Readers, please be generous; I'm doing conservatism because it's the topic on hand, but this applies equally to progressivism. A meme is the fundamental unit of transmissible culture - a catchy tune, laying napkins on the lunch table, the concept of punishment for wrongdoers. Memes are hosted in sentient minds. A…

While I think at the broader level you are correct in mechanism I'm unconvinced that this is how it works in reality. There are too many examples of ideas spreading like wildfire far faster than people die out. Ideas that people hold with high passion. An example might be same-sex marriage where we see a larger rate of increase in support post legalization[0]. While younger generations have higher initial support, al…

Yes, viruses are a very useful concept. Ideas propagate in ways that put us in mind of epidemiology.

Genotype is, broadly speaking, determined at birth. But our set of memes is in flux to a greater or lesser degree. That degree is the topic at hand; why are some more susceptible than others? I'm floating the idea that it's due to the ideas you already have at the time. That's why I brought up that some ideas confer resistance to certain other ideas.

Imagine instead a bacterium that is invaded by a variety of retroviruses, each of which change its DNA. Some of those DNA changes might increase our decrease resistance to some other retroviruses.

It's clear that strict logical consistency is not a necessary condition. Perhaps we could explore what "emotional consistency" might mean. It feels correct for me to say that when a person encounters an idea, the idea creates logical and emotional associations to other ideas that they hold, and that if the emotions reinforce the person's self-image, they will tend to adopt the new idea and incorporate it into their world-view. But I'm making this up - don't ask me to defend any of this!

Re: A math professor who objects to diversity statements

#320

Post by psd1 » Wed, Jan 17, 2024, 3:21 PM UTC

nvm0n2 wrote: post #300

psd1 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. My door is always open to Cunningham. If you're in a pedagogical mood, may I submit further misconceptions? I've always linked Keynes with the concept of national debt as a lever to pull, so I'm surprised that you mention printing money. AIUI, the Keynesian approach to the 2008 crisis would have been to issue debt in order to finance public spending, and that spending should be on social security and infrastr…

Digging and refilling holes is a metaphor, it's not meant literally. It's used in economics discussions to refer to any kind of economic activity that's taking place just for the sake of it. Debt and money printing are intimately linked in our system, to the extent that they're nearly the same thing, which is why I used them interchangeably. If you go back a few hundred years, money printing was pretty simple: the Ki…

There's more to unpack about welfare being "paying not to work" - 82 year olds, absence of employment in mining towns - but you've put the argument for small government well. You made me imagine a monkey driving a bulldozer.

Keynes' error was to pretend that the monkey is a qualified operator who follows the drawings. But the more democratic a nation becomes, the more its leadership resembles a cork bobbing on the tide. Furthermore, economics does not have perfect insight, so even a benevolent dictator will certainly fuck it up if she meddles.

Then, in a recession, you can take action to alleviate the pain somewhat, but you will inevitably just store up future pain for yourself. You could mitigate that future pain once the crisis has passed, but you won't, because the mitigation will alienate the voters. The pretence that you'll accept even a tiny amount of pain in the good times is the self-deception of an addict.

How am I doing?

This then reduces to the trolley problem. Where the one person on the side track is only presumed to be there, but might actually be further down the main track, and might get rescued anyway.

Here's my problem with von Mises. The cause of 2008 was a period of deregulation, basically Jamie Dimon going "trust me, bro" and kicking his lips. It's not an economic cause, it's a political one; but if we examine economists' contribution to the issue, we see decades of free-market-fundamentalism which, I put it to you, created massive overconfidence. The neolibs got exactly what they wanted and created a peculiarly neolib crisis. So the Austrian school is just as fingers-in-ears deaf to political folly as Keynes.