Trace is on here, though not very active (https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TraceWoodgrains)
The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
441–450 of 724 posts
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
DEI started as exactly what the original poster stated. It then has transformed many times, including through quotas (ruled unconstitutional in the 70s), and something similar to what you're talking about, to the more modern notion which is more about getting the best candidates from all populations. Is there an example where colorblind hiring had a nil or opposite effect? In places I've seen, the opposite has happen…
Not really. Everything is downstream of the pressure on organizations to address disparate impact. Some examples: When a company is under pressure to boost the number of X engineers, they quickly run into the 'pipeline problem'. There simply isn't enough X engineers on the market. So they address that by creating scholarship funds exclusively for race X. When a school is under pressure to have the racial makeup of it…
The study did show it. The author of this critique properly notes that Table 4 is not an apples to apples comparison. The author of the study notes that expanding the pool of women as used in Table 4 likely brought in less talented musicians disproportionately.
Table 5 does the more apples to apples comparison. The critique notes that sample size is too small, but it captures 445 blind women, 816 blind men, 599 non-blind women, and 1102 non-blind men auditions. That's certainly sufficient for a study like this.
The study also does reflect how when a population feel like there is less bias against them in a system they are more likely to participate -- even if that means on average the level of "merit" might go down, but those that make it through the filter will better reflect actual meritocracy -- and that's what this study showed as well.
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but thats not how any quota based system works. Thats the strawman of quota systems. The article itself showed that the quota is some fraction of total applicants that results in minimal impact to performance. Also I heard "math" with a youtube overlay.
The quota issue isn't that you have an explicit hiring quota for each race -- which might even be illegal. It's that if, at the end of the year, the number of people you hired had a large racial disparity, that's bad optics and you'll get in trouble, which you know so you fudge things to change it however you can. So you start with 500 slots to fill, 1000 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black applicants.…
There seems to be implication of confusion of what a qualified applicant means in your example above.
If there's a test used as the basis of consideration, and some process has decided that any score over X makes the candidate qualified, but then you are later going to claim that actually, given that there were candidates with a score of X+Y, a score of just X does not really constitute "qualified" and the higher scoring candidates should have been chosen, then the whole nature of the test and the ranking becomes rather suspect.
So either everyone who is judged to be qualified really is qualified, and it makes no difference that they were not necessarily the highest scoring candidates ... or ... the test for "qualified" is not suitable for purpose.
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
It turns out you can’t be an ATC unless your worst subject is science. It’s the only question which awards points.
I think you misread something, because that's not true.
"It's the only answer for that question which provides points*" Is what I meant.
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 specula…
> using current cultural agenda items and going back in time and attributing them to people is always going to be wild speculation. I'm as blue as they come, but let's not mince words. This was a racial equity policy. Like a lot of them, it was designed by idiots and/or racists. Much like the elite college admissions lawsuit, we don't need to guess at people's ideology - they WROTE DOWN that the cognitive test "disad…
> they WROTE DOWN that the cognitive test "disadvantaged" black applicants
Which would mean entirely different things if (a) that were true (b) that were not true.
It sounds as if you are completely convinced that it is not true, but what is your conviction based on, and why do you think they believed the opposite (or perhaps you take the position that they did not, in fact, believe this) ?
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you also have MTG who literally believes “they” control the weather so I’m not sure exactly why you single democrats out here or even the it to any kind of ideology specific consequence.
I don't completely understand it but Republicans manage cognitive dissonance better. Around 1994 I was interested in Trotskyism and Anarchism and wasn't sure if we needed to get the 4th international back in the US or start a 5th international. I believed in this really stupid kind of vanguardism where if you put up the biggest and most radical flag you would get everyone to rally behind it. I reformed because I got…
> manage cognitive dissonance better.
what on earth does this mean?
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#447This 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…
From an external (not US) PoV, it might also be that DEI was too much of a sacred cow before to call a spade a spade.
like the n word?
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but thats not how any quota based system works. Thats the strawman of quota systems. The article itself showed that the quota is some fraction of total applicants that results in minimal impact to performance. Also I heard "math" with a youtube overlay.
The quota issue isn't that you have an explicit hiring quota for each race -- which might even be illegal. It's that if, at the end of the year, the number of people you hired had a large racial disparity, that's bad optics and you'll get in trouble, which you know so you fudge things to change it however you can. So you start with 500 slots to fill, 1000 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black applicants.…
> So you start with 500 slots to fill, 1000 qualified white applicants and 10 qualified black applicants
What you're supposed to do is go to places with more black people and start advertising to people in general they can become air traffic controllers. Then take them through air traffic controller training school and at the end, you *don't* have only 10 qualified black applicants.
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#449DEI is simply a framework. Like Agile, it can be well implemented if the person implementing it understands the problems it is trying to address, along with its limitations.
And just like Agile, it can be poorly implemented when the person implementing it does not understand its purpose, or hates the framework and cynically implements it under protest.
In both cases, the poor implementations should not justify throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but so it goes.
Re: The FAA’s Hiring Scandal
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
Looks like you've been getting downvoted, but I think you raise perfectly valid points -- and I say this as a proponent of DEI, but not of quotas (or this type of population matching). I believe that the best solutions occur when we try to address root causes -- sincerely attempt to address them. The problem is that even in doing that, you often have to introduce inequality into the system. For example, mortality rat…
The conundrum is that by thinking this way about population groups that are not your own, and imposing your will—no matter how well-intentioned—upon them, you are undermining the agency and self-determination of said population groups. I believe that in order to actually enact meaningful change, even deeper-rooted causes must be discovered and examined—and while this is certainly possible in theory, it's essentially…
> I believe that in order to actually enact meaningful change, even deeper-rooted causes must be discovered and examined
How do you discover deeper-rooted causes if you can't be provided resources to study the distinction? How can you understand why black women are 3x more likely to die at child birth than white women if the funding agencies don't care about the answer?