Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

reason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 906 posts

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#661

Post by curioushacking »

majormajor wrote: post #593
curioushacking wrote: post #465

My understand for how we measure systemic racism issues seems to typically be predicated on assumed outcomes. For example that if the distribution of employees race does not match the general population then there must be a systemic cause for this. What I don’t understand is why that is assumed true. If we want to encourage many different cultures to live together wouldn’t it naturally make sense that different cultu…

In the United States coming from a position of "maybe there is or isn't an effect from racism" is simply naive. A quick glance at history will show you that many differences in both outcomes AND culture have deep-seated intentionally racist historical sources (in different ways for different races). How do you fight intentional racism, with a healthy dose of residual lasting generational effects from past racism, wit…

I'm not trying to say that there hasn't been a history of racism nor even that it isn't prevalent today. I just want to understand how we accurately measure the actual effects of it so that we can understand how much effort to put into solving it or measuring if it is getting better over time. And some of the most used measures I find as evidence seem to be about the distribution of races in various jobs which on its own doesn't necessarily seem like a reliable metric to me.

Others pointed out some studies which showed potential biases in hiring and that seems like a great potential proxy to understand the current level of racism in hiring.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#662

Post by pharrington »

jwarden wrote: post #609
pharrington wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who first do the targeted group violence are the bad guys.

I agree with you if you mean that the individuals that first do the targeted group violence are the bad guys. But not if you generalize blame to the group. Just about any large group of people, whether defined by by race, religion, nationality, or creed, will have bad individuals in it. And so the bad guys can almost always point to people from the other group that "started it". When someone from the out-group commit…

Groups can do bad things. Some groups exist specifically to do bad things.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#663

Post by dillondoyle »

zdragnar wrote: post #328
wcerfgba wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't freedom of association also entail freedom of non-association? If an organisation doesn't want to provide an individual with a platform, then they are executing their freedom of association. I'm not advocating for some global censorship entity.

Freedom of (non) association does not extend to protected groups in public spaces. Businesses can no longer exclusively serve white people, for example, since their stores are considered public accomodations. Ideology is not a protected class, however. In the case of Haidt, they are free to not present any research at conferences unless it advances their definition of equity, and he has no choice but to go along with…

That freedom of public accommodation is under attack.

If it even existed in the first place; there are plenty of laws that expressly allow discrimination in deference to 'religious beliefs.'

Courts, & the Supreme Court in particular, are giving far more weight to 'christian freedom' at the expense of the rest of us.

Cases include recent PrEP ruling, insane football prayer ruling that willfully ignored facts, bathroom & sports laws targeting kids. crazy ruling on prayers in court.

Adoption discrimination (de-facto govt by transitive property. we have to stop outsourcing government to contractors, especially when it makes religious orgs the only avenue).

Upcoming ruling from CO which will probably allow even more queer discrimination.

that 'pressure to conform' is and has historically been one way, giving one class the legal go ahead to discriminate in the name of some skewed idea of christian ideals

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#664

Post by ponow »

throwbacktictac wrote: post #581
mhuffman wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>despite the vast amount of empirical data Well, your examples seem pretty cherry-picked and not necessarily generally empirical (ie. lots of embedded subjectivity). Now your first link is more interesting and is usually the one that everyone pulls out as "absolute proof" that discrimination is live and well in modern hiring against Black people. I wonder, though, how much of this is in the bias of the experimenters…

I'm genuinely missing your point. It sou d like you're insinuating that the lack of a "normal" name is a good reason to disqualify someone from a job opportunity. That possibly implies that the resume screen uses someone's name as a discriminating factor and I don't think that it should be.

> I don't think that it should be

Why is it your choice to make? When you hire someone, you're hiring everything they bring to the table. You might be wrong in your interpretation, but it's what you've got. So perhaps you find names beyond the pale, but why not dress codes too? Names and many other characteristics involve human choices well beyond genetics.

You do realize that the orchestras used to hire blind, that is, the audition was done with the musician hidden behind a curtain and all other factors withheld, so that the only factor that was perceivable was the sound of the music from the musician, in an effort to remove bias. And New York Times in the last year or two had an editorial decrying this as unfair, because it didn't give the correct outcome of reducing underrepresentation. The DIE crowd does not want fairness and equality of opportunity; they want equality of outcome. They want diversity hires, not hires of the maximally strong candidates.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#665

Post by beowulfey »

Judgmentality wrote: post #607
beowulfey wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me try again. You receive three resumes for a job application, for three humans of three different races. They have the exact same credentials. You immediately assume one of the three is the brightest of them, because your understanding of Affirmative Action Policies says this particular race has the highest likelihood of having higher overall test scores. One of the other two could have had the highest possible…

> you should have treated them all equally This is obviously the golden standard we are trying to achieve, but how do we get there? It's theoretically impossible to treat everyone equally and apply affirmative action at the same time. I understand there is a difference between equality and equity, but I'm replying to the words you wrote. Affirmative action may be the best solution we currently have to deal with syste…

It is actually pretty simple (in this example anyway). If three candidates come to you with the same credentials, then do not assume one of them is the best candidate based on your interpretation of their background. You have to treat them all as equally likely candidates - interview all three. It is more work for you, but the effort is worth it, because it helps prevent the effect of possible biases.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#666

Post by Judgmentality »

beowulfey wrote: post #665
Judgmentality wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you should have treated them all equally This is obviously the golden standard we are trying to achieve, but how do we get there? It's theoretically impossible to treat everyone equally and apply affirmative action at the same time. I understand there is a difference between equality and equity, but I'm replying to the words you wrote. Affirmative action may be the best solution we currently have to deal with syste…

It is actually pretty simple (in this example anyway). If three candidates come to you with the same credentials, then do not assume one of them is the best candidate based on your interpretation of their background. You have to treat them all as equally likely candidates - interview all three. It is more work for you, but the effort is worth it, because it helps prevent the effect of possible biases.

Sure, I understand in that example what to do. But as a society, where do we draw the line? Why is it okay to apply affirmative action for selecting students but not okay when accepting employees (continuing the example from this thread)? Since we're trying to fix a systemic issue, we need a consistent response across society for it to be most effective.

My point is this is a complicated problem with no perfect solution, and people will correctly point out flaws with it both theoretically and (more relevant for this discussion) how we implement it.

Anyway, I think we mostly agree. Cheers.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#668

Post by sethammons »

> the left used to be creeped out by loyalty oaths, whether administered by the McCarthyite right or the Soviet left. But young people on the left seem to be very comfortable requiring such pledges.

I've witnessed this too. It is concerning

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#669

Post by lenocinor »

I read the whole thread up till now and did not see anyone supporting mandated DEI statements. So I’m posting to say that I do support them. In my experience at a couple of different learning institutions I’ve seen what I believe are positive changes that they’ve enabled.

EDIT: I also support antiracist sentiments and policies. I’ve watched them make what I believe are significant positive impacts when I’ve employed them personally.

Re: Mandated diversity statement drives Jonathan Haidt to quit academic society

#670

Post by lkrubner »

pessimizer wrote: post #513
lkrubner wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I envy your innocence, but sadly, the world has many reprehensible people in it.

That's an excuse to dehumanize people. Labeling people rather than deeds is simply an announcement that you're willing to compromise your own ethics in order to attack that person. It's what's really happening when we label people as terrorists.

As pharrington points out, your words imply that you agree with me that terrorists are reprehensible people, or you are trying to argue that terrorists don't actually exist. Which is it?
Post reply on HN