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

A generation of American men give up on college

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

771–780 of 824 posts

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#771

Post by zepto »

happythen wrote: post #756
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…

> A racist solution would be to give advantages to black people. Let's try it and find out. Love to see us even try to give black people an advantage. In the US, it take 200 years and 12 civil wars.

Current admissions policies in many universities and schools explicitly give black people an advantage. This is not a secret.

> In the US, it take 200 years and 12 civil wars.

It’s unclear what you mean by “12 civil wars”.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#772

Post by zepto »

slowmovintarget wrote: post #770
aksss wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Antifacist is to fascist as positron is to electron.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#773

Post by tchaffee »

edmundsauto wrote: post #767
tchaffee wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 - p…

Clearly the person is not less resilient in the stories I gave. They made it to the finish line. They have already demonstrated years of resilience and dedication to a goal. Why would you expect that to change so suddenly?

You've also created a strawman. I never mentioned childhood trauma or much at all of early life aside from growing up poor. Whatever trauma that may have caused certainly did not interfere with their accomplishments to date.

> The US military used to think successful soldiers with childhood trauma...

This is not war nor the battlefield. Let's see studies about people and their career success.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#774

Post by refenestrator »

hk2001 wrote: post #742
refenestrator wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an interesting dynamic here where imo the silent majority of progressives don't buy his approach and think it's counterproductive, but any lone soul who says so is called out, which side are you on here anyways. So this guy gets to represent himself as a spokesman for the movement and nobody really wants to contradict it under their real name.

Perhaps, but I think it’s often less a matter of being afraid of calling extremists out, and more of what I heard someone once refer to as “sane-washing”. Progressives hear extremist views and say “when they say X, what they really are saying is Y. No one actually wants X”, when in reality that’s exactly what extremists want and it gives them cover to continue to push the Overton window until it’s no longer an extrem…

This is a good take and probably covers 2/3 of liberals, actually, thanks.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#775

Post by tchaffee »

edmundsauto wrote: post #768
tchaffee wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Here is a meta-analysis of "every available field experiment of hiring discrimination against African Americans or Latinos".

Just a simple name change on a resume can result in discrimination. Lots of it.

"On average, white applicants receive 36% more callbacks than equally qualified African Americans (95% confidence interval of 25–47% more), based on random-effects meta-analysis of data since 1989, representing a substantial degree of direct discrimination"

https://www.pnas.org/content/114/41/10870.full

> people care deeply about being objective, in order to make better hiring decisions.

They really don't. It costs a lot of money to care deeply. Most companies optimize for rejecting too many candidates, looking for red flags as a time saver. This has been common practice for decades. They do it because there are usually a lot of applicants, and it's a cheap way to reduce the numbers quickly.

But it's even worse now. It's has been codified into job candidate filtering software. "Applicant Tracking System software is used by 75% of US employers to help filter job candidates".

"If an applicant's work history has a gap of more than six months, the resume is automatically screened out"

That's the opposite of caring deeply about being objective for who is the best candidate. You are making decisions based on very superficial information.

It does seem objective at first. Because it is objectively looking at one factor and making a yes or no decision. But that's exactly what I meant when I said at only a superficial level. You aren't objectively screening for the best candidates. Instead you are objectively screening for a signal, and not even a good signal. You need to screen humans, not signals.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/automated-hiring-software-rejects-...

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#776

Post by happythen »

zepto wrote: post #766
happythen wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yea totally changed my mind, it does sound like things just aren't fair and the other "groups" have it better while the white man "deserves" it's fair share. Should we start a group or what? Which other group should we target first to get the "support" that we need?

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#777

Post by happythen »

zepto wrote: post #771
happythen wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A racist solution would be to give advantages to black people. Let's try it and find out. Love to see us even try to give black people an advantage. In the US, it take 200 years and 12 civil wars.

Current admissions policies in many universities and schools explicitly give black people an advantage. This is not a secret. > In the US, it take 200 years and 12 civil wars. It’s unclear what you mean by “12 civil wars”.

Yea black people always getting that advantage, you should let more people know. I mean, people just don't understand how hard it is to be white these days with twitter hate and everything. Be the voice! Let me know how it goes.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#778

Post by happythen »

zepto wrote: post #769
happythen wrote: post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

yea it's a basic situation everyone deals with, this person just thinks it pertains to males.

Re: A generation of American men give up on college

#780

Post by zepto »

happythen wrote: post #778
zepto wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

yea it's a basic situation everyone deals with, this person just thinks it pertains to males.

That doesn’t explain your reply.

Are you claiming there is no difference in how society treats males vs females?

Why do you assume the commenter is talking about themselves?

Do you understand what masculinity is? How about toxic masculinity?

Are you male?

Post reply on HN