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On January 29 2022 06:59 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2022 06:31 micronesia wrote:
I think it's a slippery slope fallacy. If we say it's ok today for Biden to decide from the getgo his SCOTUS justice will be a black female, then we're saying it's okay for all hiring to be performed that way in the future. I wouldn't agree with all hiring being handled like this SCOTUS pick. I'm okay with Biden's method provided there actually are qualified black female judges available from the pool of "candidates," which there are. I think it's worse than just a slippery slope (non-fallacy). The very act of playing it this way already calls into question the merits of his eventual choice and rightfully so provides ammunition to any party who would like to criticize this choice. If they are able to find fault with this nominee - even a sort of "I made a mistake or two in a decades-long career" set of otherwise fully understandable faults - it will have outsized impact since there is reason to question if they were nominated on merit. When there's good a priori reason to question Biden's objectivity due to a poorly conceived approach to framing these picks, trust is going to be a hard thing to win back. Your post in particular doesn't do it, but I find it disappointing that the "well how else could you do it if not like this?" retorts keep coming up in this thread. Several people have laid out exactly how else you might do it and evidently it gets ignored.
The reality is that the moment Biden announces a controversial pick, i.e. not an old white dude, the candidate would get slammed anyway and the selection process called into question. This way, Biden gets to make a statement and positions himself favourably with the progressive wing of the party with what looks like very little loss to me.
I mean, after the way Trump chose his SCOTUS picks, are we really going to pretend that this is the beginning of the slippery slope?
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If the bar for controversy and/or fairness is something like "well Trump was worse anyways" or "it'll already be criticized, why not give them something worth criticizing too?" - that's definitely disappointing. Not to mention overplaying the weak hand that Biden has, politically.
Not sure this gives Biden "progressive points" either; the Democratic party-line is a lot more into that particular brand of deliberately divisive identity politicking than the progressives are. The latter care far more about economic concerns.
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On January 29 2022 07:20 LegalLord wrote:
If the bar for controversy and/or fairness is something like "well Trump was worse anyways" or "it'll already be criticized, why not give them something worth criticizing too?" - that's definitely disappointing. Not to mention overplaying the weak hand that Biden has, politically.
Not sure this gives Biden "progressive points" either; the Democratic party-line is a lot more into that particular brand of deliberately divisive identity politicking than the progressives are. The latter care far more about economic concerns.
Well, I can't speak for all progressives, but the fact that he's willing to fight for a black woman SCOTUS pick makes me think that he actually gives a shit and gives him a good amount of brownie points.
On the SCOTUS pick, under-represented groups have been having this fight since forever. I believe Kwark put it best a few posts back. Any black woman who made it into a list of SCOTUS picks is very likely to be a truly exceptional candidate, given the historical barriers that people from under-represented groups need to overcome. And that same black woman would be familiar with white dudes putting her credentials in doubt every step of the way.
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This is an interesting topic. Why are women/some minorities less represented in positions of power or prestige? I think these are some common types of answers.
1. All groups are really equally skilled. The only problem is that the people in charge are bigoted/racist. (i.e., If we replaced all the Asian-Americans in the math or chess Olympiad by black women, we’d get the same result.)
2. There are differences on average between groups. This is the privileged groups' fault for directly keeping the less privileged back, prevent them from making money, getting educated etc.
3. There are differences on average between groups. This is partially the privileged group’s fault, but there are also problems within the less privileged groups themselves. These range from being almost entirely created by the dominant groups (for example, women internalizing the gaze of patriarchy) to being largely caused by the disadvantaged group itself (ultra orthodox Muslims not letting their women get an education).
4. There are differences on average between groups. This is mainly because of the culture of these groups. Cultural differences between groups determine the outcome and some cultures are simply better than others. For example, poor Asian-Americans and Jews tend to do much better than other minorities.
5 There are differences on average between groups. This is grounded in biological differences and impossible to change.
To me 1-2 are woke, 3 moderate, 4 conservative, 5 racist. Thinking about it, I’d place myself somewhere between 3 and 4.
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This is precisely what I was talking about. They constantly conflate correlation with causation. They noted that the top quartile was more diverse and concluded that it was thanks to greater diversity. That reasoning is obviously flawed. They didn't measure how performance actually changed with increasing diversity. It could very well be that it didn't change at all, and that the well performing companies simply could afford to dedicate resources to various diversity initiatives and worse performing companies couldn't. Hell, those diversity initiatives could even be detrimental to performance. There's no way of telling that from that data...
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On January 29 2022 08:15 Elroi wrote:
This is an interesting topic. Why are women/some minorities less represented in positions of power or prestige? I think these are some common types of answers.
I just wanted to answer your question directly. Why are women/some minorities less represented in positions of power or prestige?
It's because of a lack of opportunity.
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Northern Ireland27207 Posts
On January 29 2022 11:35 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2022 08:19 maybenexttime wrote:This is precisely what I was talking about. They constantly conflate correlation with causation. They noted that the top quartile was more diverse and concluded that it was thanks to greater diversity. That reasoning is obviously flawed. They didn't measure how performance actually changed with increasing diversity. It could very well be that it didn't change at all, and that the well performing companies simply could afford to dedicate resources to various diversity initiatives and worse performing companies couldn't. Hell, those diversity initiatives could even be detrimental to performance. There's no way of telling that from that data... The more times you have correlation you can better conclude causation is more likely but like with most "social sciences" it is not as conclusive as math or science. I mean how exactly would you run a control group and get exactly the same circumstances for both? + Show Spoiler +
I can not share our internal stuff because its not for public but I can tell you that the areas with diversity are out preforming those with out and that as we get more diverse we preform better in those specific groups. Because of this we invested pretty big money into how to attract people of certain groups that we were not performing as well with and changed our criteria. Partly because our previous criteria had unconcious bias toward people who grew up in Canada, english (or french in certain parts of Canada) as first language and so on. It does not mean that we only look at that or that we wont hire white males, heck we still have mostly white males, but changing our criteria based on these results has increased the amount of people from the under represented groups and we are getting more applications from those groups as we are better at marketing the positions towards them. The sales end was where it started and was the easiest place to see direct corelation but based on the results of that we did it other areas and it has also worked. And im not only talking about groups by race and gender but also things like age. And for inclusion we talk about remote workers which is huge because people like dealing with local and having a full office in each snaller city did not make sense and supporting those people is very different and what makes people sucessful in a remote role is also very different
. Spoilered to save space and its a long paragraph about where I work with no data because the data I get to see is not for public. Here is some quick questions Id have for you as a non believer, do you have any data to support that diversity does not help? Any that it hinders? Even just correlation? If not why do you not think its likely that it does not help and what is the draw back for hiring for it?
I could assume there are some environments where diversity or lack thereof isn’t a factor either way, many where it’s beneficial, especially multifaceted roles where divergent life experiences and views breed different perspectives, which in turn better informs the wider institutions.
I think it’s possibly overstated, but I’ve not seen data either way. Not that it isn’t a factor or is desirable, just some frame it as if all you have to do is have a more diverse workforce and you’ll perform better by default. If workers aren’t enfranchised in processes the benefits of a wide knowledge pool aren’t going to manifest properly.
Least in the U.K. some of the big economic/cultural magnets, especially London are where the money also is, so you get both more cutting edge companies as well as a more diverse pool to begin with, so the two kind of go hand in hand almost by default.
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Northern Ireland27207 Posts
On January 29 2022 08:15 Elroi wrote:
This is an interesting topic. Why are women/some minorities less represented in positions of power or prestige? I think these are some common types of answers.
1. All groups are really equally skilled. The only problem is that the people in charge are bigoted/racist. (i.e., If we replaced all the Asian-Americans in the math or chess Olympiad by black women, we’d get the same result.)
2. There are differences on average between groups. This is the privileged groups' fault for directly keeping the less privileged back, prevent them from making money, getting educated etc.
3. There are differences on average between groups. This is partially the privileged group’s fault, but there are also problems within the less privileged groups themselves. These range from being almost entirely created by the dominant groups (for example, women internalizing the gaze of patriarchy) to being largely caused by the disadvantaged group itself (ultra orthodox Muslims not letting their women get an education).
4. There are differences on average between groups. This is mainly because of the culture of these groups. Cultural differences between groups determine the outcome and some cultures are simply better than others. For example, poor Asian-Americans and Jews tend to do much better than other minorities.
5 There are differences on average between groups. This is grounded in biological differences and impossible to change.
To me 1-2 are woke, 3 moderate, 4 conservative, 5 racist. Thinking about it, I’d place myself somewhere between 3 and 4.
It’s probably facets of parts of all of 1 thru 4, IMO anyway. It’s quite a complex problem that people can be extremely reductive on.
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On January 29 2022 08:19 maybenexttime wrote:This is precisely what I was talking about. They constantly conflate correlation with causation. They noted that the top quartile was more diverse and concluded that it was thanks to greater diversity. That reasoning is obviously flawed. They didn't measure how performance actually changed with increasing diversity. It could very well be that it didn't change at all, and that the well performing companies simply could afford to dedicate resources to various diversity initiatives and worse performing companies couldn't. Hell, those diversity initiatives could even be detrimental to performance. There's no way of telling that from that data...
Disappointingly, a lot of the studies in the social "sciences" are little more than a survey with unreliable methodology interpreted using a questionable approach to statistics. These same studies of questionable merit get promoted as "the science says" so-and-so. This is a problem, and we haven't gotten to any potential conflicts of interest you might find without going much further than, say, reading the domain names of the studies linked here.
On January 29 2022 08:15 Elroi wrote:
This is an interesting topic. Why are women/some minorities less represented in positions of power or prestige? I think these are some common types of answers.
1. All groups are really equally skilled. The only problem is that the people in charge are bigoted/racist. (i.e., If we replaced all the Asian-Americans in the math or chess Olympiad by black women, we’d get the same result.)
2. There are differences on average between groups. This is the privileged groups' fault for directly keeping the less privileged back, prevent them from making money, getting educated etc.
3. There are differences on average between groups. This is partially the privileged group’s fault, but there are also problems within the less privileged groups themselves. These range from being almost entirely created by the dominant groups (for example, women internalizing the gaze of patriarchy) to being largely caused by the disadvantaged group itself (ultra orthodox Muslims not letting their women get an education).
4. There are differences on average between groups. This is mainly because of the culture of these groups. Cultural differences between groups determine the outcome and some cultures are simply better than others. For example, poor Asian-Americans and Jews tend to do much better than other minorities.
5 There are differences on average between groups. This is grounded in biological differences and impossible to change.
To me 1-2 are woke, 3 moderate, 4 conservative, 5 racist. Thinking about it, I’d place myself somewhere between 3 and 4.
Personally, I'd lean towards (3), and think that that warrants a minor, but only minor, preference in consideration for said positions of power or prestige. Essentially in the form I've argued for so far.
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On January 29 2022 08:19 maybenexttime wrote:This is precisely what I was talking about. They constantly conflate correlation with causation. They noted that the top quartile was more diverse and concluded that it was thanks to greater diversity. That reasoning is obviously flawed. They didn't measure how performance actually changed with increasing diversity. It could very well be that it didn't change at all, and that the well performing companies simply could afford to dedicate resources to various diversity initiatives and worse performing companies couldn't. Hell, those diversity initiatives could even be detrimental to performance. There's no way of telling that from that data...
If all they were doing in those reports were summarised in the title, you'd be right. But diving into the first one, we see this interesting tidbit:
3. Diversity of thinking enhances innovation by 20%
That’s according to research from Deloitte, who also found that diverse workforces are 30% more likely to spot mistakes.
Having interviewed 50 global organisations for their report, Deloitte called attention to one particular example in Qantas. Between 2013 and 2017, the Australian airline went from their greatest ever loss to their greatest ever profit, won the ‘World’s safest airline’ award and ranked as Australia’s most trusted big business.
How did they achieve this turn-around? According to CEO Alan Joyce, it had everything to do with the company’s “very diverse environment and very inclusive culture,” which, he claimed, “got us through the tough times… diversity generated better strategy, better risk management, better debates [and] better outcomes.”
It's anecdotal, but there's more than just that one CEO, there are numerous companies whose CEO or HR departments report improvements KPIs after starting to focus on diversity as a goal in their workforce (as well as fostering an inclusive culture, and a bunch of other things that need to happen for diversity to be a positive driver... see my earlier link for a more theoretical framework for how diversity helps drive performance).
Sure, it's not the gold standard of a repeatable experiment with controlled conditions, but it's a bunch of pre-post tests, which are about as good as you'll get in most social science research: you can't run an A/B here.
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On January 29 2022 16:40 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On January 29 2022 08:19 maybenexttime wrote:This is precisely what I was talking about. They constantly conflate correlation with causation. They noted that the top quartile was more diverse and concluded that it was thanks to greater diversity. That reasoning is obviously flawed. They didn't measure how performance actually changed with increasing diversity. It could very well be that it didn't change at all, and that the well performing companies simply could afford to dedicate resources to various diversity initiatives and worse performing companies couldn't. Hell, those diversity initiatives could even be detrimental to performance. There's no way of telling that from that data... If all they were doing in those reports were summarised in the title, you'd be right. But diving into the first one, we see this interesting tidbit: Show nested quote +
3. Diversity of thinking enhances innovation by 20%
That’s according to research from Deloitte, who also found that diverse workforces are 30% more likely to spot mistakes.
Having interviewed 50 global organisations for their report, Deloitte called attention to one particular example in Qantas. Between 2013 and 2017, the Australian airline went from their greatest ever loss to their greatest ever profit, won the ‘World’s safest airline’ award and ranked as Australia’s most trusted big business.
How did they achieve this turn-around? According to CEO Alan Joyce, it had everything to do with the company’s “very diverse environment and very inclusive culture,” which, he claimed, “got us through the tough times… diversity generated better strategy, better risk management, better debates [and] better outcomes.”
It's anecdotal, but there's more than just that one CEO, there are numerous companies whose CEO or HR departments report improvements KPIs after starting to focus on diversity as a goal in their workforce (as well as fostering an inclusive culture, and a bunch of other things that need to happen for diversity to be a positive driver... see my earlier link for a more theoretical framework for how diversity helps drive performance). Sure, it's not the gold standard of a repeatable experiment with controlled conditions, but it's a bunch of pre-post tests, which are about as good as you'll get in most social science research: you can't run an A/B here.
To add to this, my own personal experience is aligned with this when running a research group. I should also say that the two times I've worked in a toxic environment, both times it was in a place with non-existent diversity, i.e. virtually no women and certainly zero under-represented groups. My personal anecdotal correlation is that with no diversity, you encounter a lot more groupthink.
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Frankly, your argument is ridiculous. Every administration has so far put out a list of "qualifications" they want in their pick so far, the time you yelled was not when that criteria was needs to believe in God, that abortion is a sin, and that a sitting president is actually a king. Nobody back then said, we are excluding the qualified progressives, that's wrong. In each case there is a range of "qualified" people to chose from, if there were not, you would have very different problems. Acting as if reverse racism is a problem for a job position that is politically appointed every 4 years, because Dave and William are excluded from the process, when Dave and Williams siblings have been hired the last three times, makes zero sense. It's not like they got 5 applicants on one job offer, one was a black female high school dropout and 4 were from Harvard but white and Biden had to chose the dropout because of quotas. The qualification for that role is be a politically good pick for the seat and understand law well. Which means Dave and William are by definition less qualified because they lack an uterus and have never been discriminated against due to the color of their skin. And if one side consistently nominates and elects white people for all their positions but doesn't say it's a qualification for the job and one side tries to hire as diverse as possible and says that skincolour is a qualification for some of them, I know which qualification process is the more racist one.
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Northern Ireland27207 Posts
On January 29 2022 18:17 Broetchenholer wrote:
Frankly, your argument is ridiculous. Every administration has so far put out a list of "qualifications" they want in their pick so far, the time you yelled was not when that criteria was needs to believe in God, that abortion is a sin, and that a sitting president is actually a king. Nobody back then said, we are excluding the qualified progressives, that's wrong. In each case there is a range of "qualified" people to chose from, if there were not, you would have very different problems. Acting as if reverse racism is a problem for a job position that is politically appointed every 4 years, because Dave and William are excluded from the process, when Dave and Williams siblings have been hired the last three times, makes zero sense. It's not like they got 5 applicants on one job offer, one was a black female high school dropout and 4 were from Harvard but white and Biden had to chose the dropout because of quotas. The qualification for that role is be a politically good pick for the seat and understand law well. Which means Dave and William are by definition less qualified because they lack an uterus and have never been discriminated against due to the color of their skin. And if one side consistently nominates and elects white people for all their positions but doesn't say it's a qualification for the job and one side tries to hire as diverse as possible and says that skincolour is a qualification for some of them, I know which qualification process is the more racist one.
Well basically aye.
Assuming the bar is suitably qualified, then I don’t have a huge amount of issue with some ode to diversity being a tiebreaker.
Which is rather different from the framing that somehow the bar to being qualified being lower to accommodate diversity, which is a frequent charge.
As a pretty big football fan, and a giant football podcast fan it’s really quite sad when any time some (really good) podcast contributor gets any kind of mainstream broadcasting gig the comment section is filled with ‘oh another woke appointment’ rhetoric and a level of scrutiny applied to their bona fides that just doesn’t happen with x mediocre white dude pundit.
To be clear that’s a side rant and not something I’m charging thread contributors with in the US politics context
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Norway28866 Posts
All research I've seen and personal experience I've had indicates that some diversity is preferable. 50/50 men/women isn't a goal imo - but the 'generalized but also somewhat true' axioms regarding men and women end up applying much less in an 80/20 or 70/30 environment than they do in a 100/0 environment; men and women both end up moderating their behavior if the other gender is present. (And this type of moderation is generally healthy in a work environment). Likewise I can assume that ethnic diversity can contribute to a group moderating their preconceptions regarding other ethnic groups (even if I in this regard have much less personal experience, being Norwegian) - something which should be a goal, especially for an institution like the SC.
I'm still kinda inclined to agree with Dan though. I'd like to see this framed more through the lens of 'diversity is an asset, and seeing how we have no black women present on the SC, being a black woman will make it more likely that you'll get the nomination' than an 'if you are not a black woman, you have 0% chance of getting the nomination'. Even if the reality is that you basically have 400 almost equally viable candidates on merit and that the racial and gender component is bound to be decisive, there's something off-putting about a person being formally disqualified based on gender and ethnicity, and I feel that way as a person who is entirely accepting of the notion that more diversity is inherently positive.
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Northern Ireland27207 Posts
On January 29 2022 19:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
All research I've seen and personal experience I've had indicates that some diversity is preferable. 50/50 men/women isn't a goal imo - but the 'generalized but also somewhat true' axioms regarding men and women end up applying much less in an 80/20 or 70/30 environment than they do in a 100/0 environment; men and women both end up moderating their behavior if the other gender is present. (And this type of moderation is generally healthy in a work environment). Likewise I can assume that ethnic diversity can contribute to a group moderating their preconceptions regarding other ethnic groups (even if I in this regard have much less personal experience, being Norwegian) - something which should be a goal, especially for an institution like the SC.
I'm still kinda inclined to agree with Dan though. I'd like to see this framed more through the lens of 'diversity is an asset, and seeing how we have no black women present on the SC, being a black woman will make it more likely that you'll get the nomination' than an 'if you are not a black woman, you have 0% chance of getting the nomination'. Even if the reality is that you basically have 400 almost equally viable candidates on merit and that the racial and gender component is bound to be decisive, there's something off-putting about a person being formally disqualified based on gender and ethnicity, and I feel that way as a person who is entirely accepting of the notion that more diversity is inherently positive.
I think it’s super dependent on the gig
The Supreme Court is as much being aligned with whoever is President in base ideology as it is about your legal chops. So it’s already not a pure meritocratic appointment.
And at a time where, in another sphere there’s been considerable tension between PoC and legal apparatuses
It’s already an appointment that isn’t purely meritocratic anyway and, to some degree that symbolic nod carries some additional import.
If we’re talking a more regular, non publicly facing and impactful job, then yes I feel what you’re mentioning is considerably more problematic.
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On January 29 2022 19:09 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I'm still kinda inclined to agree with Dan though. I'd like to see this framed more through the lens of 'diversity is an asset, and seeing how we have no black women present on the SC, being a black woman will make it more likely that you'll get the nomination' than an 'if you are not a black woman, you have 0% chance of getting the nomination'. Even if the reality is that you basically have 400 almost equally viable candidates on merit and that the racial and gender component is bound to be decisive, there's something off-putting about a person being formally disqualified based on gender and ethnicity, and I feel that way as a person who is entirely accepting of the notion that more diversity is inherently positive.
In an ideal world, agreed. In the hyper-partisan environment that is US politics, you know there was never a chance that conservative-leaning newspapers would ever frame a non-white dude as anything other than 'a woke diversity pick' as LL put it a while back. Biden certainly could have been more nuanced about why a black woman would add more to the role than a traditional white man and that's on him. Equally, picking a member from the most oppressed racial group can very easily be understood by the listener as a genuine wish to improve the diversity of the SC makeup.
It'd be fantastic if this starts a tradition with the SC where all new picks are chosen to be more representative of the US population at large. I'd personally like to go down that particularly slippery slope as I think that would improve outcomes for regular people since the SC is now the place where policy is made.
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Somewhat ironically, SCOTUS has agreed to hear a case on Affirmative Action brought by Asian students who state they were discriminated against in the admissions process by Harvard by giving preference to Black/Hispanic students. As far as I know we've never had any Asian SC justices and it looks like they have been immediately excluded from this nomination.
Seems like people only want to frame this as a black woman vs white bloke type of thing. While it's true that this has been the case for hundreds of years on SCOTUS, in modern America I see the "victims" of this type of thing being Asians more often than not. I brought this up a few months ago in this thread. In San Francisco they got rid of merit-based admissions to a prestigious school and change it to a lottery system not because there were too many whites but because there were too many Asians. They're also trying to get rid of gifted math programs in high school for the same reasons - too many Asians, not enough blacks.
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Well if Biden gets to seat a 2nd SCJ at some point then I see no reason he can't aim for a Hispanic or Asian Judge, providing they have the qualifications for it yadayada.
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EPT
