10 ms·

Not saying this is right, but the opposite is also more common than you'd think. For example, this is no different than: 1. Oxford University - extends exam ti

• scrasmussen 8y ago
  It's not the same at all. Oxford extended time for both men and women equally and the professor wasn't allowed to bump the grades. Neither was a systematic manipulation of scores to keep men out of a field.
• dandare 8y ago
  I have long argued that any act of positive discrimination results in an equal amount of negative discrimination. Be it sex, race, social background, income or any other attribute. Some argue that positive discrimination is the most efficient way to right past wrongs or that it has a net positive effect on a society but that does not negate the effect of the negative discrimination on the affected individuals. What does HN think?
  • hhjinks 8y ago
    University enrollment is a zero sum game, but not everything is. Positive discrimination in a zero sum game will indeed result in negative discrimination, but not by virtue of discrimination being subject to Newton's Third Law.
    • dandare 8y ago
      I didn't get the Newton's Third Law part.
      • Chris_Jay 8y ago
        There is a school of philosophy that newton's laws of motion apply to the political realm - "any action taken to benefit a minority group will result in an equal and opposite counter-reaction". I wouldn't be terribly far off if I described Sun Zu's "The Art of War" as Newton's laws of motion applied to game theory.
  • didibus 8y ago
    I think the idea of positive discrimination is related to countering inherent bias. You might think A isn't as qualified as B. But it is known that inherent bias against A is very likely. So you might decide, even though I believe B to be more qualified, I will go with A, knowing that my judgement might be wrong, because of the likelihood of inherent bias. In a way, yes, the known biases, can create a new bias. I bias against my known biases. This does mean that at an individual level, I favored someone else, when I initially wouldn't have. But does it result in better outcomes? I think this is where it matters. Let me explain. If one is chosen and given opportunity over another. That choice is always going to be judgemental and opinionated. You're trying to predict who will make better use of the opportunity and contribute back the most for being given it. But predictions, like in machine learning, show that a biased data set often perform poorly. So I think part of positive discrimination is to say, diversity could actually yield better results. Yet, because we don't have diverse data, we don't know for sure. But its still okay for the person who chooses to be of the opinion that it would. I find that no different then saying, well I felt they were more knowledgeable. All of it are intractable metrics in an attempt to predict outcome. Edit: Some more thoughts related to fairness. Is it fair to give opportunity only to those who would maximise it? What if it was true, that there was a genetic quality, sex, or race, or a more specific one, like height, IQ, EQ, etc., which was the key variable to maximize the opportunity? Is it fair to say only they shall be given such opportunity, always? Or should we pick at random? Would that be more fair? Are there other scheme? What does it even mean to be fair? Your genetics aren't fair, should society be fairer then them? Clearly in the modern western world, we seem to define fairness as, whoever can maximize the opportunity the most, shall be given it. Aka, meritocracy. Is this best for our society though? If so, are we doing a good job at it? What if we try to do that, but instead have been giving opportunity to those who most resemble us? Not to those who can most maximise it? What then? Is that unfair?
    • apatters 8y ago
      What if positive discrimination triggers retaliatory bias? Have you really done more good than harm? Positive discrimination is like bombing a village known to harbor terrorists. Sure, you may kill some terrorists and drive the rest underground. You'll also radicalize a bunch of villagers. Suddenly ideas that used to be relegated to the lunatic fringe are going mainstream. Sound anything like the US political situation in 2018?
  • tomp 8y ago
    > effect of the negative discrimination on the affected individuals It's worse than that. What doctor would you go to, a white man, a black man, or a woman, if you knew that there's affirmative action for blacks/women, and you wanted (and could afford) the best doctor? Mind you, picking white man isn't even racist, it's rational in the Bayesian framework (the white/male had to have better exam scores to be admitted to the school than blacks/women).
    • lucideer 8y ago
      > picking white man isn't even racist, it's rational in the Bayesian framework Only if you assume no inherent counter-bias, which is of course ridiculous. Without affirmative action, blacks/women would have to have equal exam scores coupled with adverse conditions (statistically, on average) to the white/male candidate. By that logic, they would need to perform much better on aggregate.
      • dandare 8y ago
        Do you assume the adverse conditions that affect black women (BW) will disappear once they are admitted to the school? If not, then it is still more rational to choose a white man (WM), who performed better in the exams and is not affected by adverse conditions during his study. Anyway, my original question was about fairness :).
        • lucideer 8y ago
          > Do you assume the adverse conditions that affect black women (BW) will disappear once they are admitted to the school? I guess the hope is that increased participation will slowly reduce the severity of adversity, but whether that is effective I'm less sure of (I don't really believe it will ever disappear completely tbh). As for it being more rational to choose the person who contends with adversity on the assumption that the adversity never disappears (and therefore continues to impair), this only works on the assumption that affirmative action is a complete, perfect remedy to adversity: otherwise those contending with adversity must still overachieve to a certain degree to get the same positions (and therefore represent a potentially better rational choice).
• Firadeoclus 8y ago
  Actually, that is quite different. 1. Seems like a legitimate choice on what a test is designed to measure. Exam times are the same for all students. 2. "Fortunately, the plan appears to have been vetoed." - so it didn't actually come to pass.
  • lawlessone 8y ago
    The above examples are also disclosed and the reasoning explained.
  • close04 8y ago
    For 1. - that's not how it works. When you adjust a parameter to "give a better chance" to one group you are inadvertently negating the advantage of the other. As said before, admissions are a 0 sum game. Any advantage you give to one group it can only turn into a disadvantage for another. And testing the ability to work under pressure in an exam is as reasonable as you can expect. In this case extending the time because "female candidates might be more likely to be adversely affected by time pressure" negates the advantage people that can work under pressure have. I'm curious how they're going to do this in real life when (unsurprisingly) they will be expected to work under pressure and it will highlight a big mismatch between academic and professional performance levels.
    • deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    • Firadeoclus 8y ago
      Exams are testing the ability to work under pressure. Giving students 15 minutes extra only changes the degree of pressure. The previous time given isn't a "neutral" point. How much of an advantage in terms of exam results _should_ people who can work under high pressure have? The pressures STEM employees face at work are usually very different from exam pressure, so I would lean towards "very little" as the answer to that question.
      • close04 8y ago
• eeeuo 8y ago
  Yes, #1 "is different" than the OP. It would only be equivalent if women were allowed more time than men to complete the exam.* #2 is a completely misleading headline. It ... never happened. An article in which the 2nd paragraph contradicts the headline isn't written in good faith. [*] I would also argue that extending exams so that each student has a reasonable amount of time to finish is not a bad practice. A student that gives a correct answer in the extra 15 minutes is no less knowledgeable than a student that gives the correct answer in the original allocated time. We are selecting for breadth and depth of knowledge, not speed of recitation or ability to perform under pressure. In a CS exam, you either know the answer or you do not. Extra time is not going to allow you to falsify your level of knowledge. It will, however, give slower workers the ability to fully complete the exam. Students that work quickly but are less knowledgeable than their peers are the only ones that would be penalized by this change. Those students have inflated scores relative to their knowledge, therefore this penalization should be encouraged. In an untimed test, the most knowledgeable student will always get the highest test score, therefore knowledgeable students should not be opposed to increasing test times, they should encourage them.
  • skate22 8y ago
    > "In a CS exam, you either know the answer or you do not." This is simply not true. Consider an algorithm proof, with enough time you might be able to derive a proof that you should have known cold. The real world does have deadlines & performance matters, and the women who spent the time studying should get the better grade
    • eeeuo 8y ago
      You believe that a student that derives a proof from scratch is less knowledgeable than a student that rote memorizes it out of a textbook? My argument comes from the perspective of the real world. It is, in effect, the same type of argument that drives the "interview questions on a whiteboard" discussion -- which qualities are actually important in an employee? As someone involved with hiring for a company that consistently produces high quality, critical code used in important systems, my experience is that "working under pressure" is pretty far down the list of important qualities.
• Fnoord 8y ago
  > Not saying this is right, but the opposite is also more common than you'd think. You don't know how common the reader thinks this is occurring, but you're implying its common. Given your sources are both debunked by another reader I'd appreciate a plethora of other sources.
• tfgg 8y ago
  Funny how when confronted with an article that gives a clear, unambiguous demonstration of how patriarchy negatively affects women, you come up with two weak articles that supposedly demonstrate cases where women were advantaged (they weren't). From that, I'm led to believe that maybe the opposite actually isn't more common than I think. Maybe you don't actually think that the issue in the Tokyo medical school was such a big deal after all?
  • lainga 8y ago
    Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
• JustSomeNobody 8y ago
  So? Why can't we look at what the Tokyo medical school did, on it's own, and argue that? Why is there always some form of whataboutism?