A generation of American men give up on college • Hacker News Board

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#761

Post by happythen » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

exporectomy wrote: post #712

jensensbutton wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Blacks have a huge disadvantage of poor upbringing by their own family and community The actual issue is they have to interview with people holding the same ignorant assumptions you do.

This is what the science actually says. Black disfunction is attributed to culture spread from adults to children. Black mothers, for example, criticize their children more often than they praise them, but the reverse is true for white mothers. That's just an example of the kind of cultural effect that can be included - I'm not sure if that one specifically has been shown to be causative of lifelong disadvantage.

Definitely black people's fault... hey you coming to the meeting next week? we got a lot of crosses to burn, could use your help.

Good to see you creepin in homes listening to black mothers not give enough praise to their kids, thats great research for the cause.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#762

Post by happythen » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 7:43 PM UTC

klyrs wrote: post #613

exporectomy wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a knee on the neck. Women might get assaulted You've been reading too much news. That doesn't happen to normal people in real life. Blacks have a huge disadvantage of poor upbringing by their own family and community and women have a huge "disadvantage" of not wanting to be a computer programmer.

Women have the disadvantage that if they reveal their gender online, they're barraged with sexual harassment and even death threats for nothing but being a woman. Do you suppose this treatment encourages curiosity in computing?

they won't answer so I will, "no it doesn't"

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#763

Post by zepto » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

happythen wrote: post #759

zepto wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And because men need the support. I suspect that a lot fewer men needed support in, say, 1950. > Why do more men need support than did in 1950? My answer is that when men were the vast majority consumers of higher education the system was built to support them . This accords with what the social justice people would say, and I think they are right about that. What they are wrong about is that men today should be de…

What support is not offered now that men had in the 1950's?

Men today not should be denied support that other groups have today because men in the 1950s had support that other groups in the 1950s did not have.

The original article explicitly addresses this.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#764

Post by foolinaround » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #138

smitty1e wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother in law is an electrician. I had enough EE in college to change a light switch without burning the house down. However, that book-learnin' fell apart when confronted with troubleshooting a strangely wired room, and I got very polite while asking him over to bail me out. These fellows eschewing the ivory tower, where being of European extraction and bearing a Y-chromosome on the college campus is an indictme…

EE programs tend to focus on electronics, not electrical systems. But learning how house wiring works is a simple book away. But be careful - unlike electronics, house electrics can kill you. On the other hand, electricians have weird gaps in their knowledge. If I ask them to do something slightly out of the ordinary, this becomes apparent. For example, none of them understand inductive coupling, or even know what it…

> It's the same with roofers. They have no idea what galvanic corrosion is, and will invariably use the wrong nails for anything metal.

Maybe, they don't need to? These trades should have cheatsheets where they can check for certain scenarios - like the 2 described, and it would provide Do's and Don'ts?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#765

Post by happythen » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

zepto wrote: post #763

happythen wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What support is not offered now that men had in the 1950's?

Men today not should be denied support that other groups have today because men in the 1950s had support that other groups in the 1950s did not have. The original article explicitly addresses this.

Just saying thats not answering the question, guys today have so much more, except for more severe inequality over their counterparts.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#766

Post by zepto » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

happythen wrote: post #765

zepto wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men today not should be denied support that other groups have today because men in the 1950s had support that other groups in the 1950s did not have. The original article explicitly addresses this.

Just saying thats not answering the question, guys today have so much more, except for more severe inequality over their counterparts.

The question is fully answered. Men today are no less deserving of support than anyone else. They deserve the same support that other groups have today.

If you read the article you’ll see that men do not have the same support that other groups have, and proposals to provide that support are rejected on the basis of history rather than present need.

The desire ‘not to help white men’ is explicitly mentioned.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#767

Post by edmundsauto » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 9:00 PM UTC

tchaffee wrote: post #741

confidantlake wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But looking at what a candidate can do is objective. Trying to compare how tough each one had it is extremely subjective. Is being a woman harder than a minority? Is having a low iq harder than being poor? Being a single parent harder than being addicted to alcohol? Maybe Charley had depression and anxiety and never made any friends while Joe is outgoing and did allowing him to form study groups easier. Maybe Charley…

> We are here to judge how someone can do the job. You missed the most important part of my point. Someone who crosses the finish line at the same time as someone else, but started from further back is almost always better at doing the job. I already said it's very difficult to objectively measure. But any improvement in doing so will give you a competitive advantage in finding the best candidates.

I can't agree with your generalization that people who faced more challenges are likely to be better at doing the job. It seems possible those early life difficulties could be traumatizing, leaving those folks less resilient.

The US military used to think successful soldiers with childhood trauma, had coping skills that protected them in deployment. When they ran the studies, they found they were completely wrong - people with childhood trauma, regardless of their military success, were multiple times (4-6x odds ratios) more likely to develop PTSD, (re-)start smoking, or misuse substances.

It's a neat narrative: go through hardship + come out the other side = better coping skills / more productivity. However, humans are complex and often fragile.

I accept the argument that a person who has experienced more hardships has accomplished more to reach that same point. That could be justified if your hiring principles are "who has earned this spot more". It doesn't necessary follow that their trajectory has a steeper slope from the point of hiring.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#768

Post by edmundsauto » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

tchaffee wrote: post #655

edmundsauto wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that companies also want an objective hiring process, because otherwise employee bias will seep in. The fact that these two issues are in opposition (plus the general recruiting pipeline issues) are why this is such a difficult problem to solve.

> The problem is that companies also want an objective hiring process Usually only at a very superficial level. Enough to comply with the law. And to be fair, some companies do have good intentions with a little extra effort and money put into diversity efforts. A truly objective hiring process would take into account that Joe and Charley who both got the same results on the coding test are not equally qualified if J…

> Usually only at a very superficial level. Enough to comply with the law

Any objective evidence to support this? My experience has been the opposite - people care deeply about being objective, in order to make better hiring decisions.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#769

Post by zepto » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

happythen wrote: post #754

fennecfoxy wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>assisting those who have historically held the biggest educational advantages History is just that: history. A white male going to uni _right now_ hasn't really enjoyed those historical advantages; they were before their time. Yes there are other advantages in the modern world to being a white male, but there are also equivalent disadvantages, too. Easier to get power...but if you're male nobody is there to defend y…

Breaking news: life is hard for everyone. You actually have it easier, but not easy. Figure it out, don't man up. Shocking fact, caring about others might help fix yourself.

Can you explain how this relates to the comment you are replying to? It’s not clear how it follows.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#770

Post by slowmovintarget » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

aksss wrote: post #699

zepto wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't expect to play a game, give one team an advantage for the first half, give neither team an advantage in the second half, and call it a fair game at the end. The game you are referring to is one in which you presuppose dividing people into ‘teams’. I.e. you are simply assuming that racism is forever and that the only fairness comes dividing people by race and then balancing resources according to racial gr…

> This is just more racism You never hear the tree-hugger saying, "it's my turn to clear-cut forests with unsustainable abandon". No, the goal is to stop clear cutting forests with unsustainable abandon. That's how I was raised to think of racism. You don't straighten up by stopping racism over here while increasing it over there. You stop racism by stopping racism.

"The way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race."

I heard someone else phrase it that the current "anti-racist" movement isn't trying to eliminate the jack-boots, they're trying them on for size, instead.