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Northern Ireland27478 Posts
On February 01 2022 13:22 Husyelt wrote:
God I can't wait for the confirmation hearings for whichever person gets chosen.
Republicans: "Your previous sins have been well documented and presented here, what say you? Whore."
Democrats: Mrs. Angel, innumerable are your holy names, my colleagues on the other aisle have blasphemed against you, and I just want to say how saddened I am to hear that. Can I list your great accomplishments and charitable acts?"
Rinse and repeat for many days and then 24/7 cable news can chew on the fat and grease while they savor the small bits of meat.
Haha, both parts amusingly and depressingly accurate. Long live politics eh?
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On February 02 2022 00:14 Doc.Rivers wrote:Show nested quote +On February 01 2022 18:14 EnDeR_ wrote:On February 01 2022 17:50 BlackJack wrote:On February 01 2022 17:39 EnDeR_ wrote:
This isn't that hard. If it had been unintentional, he'd have deleted the tweet, said, 'ooops, bad wording, here's the tweet again'. Fair enough, you type something quickly and make a mistake but you know, you can just fix it if you unintentionally sounded racist. Again, not that difficult. He did delete it and apologized for the bad wording Then what exactly are we discussing here? The author of the tweet thinks it was poorly worded. What is there to discuss? It's a mini controversy because Shapiro was put on leave pending an investigation, and many are calling for him to be fired.
Looks like they're doing damage control. He'll have to do some sensitivity training and he'll be back soon enough. In all honesty, writing 'lesser black woman' should have immediately pinged his racism radar and if that's not the case, he really does need the training.
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Even if he didn't mean black people are lesser people, his assumption a worse candidate would result from limiting the pool to black women is damning by itself. The more people think about this, the more screwed he will be.
Shap: I didn't mean black women are lesser, I meant the nominee would be lesser
?: Why would the nominee be lesser?
Shap: Because they'd be limiting the candidates to only black women
?: And why would that mean a lesser candidate?
Shap: Because it would be removing a lot of candidates from consideration
?: Which candidates? Men or non black people? Which should we assume would result in a better candidate?
There's really just no mental gymnastics that make this comment actually ok. Even ignoring the less generous interpretation, it is really bad.
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On February 02 2022 00:55 Mohdoo wrote:
Even if he didn't mean black people are lesser people, his assumption a worse candidate would result from limiting the pool to black women is damning by itself. The more people think about this, the more screwed he will be.
Shap: I didn't mean black women are lesser, I meant the nominee would be lesser
?: Why would the nominee be lesser?
Shap: Because they'd be limiting the candidates to only black women
?: And why would that mean a lesser candidate?
Shap: Because it would be removing a lot of candidates from consideration
?: Which candidates? Men or non black people? Which should we assume would result in a better candidate?
There's really just no mental gymnastics that make this comment actually ok. Even ignoring the less generous interpretation, it is really bad.
I don't think that that line of thought is necessarily damning.
If we talk about something less politically charged, i don't think it is absurd to think that if you reduce the pool of choices, you may get a worse end result, or a worse top result.
If i want to eat pizza, but randomly exclude half the pizzerias in town, i may accidentally exclude the pizzeria with the best pizza, and thus get a worse "best" pizza.
Of course, in this case the assumption that some racism may be involved is not to be discarded.
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On February 02 2022 00:55 Mohdoo wrote:
Even if he didn't mean black people are lesser people, his assumption a worse candidate would result from limiting the pool to black women is damning by itself.
His assumption was not this, it was that a worse candidate would result from not picking Judge Sri Sirivasan. His argument was that all candidates are lesser than Sirivasan.
As for the dog whistle arguments made by others, I don't think it's fair to impute any Fox News dog whistles onto random other people.
As for whether his job is actually in jeopardy, there is most definitely an outrage machine calling for him to be fired and putting pressure on his employer to do so.
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This reminds me of the James Damore memo incident: some people will find it deeply upsetting, some will sympathize, but ultimately any sane person will know that the nature of internet mobs are such that you should never say something like that if you value your job. Best to be as bland and uncontroversial as possible for anything tied to your real name.
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On February 02 2022 01:13 LegalLord wrote:
This reminds me of the James Damore memo incident: some people will find it deeply upsetting, some will sympathize, but ultimately any sane person will know that the nature of internet mobs are such that you should never say something like that if you value your job. Best to be as bland and uncontroversial as possible for anything tied to your real name.
Right. Shapiro could have easily written his post like "I think Sri S. would have been the best pick for our next Supreme Court Justice, but he's being excluded due to Biden's race/sex restrictions." That hits Shapiro's two points: that he thinks Sri S. is the most qualified candidate, and that Shapiro is critical of Biden's additional criteria for our next SCJ.
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On February 02 2022 01:06 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2022 00:55 Mohdoo wrote:
Even if he didn't mean black people are lesser people, his assumption a worse candidate would result from limiting the pool to black women is damning by itself. The more people think about this, the more screwed he will be.
Shap: I didn't mean black women are lesser, I meant the nominee would be lesser
?: Why would the nominee be lesser?
Shap: Because they'd be limiting the candidates to only black women
?: And why would that mean a lesser candidate?
Shap: Because it would be removing a lot of candidates from consideration
?: Which candidates? Men or non black people? Which should we assume would result in a better candidate?
There's really just no mental gymnastics that make this comment actually ok. Even ignoring the less generous interpretation, it is really bad. I don't think that that line of thought is necessarily damning. If we talk about something less politically charged, i don't think it is absurd to think that if you reduce the pool of choices, you may get a worse end result, or a worse top result. If i want to eat pizza, but randomly exclude half the pizzerias in town, i may accidentally exclude the pizzeria with the best pizza, and thus get a worse "best" pizza. Of course, in this case the assumption that some racism may be involved is not to be discarded.
This comparison is not good. Pizza and law are not comparable. Ethics/philosophy/law can't be measured the same way enjoyment of pizza can. You can easily rank your favorite pizzas and the quality/value of pizza is exclusively determined by total pleasure output. Law benefits from a wide variety of perspectives and the effectiveness of a judge can not be ranked by their GPA in law school or which law school they went to. The comparison just isn't good.
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On February 02 2022 01:12 Doc.Rivers wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2022 00:55 Mohdoo wrote:
Even if he didn't mean black people are lesser people, his assumption a worse candidate would result from limiting the pool to black women is damning by itself. His assumption was not this, it was that a worse candidate would result from not picking Judge Sri Sirivasan. His argument was that all candidates are lesser than Sirivasan.
Was Sirivasan mentioned in his original Tweet? If so, I can buy that. If not, I think we have no reason to assume this is true.
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On February 02 2022 01:42 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2022 01:12 Doc.Rivers wrote:On February 02 2022 00:55 Mohdoo wrote:
Even if he didn't mean black people are lesser people, his assumption a worse candidate would result from limiting the pool to black women is damning by itself. His assumption was not this, it was that a worse candidate would result from not picking Judge Sri Sirivasan. His argument was that all candidates are lesser than Sirivasan. Was Sirivasan mentioned in his original Tweet? If so, I can buy that. If not, I think we have no reason to assume this is true.
It was in the original tweet.
There's not much point to keep beating this dead horse. Even the guy thought the phrasing was bad and retracted the tweet.
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On February 02 2022 02:01 EnDeR_ wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2022 01:42 Mohdoo wrote:On February 02 2022 01:12 Doc.Rivers wrote:On February 02 2022 00:55 Mohdoo wrote:
Even if he didn't mean black people are lesser people, his assumption a worse candidate would result from limiting the pool to black women is damning by itself. His assumption was not this, it was that a worse candidate would result from not picking Judge Sri Sirivasan. His argument was that all candidates are lesser than Sirivasan. Was Sirivasan mentioned in his original Tweet? If so, I can buy that. If not, I think we have no reason to assume this is true. It was in the original tweet. There's not much point to keep beating this dead horse. Even the guy thought the phrasing was bad and retracted the tweet.
well then i take back everything and people are being really stupid for being mad if he specified who the bad candidate was originally
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On February 02 2022 01:12 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2022 01:06 Simberto wrote:On February 02 2022 00:55 Mohdoo wrote:
Even if he didn't mean black people are lesser people, his assumption a worse candidate would result from limiting the pool to black women is damning by itself. The more people think about this, the more screwed he will be.
Shap: I didn't mean black women are lesser, I meant the nominee would be lesser
?: Why would the nominee be lesser?
Shap: Because they'd be limiting the candidates to only black women
?: And why would that mean a lesser candidate?
Shap: Because it would be removing a lot of candidates from consideration
?: Which candidates? Men or non black people? Which should we assume would result in a better candidate?
There's really just no mental gymnastics that make this comment actually ok. Even ignoring the less generous interpretation, it is really bad. I don't think that that line of thought is necessarily damning. If we talk about something less politically charged, i don't think it is absurd to think that if you reduce the pool of choices, you may get a worse end result, or a worse top result. If i want to eat pizza, but randomly exclude half the pizzerias in town, i may accidentally exclude the pizzeria with the best pizza, and thus get a worse "best" pizza. Of course, in this case the assumption that some racism may be involved is not to be discarded. I think it depends on the use of absolutes or not, which was my concern with some of the posting here. If someone was to say, "we may not get the best candidate" I agree that is a reasonable question, especially before you see the options left off the table and which one was picked.
That was literally my point all along. But to me you were not this charitable...
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On February 02 2022 01:41 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 02 2022 01:06 Simberto wrote:On February 02 2022 00:55 Mohdoo wrote:
Even if he didn't mean black people are lesser people, his assumption a worse candidate would result from limiting the pool to black women is damning by itself. The more people think about this, the more screwed he will be.
Shap: I didn't mean black women are lesser, I meant the nominee would be lesser
?: Why would the nominee be lesser?
Shap: Because they'd be limiting the candidates to only black women
?: And why would that mean a lesser candidate?
Shap: Because it would be removing a lot of candidates from consideration
?: Which candidates? Men or non black people? Which should we assume would result in a better candidate?
There's really just no mental gymnastics that make this comment actually ok. Even ignoring the less generous interpretation, it is really bad. I don't think that that line of thought is necessarily damning. If we talk about something less politically charged, i don't think it is absurd to think that if you reduce the pool of choices, you may get a worse end result, or a worse top result. If i want to eat pizza, but randomly exclude half the pizzerias in town, i may accidentally exclude the pizzeria with the best pizza, and thus get a worse "best" pizza. Of course, in this case the assumption that some racism may be involved is not to be discarded. This comparison is not good. Pizza and law are not comparable. Ethics/philosophy/law can't be measured the same way enjoyment of pizza can. You can easily rank your favorite pizzas and the quality/value of pizza is exclusively determined by total pleasure output. Law benefits from a wide variety of perspectives and the effectiveness of a judge can not be ranked by their GPA in law school or which law school they went to. The comparison just isn't good.
True, the comparison is definitively not idea. I am basically trying to look this from a mathematical perspective.
You figure out some way to define "goodness", probably based on weighing a bunch of criteria. That isn't easy, and probably hard to actually explicitly do, but if we assume that there is a "best" person for the job, we necessarily need to assume that some goodness criteria exist.
We now take the set of all candidates, and divide it into two subsets. The "best" person is necessarily in one of them. If we exclude one subset before looking at the "goodness" of the candidates within that subset , it is possible that we accidentally exclude the "best" person.
I am pretty sure that in this case "not being an old white dude" should be valued highly in our "goodness" criteria for exactly the reasons your mentioned, which should rank a bunch of "not-white-old-dudes" high on the goodness scale. But arbitrarily restricting your selection will never improve your resulting candidate.
And just to be sure, with "goodness" scale i don't mean GPA in law school or any other simplistic obvious way to rank people.
I talked about pizza because i was trying to avoid the concrete politically charged situation. Basically, i am mostly talking about this as a math dude trying to look at this mathematically. I hope people here know me well enough to not assume that i am some crypto-rightwing asshole whose goal with this argument is to wiggle his way into getting another old white dude.
I guess my main point is that you should focus on your goodness scale instead of arbitrarily restricting your selection, just put a high value on that criterium in your goodness evaluation instead. I also do not claim that i actually have a valid goodness scale.
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If the supreme court is supposed to represent all americans, it kinda makes sense to have a black woman seated. I'm sure there are plenty of good candidates that would represent a large minority of americans who aren't currently represented.
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United Kingdom10026 Posts
So this argument is kind of moot if no-one is going to explain exactly what the attributes are that would make 'objectively the best' SC judge.
Clearly lots of people seem to think that the most important thing in the search for objectively the best judge - which can I remind everyone again only seems to have started since the idea of a black woman being given the job came up - is that the pool isn't limited.
But exactly what attributes are required?
Experience? Are the most experienced judges the best candidates?
Political neutrality? Is this now suddenly a requirement?
Is there even some reason that being 'the best person for the job' is suddenly now more important than political considerations? Why did this only happen when a black woman might get the job?
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On February 02 2022 02:53 Jockmcplop wrote:
So this argument is kind of moot if no-one is going to explain exactly what the attributes are that would make 'objectively the best' SC judge.
Clearly lots of people seem to think that the most important thing in the search for objectively the best judge - which can I remind everyone again only seems to have started since the idea of a black woman being given the job came up - is that the pool isn't limited.
But exactly what attributes are required?
Experience? Are the most experienced judges the best candidates?
Political neutrality? Is this now suddenly a requirement?
Is there even some reason that being 'the best person for the job' is suddenly now more important than political considerations? Why did this only happen when a black woman might get the job?
The thing is that it does not matter at all which attributes you define. Limiting your pool of candidates before checking will always lead to the possibility of leaving out the "best" candidate.
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EPT
