8 ms·

Nobel Prize: We will not have gender or ethnicity quotas – top scientist

temptemptemp111 5y ago
Yes, Jews should be exempt from this culture war. The fact that they're vastly over represented has everything to do with them being way smarter than goyem and nothing to do with schemes or honesty!
nme01 5y ago
Funny how people who claim to be so rational and to make data-driven decisions apply quotas for genders, skin color, sexual orientation etc. while there’s evidence that those kinds of policies are actually counter-productive.
- tomp 5y ago
  Can you post some sources / links to such evidence? In my debates, I'd often ask people "do you have any data to support your position" but if I had data that argues against their positions, that'd be even better!
  - xiphias2 5y ago
    I knew a hard working student who was applying for PhD who had the incentive to change his gender and sexual orientation (lie) to get extra points to get in. I don’t know what he did at the end, but incentivizing people to lie will definitely worsen the pool of PhD students.
    - tomp 5y ago
      Well, the beautiful thing is, as a science-supporter (not "believer"!), I don't even recognize the concept of "gender" as distinct from "sex" (noone ever managed to explain it in a non-recursive manner, or consistently define it), so I'm officially agender, I don't even need to lie (while remaining a man (sex)).
- cute_boi 5y ago
  quotas might be a solution to various problems but in this world where there are stupid politics, greed, money over ethics we know it is good on paper and is worst on practical life. A good example is India where quotas has been ingrained in every part of society and at the end many dexterous candidates doesn't get a seat. Quotas were introduced in India to alleviate poverty but now a days its just used by politicians to appease minorities. Quota were supposed to temporary but we know it is never going away. I want society to solve problem not circumscribe at the problem and mark it as solution.
  - SiempreViernes 5y ago
    So you think Indian politicians would have alleviated poverty much better without quotas?
- eesmith 5y ago
  There is also evidence that it's not counter-productive. Eg, Clayton, A. "How Do Electoral Gender Quotas Affect Policy?", Annu. Rev. Political Sci. 2021. 24:235–52 at https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041719-102019 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisc... > The large majority of work on quota adoption suggests that quotas are followed by the greater substantive representation of women’s interests, priorities, and preferences. However, several studies have documented cases in which quotas have resulted in limited policy changes or even more gender-inegalitarian outcomes. ... > On average, quota-elected women appear to influence policy in ways that substantively benefit women constituents, either by distributing resources in ways that reflect women’s priorities or by enacting or enforcing policies that grant women greater rights. Yet, these findings are not universal, and some work uncovers null results or even instances of backlash against women officeholders in ways that exacerbate patriarchal policies and practices. That there is such variation in the observed policy effects of gender quotas suggests the potential for moderating variables. That's specifically on policy making, but I think it's enough to highlight how evidence of backlash - which certainly does exist! - isn't on its own enough to make data-driven decisions.
  - nme01 5y ago
    I guess it depends on how you define a goal of quotas. If it’s meant to increase women’s presence in certain areas just for the sake of having more women somewhere, then quotas might work. But if you apply quotas to fight the gender/sexuality/skin color bias then usually those policies are applied in a wrong place which creates yet another bias, just of a different direction. Let’s get a promotion policies for example: if you say that at least 50% of board of directors should be women but 95% of all employees is man, then average woman in the company is 19 times more likely to be promoted than average man which seems extremely unfair. The problem should be well understood first. That is: why do we have so few female employees. Then it might turn out that we are biased in our hiring process. If there’s no evidence for that, then maybe there’s a bias during university recruitment process etc.
    - eesmith 5y ago
      In order to make a data-driven decision, where's the evidence that your hypothesis is correct? FWIW, Norway requires at least 40% gender representation on the boards of public companies, so there's data right there. The best I can tell is "mixed", but definitely not "actually counter-productive". I quoted "mixed" from https://www.ft.com/content/6f6bc5a2-7b70-11e8-af48-190d103e32a4 https://www.ft.com/content/6f6bc5a2-7b70-11e8-af48-190d103e3... . One of the observations quoted there is: > Ms Helleland says three-quarters of recruitment is down to informal networks: “Men recruit men. Men recruit CEOs that look like themselves. I interpret that as an informal quota system for men. There's decades of research on this topic. Either it's "well understood" now, or there's no good way to make a data-driven decision.
- tgv 5y ago
  Then you'll be able to answer the most basic question: what's the goal of gender quota? And then show how gender quota accomplishes that goal, or at least moves towards it, without harming other goals.
nix23 5y ago
It should be illegal to have quotas for gender and ethnicity. Otherwise we make the opposite of "i don't care what you are, but who you are", every woman in a high position would be looked at as the "quota-thing" etc. It would be terrible for those persons who really achieved that position by themself s (and not by quota).
- eesmith 5y ago
  The Catholic priesthood has a 100% quota for men. You want to make that illegal, right? There's no need to pinpoint women in high position now. Historically there was a strong bias to choose men instead of equally qualified women. You should look at (eg) every male doctor hired in the 1950s and 1960s as not really achieving that position through their own merit. Your ire extends, I presume, towards legacy preference at colleges. Those students should certainly be seen as a "quota-thing", not achieving that position by themselves. Jo Freeman's classic essay "The Tyranny of Stuctureless" points out that when there is no formal structure, informal structures arise, masking the power of elites. If there are informal quotas - eg, systemic cultural biases [1] - then a solution may be to switch to formal quotas. [1] The stereotype of a scientist is 'white males wearing lab coats, eyeglasses, with facial hair, and an eccentric appearance'. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/edri/2019/6324704/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/edri/2019/6324704/ Someone who fits the stereotype is more likely to be seen as and accepted as a scientist, and not have to deal with comments like "you can't be a scientist - you're too pretty!"
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  - nix23 5y ago
    > The Catholic priesthood has a 100% quota for men. You want to make that illegal, right? If i think about an open society, the catholic church is not the first thing that comes to my mind. Also there is no Government who FORCES them to have just men. If you have a Man-Cave(Church) where "no woman's" have access, that's absolutely your right...crazy but your decision. NOT okay is, that the Government forces you to have a quota, and btw it's always one-sided, more Woman's in Management for example, but no Quota for Men's in...lets say gender study's. >>To my sibling: It's not Rome but the Vatican, the Vatican IS the Church, and please stop comparing a free and open society with that crazy construct called "Roman Catholic Church", where raping children's are called a "trade secret" and "a internal affair". >>>>To the other sibling: Now you see the problem when the state try's to implement artificial quotas for something that should not be regulated on the basis of gender or ethnicity. >The Nobel Foundation is a private institution. Your comment sounded like you want it to be illegal for a private foundation to have quotas in prize giving. Yes absolutely, since it's racist and bigoted, how should the quote for whites be for the "Royal Society Africa Prize"?
4gotunameagain 5y ago
I can understand the rationale behind quotas, but I am not convinced that it is effective. What worries me though is that racist and sexist policies like that are prevalent and accepted without anyone knowing if it is the right way to go. I think that equality of outcome not only will not solve the problems that our societies have, but exacerbate them
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  It plainly isn't possible to implement without discrimination. Some argue that this is good discrimination. It is also noteworthy that only desirable jobs get quotas like this.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  It's one step towards gender equality; if you use quotas to award different population groups equally, it will on the one hand normalize them for everyone else, and may inspire others to try on the other hand. If the top of whatever Nobel prizes are handed out for remains white men, nobody that doesn't fit that category will feel like they have a chance. Anyway, it's one strategy; the other, and IMO more important one, is to give everybody equal access to education and the sciences. This is a governmental issue, who should be paying for everyone's education, transport to said education, and if need be, housing near said education. And of course strict anti-discrimination and anti-elitism laws. Breaking up concepts of 'class' should also be a thing, since right now, working class people will be less inclined to go to university for example. I've been lucky in that regard; grew up 'working class', but thanks to the at the time government policies of giving out stipends for education I got college educated and a career in software development, moving up to middle class. It's a great example of social mobility, and I think everyone should have that opportunity. But after my education, the government pulled up the ladder behind me. First by changing the scholarship rules so that after a certain age you are no longer entitled, making it harder for people to go from college to university for example. Then they changed it so it's 100% a loan, which on the one hand makes people less inclined to start a higher level education, and on the other it starts their career with tens of thousands of debt, making it harder to e.g. buy a house and start a family alongside their career. I mean there's voices going up to undo those changes now, but it's been years under this shitty system and damage has already been done. It's stupid as well, because it's a relatively small cost at great benefit - it doesn't make financial sense. Say an education costs the government 50.000 per person. That is repaid in income taxes alone within 3-5 years. edit: well this comment meandered a bit.
gerikson 5y ago
The prizes are awarded by different institutions. Science prices including economics by Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien. Literature by Svenska Akademien. Peace by a committee in the Norwegian parliament. These reflect the conditions at the time of Nobel's will. Each institute is free to decide their own criteria, in accordance with their reading of the will. https://www.kva.se/sv/startsida https://www.kva.se/sv/startsida https://www.svenskaakademien.se/en https://www.svenskaakademien.se/en
- nix23 5y ago
  >Peace by a committee in the Norwegian parliament. Ahh now we know why Obama got it ;)
- dagw 5y ago
  Science prices including economics by Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien. Medicine is decided by a group at Karolinska Institutet (Sweden's largest hospital and medical school). Peace by a committee in the Norwegian parliament. By a committee appointed by, but independent of, the Norwegian parliament. Also the committee contains no current members of the Norwegian parliament.
  - gerikson 5y ago
    Thanks for clarifying.
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mothsonasloth 5y ago
When I was at University I went to a guest lecturer who was talking about the mathematics of government policies in the UK. They touched on the interesting subject of quotas for the fishing industry, and how they were impacting or not impacting fishermen. * Some fishermen were forced to throw away extra catch back into the sea (which is wasteful), especially if the next week they didn't have a great catch * Some fishermen would team up with other fishermen to split the catches before landing them in harbour * Other fishermen would under declare their catches, along with the harbour fish markets All in all, the conclusion was that quotas are near impossible to enforce, are another layer of bureaucracy and are impossible to gain accurate data observations from. However to the general public, they are an easy sell by goverments, especially on environmental issues like fish and oceans. Which to this day has always instilled a healthy skepticism in quotas. "The beatings will continue until the quotas improve...."
- david38 5y ago
  So the answer is fishermen should be allowed to harvest natural resources without restrictions? Oh right, we tried that, and look where it got us. These are all solvable problems. Cameras on the boats, tighter limits on nets, etc. If a population is known the scam at a high enough level, it should get tighter oversight.
- tzs 5y ago
  For fishing, a plus for quotas is they can make it safer. The way crab fishing used to work in the Bering Sea for example is that each for each crab season the agencies that manage the fisheries would determine a total amount that the fishery could support that year, and then the fleet would go out and catch that. This was called the derby system. As each boat caught crab it would report its catch, and when the total across all boats hit the limit the season ended and everyone had to stop fishing. Safety took a back seed to fishing speed in this environment, because if anything slowed down fishing or made you miss some fishing time it could dramatically lower your catch. They replaced that with a quota system. For each type of crab's season each boat gets a quota and the season runs a fixed time. Under the quota system the boats have plenty of time to catch their quotes without having to compromise safety as much. Under the derby system, the Alaska crab fleet was averaging a little over 7 deaths a year. After the switch to the quote system it was around 1 death every 5 or 6 years. Big parts of this decrease can directly be attributed to the change from derby to quotas. Around 2/3 of the derby deaths were due to boats piled high with crab traps capsizing. They went out, dropped everything they had, waiting 12-24 hours, and pulled them. Empty those into the crab tanks and go lay the traps again. Under quota, the boats aren't in such a hurry. When they lay traps they leave them down for 36-48 hours. They can lay some traps and then go pick up more and lay them before it is time to pull the first group so they don't need to go out with the boat piled to near overload with traps. Being about to keep the traps down longer helps them in other ways, too, not safety related. The traps are designed so smaller crab that aren't big enough to legally take can escape, but that takes them time. When you pull in 12-24 hours you get a lot of small crab that haven't escaped yet, meaning more work for the crew to separate them and throw them back. After 36-48 hours a lot more of the small crabs have left so less work for the crew. Also it is pretty traumatic for a crab to be caught and then thrown back, and many don't survive that. In the derby days this killed enough young crabs that it reduced the available harvest in future seasons. Stopping that reversed a long decline in some crab populations.
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throw63738 5y ago
There is not even solid definition of gender or woman. There is no way to enforce such quotas without being sexist and transphobic!
alecst 5y ago
I like thinking about affirmative action because it shine a a light a bit on one's internal moral calculus. Like do you think institutions should award exclusively on merit, or on some other aspects of their mission? The Nobel Science Committee could argue that their mission is the advancement of science, not necessarily the advancement of society or culture. For them, it's reasonable to take the position that the award should be given out based solely on the merits of the scientist. On the other hand the University of Texas Law School might award admission based on other parts of its mission besides just the academic merits of its applicants. For example, it might preferentially admit minorities to advance its mission of increasing minoirty representation in politics. Or it might want to correct for the testing gap, or compensate for past wrongs. Sandel's book "Justice" opened my eyes a little bit to thinking more about "who deserves what" in a variety of social issues.
- supergirl 5y ago
  counter argument: to advance science we need to get more women into science. basically half the population is not pursuing science; that’s a giant untapped pool. and to get more women into science, one way is to artificially seed the current system and add women who may not otherwise qualify, so that they can inspire the next generations. it’s not perfect but it’s something. that assumes we already fixed biases against women and what we need to solve now is just the fact that women are not as qualified yet
  - shakow 5y ago
    > counter argument: to advance science we need to get more women into science Not really, just money: unfortunately, women don't have some magical sciencey abilities that make them outperform men. The thing with work is that it is sex-agnostic; whether the grunts^W PhD students collecting data, the penpushers^W profs. filling grant applications and the slaves^W postdocs computing stuff have a vagina or a penis, the whole machine will still go forward. You can e.g. compare the the US and the USSR/Russia; having the first woman in space and, generally, much more women in science, didn't make them scientifically dominate the West. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-russia-had-a-better-record-of-training-women-in-stem-than-america-does-today-180948141/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-russia-had-... https://shethoughtit.ilcml.com/essay/comrades-in-science-women-in-stem-fields-in-the-soviet-union/ https://shethoughtit.ilcml.com/essay/comrades-in-science-wom... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321 > basically half the population is not pursuing science That would only be true if the number of tenure tracks/stipends/grants/... were increasing in parallel. The only thing happening now is that the proportion of women is increasing, not necessarily the “science output”.
hvasilev 5y ago
Well at some point the rational people will have to step up and reject the "positive racism" trend. You cannot avoid forever this little "social Marxism" problem that you folks have in the West.
- boppo1 5y ago
  It could go on for generations. It is deeply ingrained in the ruling socio-economic class that it isn't marxism. I know several people who promote marxist ideas and policies, but refuse to recognize them as such because NYT told them it's not marxism.
irjustin 5y ago
This is why affirmative action was removed. And, it's also the exact same reason why affirmative action was put in place. Gender and racial bias will exist regardless of quotas nor lack of quotas. In the end the best way is just like a lot of hiring platforms, remove name, picture and any identifying references. As blind as possible is probably the most fair methodology. Problem is just like interviews, though, eventually you need to speak to the person/team. It's where all these issues show up. Better than nothing in my eyes.
- awofford 5y ago
  I think there has to be some kind of subjective measure in the hiring process. Two people could have similarly excellent credentials and experience, but one may have terrible social/communication skills that are likely not reflected in their resume. I’ve seen several people say that screening for “culture fit” just introduces bias in the process, which is likely true, but I don’t think that negates the reality of some people just not being good fits for certain teams. I agree that a blind-as-possible hiring process is probably the most fair, but I have doubts that it actually leads to the best hiring decisions. Although, quotas are fair to no one, in my opinion.
fmajid 5y ago
What they could do is retroactively fix injustices like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/opinion/pulsars-jocelyn-bell-burnell-astronomy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/opinion/pulsars-jocelyn-b...
- fmajid 5y ago
  Also Rosalind Franklin, although her untimely demise to cancer complicates things.

Yes, Jews should be exempt from this culture war. The fact that they're vastly over represented has everything to do with them being way smarter than goyem and nothing to do with schemes or honesty!

nme01 5y ago

Funny how people who claim to be so rational and to make data-driven decisions apply quotas for genders, skin color, sexual orientation etc. while there’s evidence that those kinds of policies are actually counter-productive.

tomp 5y ago
Can you post some sources / links to such evidence? In my debates, I'd often ask people "do you have any data to support your position" but if I had data that argues against their positions, that'd be even better!
- xiphias2 5y ago
  I knew a hard working student who was applying for PhD who had the incentive to change his gender and sexual orientation (lie) to get extra points to get in. I don’t know what he did at the end, but incentivizing people to lie will definitely worsen the pool of PhD students.
  - tomp 5y ago
    Well, the beautiful thing is, as a science-supporter (not "believer"!), I don't even recognize the concept of "gender" as distinct from "sex" (noone ever managed to explain it in a non-recursive manner, or consistently define it), so I'm officially agender, I don't even need to lie (while remaining a man (sex)).
cute_boi 5y ago
quotas might be a solution to various problems but in this world where there are stupid politics, greed, money over ethics we know it is good on paper and is worst on practical life. A good example is India where quotas has been ingrained in every part of society and at the end many dexterous candidates doesn't get a seat. Quotas were introduced in India to alleviate poverty but now a days its just used by politicians to appease minorities. Quota were supposed to temporary but we know it is never going away. I want society to solve problem not circumscribe at the problem and mark it as solution.
- SiempreViernes 5y ago
  So you think Indian politicians would have alleviated poverty much better without quotas?
eesmith 5y ago
There is also evidence that it's not counter-productive. Eg, Clayton, A. "How Do Electoral Gender Quotas Affect Policy?", Annu. Rev. Political Sci. 2021. 24:235–52 at https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisci-041719-102019 https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-polisc... > The large majority of work on quota adoption suggests that quotas are followed by the greater substantive representation of women’s interests, priorities, and preferences. However, several studies have documented cases in which quotas have resulted in limited policy changes or even more gender-inegalitarian outcomes. ... > On average, quota-elected women appear to influence policy in ways that substantively benefit women constituents, either by distributing resources in ways that reflect women’s priorities or by enacting or enforcing policies that grant women greater rights. Yet, these findings are not universal, and some work uncovers null results or even instances of backlash against women officeholders in ways that exacerbate patriarchal policies and practices. That there is such variation in the observed policy effects of gender quotas suggests the potential for moderating variables. That's specifically on policy making, but I think it's enough to highlight how evidence of backlash - which certainly does exist! - isn't on its own enough to make data-driven decisions.
- nme01 5y ago
  I guess it depends on how you define a goal of quotas. If it’s meant to increase women’s presence in certain areas just for the sake of having more women somewhere, then quotas might work. But if you apply quotas to fight the gender/sexuality/skin color bias then usually those policies are applied in a wrong place which creates yet another bias, just of a different direction. Let’s get a promotion policies for example: if you say that at least 50% of board of directors should be women but 95% of all employees is man, then average woman in the company is 19 times more likely to be promoted than average man which seems extremely unfair. The problem should be well understood first. That is: why do we have so few female employees. Then it might turn out that we are biased in our hiring process. If there’s no evidence for that, then maybe there’s a bias during university recruitment process etc.
  - eesmith 5y ago
    In order to make a data-driven decision, where's the evidence that your hypothesis is correct? FWIW, Norway requires at least 40% gender representation on the boards of public companies, so there's data right there. The best I can tell is "mixed", but definitely not "actually counter-productive". I quoted "mixed" from https://www.ft.com/content/6f6bc5a2-7b70-11e8-af48-190d103e32a4 https://www.ft.com/content/6f6bc5a2-7b70-11e8-af48-190d103e3... . One of the observations quoted there is: > Ms Helleland says three-quarters of recruitment is down to informal networks: “Men recruit men. Men recruit CEOs that look like themselves. I interpret that as an informal quota system for men. There's decades of research on this topic. Either it's "well understood" now, or there's no good way to make a data-driven decision.
tgv 5y ago
Then you'll be able to answer the most basic question: what's the goal of gender quota? And then show how gender quota accomplishes that goal, or at least moves towards it, without harming other goals.

nix23 5y ago

It should be illegal to have quotas for gender and ethnicity. Otherwise we make the opposite of "i don't care what you are, but who you are", every woman in a high position would be looked at as the "quota-thing" etc. It would be terrible for those persons who really achieved that position by themself s (and not by quota).

eesmith 5y ago
The Catholic priesthood has a 100% quota for men. You want to make that illegal, right? There's no need to pinpoint women in high position now. Historically there was a strong bias to choose men instead of equally qualified women. You should look at (eg) every male doctor hired in the 1950s and 1960s as not really achieving that position through their own merit. Your ire extends, I presume, towards legacy preference at colleges. Those students should certainly be seen as a "quota-thing", not achieving that position by themselves. Jo Freeman's classic essay "The Tyranny of Stuctureless" points out that when there is no formal structure, informal structures arise, masking the power of elites. If there are informal quotas - eg, systemic cultural biases [1] - then a solution may be to switch to formal quotas. [1] The stereotype of a scientist is 'white males wearing lab coats, eyeglasses, with facial hair, and an eccentric appearance'. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/edri/2019/6324704/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/edri/2019/6324704/ Someone who fits the stereotype is more likely to be seen as and accepted as a scientist, and not have to deal with comments like "you can't be a scientist - you're too pretty!"
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- nix23 5y ago
  > The Catholic priesthood has a 100% quota for men. You want to make that illegal, right? If i think about an open society, the catholic church is not the first thing that comes to my mind. Also there is no Government who FORCES them to have just men. If you have a Man-Cave(Church) where "no woman's" have access, that's absolutely your right...crazy but your decision. NOT okay is, that the Government forces you to have a quota, and btw it's always one-sided, more Woman's in Management for example, but no Quota for Men's in...lets say gender study's. >>To my sibling: It's not Rome but the Vatican, the Vatican IS the Church, and please stop comparing a free and open society with that crazy construct called "Roman Catholic Church", where raping children's are called a "trade secret" and "a internal affair". >>>>To the other sibling: Now you see the problem when the state try's to implement artificial quotas for something that should not be regulated on the basis of gender or ethnicity. >The Nobel Foundation is a private institution. Your comment sounded like you want it to be illegal for a private foundation to have quotas in prize giving. Yes absolutely, since it's racist and bigoted, how should the quote for whites be for the "Royal Society Africa Prize"?

4gotunameagain 5y ago

I can understand the rationale behind quotas, but I am not convinced that it is effective. What worries me though is that racist and sexist policies like that are prevalent and accepted without anyone knowing if it is the right way to go. I think that equality of outcome not only will not solve the problems that our societies have, but exacerbate them

raxxorrax 5y ago
It plainly isn't possible to implement without discrimination. Some argue that this is good discrimination. It is also noteworthy that only desirable jobs get quotas like this.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
It's one step towards gender equality; if you use quotas to award different population groups equally, it will on the one hand normalize them for everyone else, and may inspire others to try on the other hand. If the top of whatever Nobel prizes are handed out for remains white men, nobody that doesn't fit that category will feel like they have a chance. Anyway, it's one strategy; the other, and IMO more important one, is to give everybody equal access to education and the sciences. This is a governmental issue, who should be paying for everyone's education, transport to said education, and if need be, housing near said education. And of course strict anti-discrimination and anti-elitism laws. Breaking up concepts of 'class' should also be a thing, since right now, working class people will be less inclined to go to university for example. I've been lucky in that regard; grew up 'working class', but thanks to the at the time government policies of giving out stipends for education I got college educated and a career in software development, moving up to middle class. It's a great example of social mobility, and I think everyone should have that opportunity. But after my education, the government pulled up the ladder behind me. First by changing the scholarship rules so that after a certain age you are no longer entitled, making it harder for people to go from college to university for example. Then they changed it so it's 100% a loan, which on the one hand makes people less inclined to start a higher level education, and on the other it starts their career with tens of thousands of debt, making it harder to e.g. buy a house and start a family alongside their career. I mean there's voices going up to undo those changes now, but it's been years under this shitty system and damage has already been done. It's stupid as well, because it's a relatively small cost at great benefit - it doesn't make financial sense. Say an education costs the government 50.000 per person. That is repaid in income taxes alone within 3-5 years. edit: well this comment meandered a bit.

gerikson 5y ago

The prizes are awarded by different institutions. Science prices including economics by Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien. Literature by Svenska Akademien. Peace by a committee in the Norwegian parliament. These reflect the conditions at the time of Nobel's will. Each institute is free to decide their own criteria, in accordance with their reading of the will. https://www.kva.se/sv/startsida https://www.kva.se/sv/startsida https://www.svenskaakademien.se/en https://www.svenskaakademien.se/en

nix23 5y ago
>Peace by a committee in the Norwegian parliament. Ahh now we know why Obama got it ;)
dagw 5y ago
Science prices including economics by Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien. Medicine is decided by a group at Karolinska Institutet (Sweden's largest hospital and medical school). Peace by a committee in the Norwegian parliament. By a committee appointed by, but independent of, the Norwegian parliament. Also the committee contains no current members of the Norwegian parliament.
- gerikson 5y ago
  Thanks for clarifying.

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mothsonasloth 5y ago

When I was at University I went to a guest lecturer who was talking about the mathematics of government policies in the UK. They touched on the interesting subject of quotas for the fishing industry, and how they were impacting or not impacting fishermen. * Some fishermen were forced to throw away extra catch back into the sea (which is wasteful), especially if the next week they didn't have a great catch * Some fishermen would team up with other fishermen to split the catches before landing them in harbour * Other fishermen would under declare their catches, along with the harbour fish markets All in all, the conclusion was that quotas are near impossible to enforce, are another layer of bureaucracy and are impossible to gain accurate data observations from. However to the general public, they are an easy sell by goverments, especially on environmental issues like fish and oceans. Which to this day has always instilled a healthy skepticism in quotas. "The beatings will continue until the quotas improve...."

david38 5y ago
So the answer is fishermen should be allowed to harvest natural resources without restrictions? Oh right, we tried that, and look where it got us. These are all solvable problems. Cameras on the boats, tighter limits on nets, etc. If a population is known the scam at a high enough level, it should get tighter oversight.
tzs 5y ago
For fishing, a plus for quotas is they can make it safer. The way crab fishing used to work in the Bering Sea for example is that each for each crab season the agencies that manage the fisheries would determine a total amount that the fishery could support that year, and then the fleet would go out and catch that. This was called the derby system. As each boat caught crab it would report its catch, and when the total across all boats hit the limit the season ended and everyone had to stop fishing. Safety took a back seed to fishing speed in this environment, because if anything slowed down fishing or made you miss some fishing time it could dramatically lower your catch. They replaced that with a quota system. For each type of crab's season each boat gets a quota and the season runs a fixed time. Under the quota system the boats have plenty of time to catch their quotes without having to compromise safety as much. Under the derby system, the Alaska crab fleet was averaging a little over 7 deaths a year. After the switch to the quote system it was around 1 death every 5 or 6 years. Big parts of this decrease can directly be attributed to the change from derby to quotas. Around 2/3 of the derby deaths were due to boats piled high with crab traps capsizing. They went out, dropped everything they had, waiting 12-24 hours, and pulled them. Empty those into the crab tanks and go lay the traps again. Under quota, the boats aren't in such a hurry. When they lay traps they leave them down for 36-48 hours. They can lay some traps and then go pick up more and lay them before it is time to pull the first group so they don't need to go out with the boat piled to near overload with traps. Being about to keep the traps down longer helps them in other ways, too, not safety related. The traps are designed so smaller crab that aren't big enough to legally take can escape, but that takes them time. When you pull in 12-24 hours you get a lot of small crab that haven't escaped yet, meaning more work for the crew to separate them and throw them back. After 36-48 hours a lot more of the small crabs have left so less work for the crew. Also it is pretty traumatic for a crab to be caught and then thrown back, and many don't survive that. In the derby days this killed enough young crabs that it reduced the available harvest in future seasons. Stopping that reversed a long decline in some crab populations.

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throw63738 5y ago

There is not even solid definition of gender or woman. There is no way to enforce such quotas without being sexist and transphobic!

alecst 5y ago

I like thinking about affirmative action because it shine a a light a bit on one's internal moral calculus. Like do you think institutions should award exclusively on merit, or on some other aspects of their mission? The Nobel Science Committee could argue that their mission is the advancement of science, not necessarily the advancement of society or culture. For them, it's reasonable to take the position that the award should be given out based solely on the merits of the scientist. On the other hand the University of Texas Law School might award admission based on other parts of its mission besides just the academic merits of its applicants. For example, it might preferentially admit minorities to advance its mission of increasing minoirty representation in politics. Or it might want to correct for the testing gap, or compensate for past wrongs. Sandel's book "Justice" opened my eyes a little bit to thinking more about "who deserves what" in a variety of social issues.

supergirl 5y ago
counter argument: to advance science we need to get more women into science. basically half the population is not pursuing science; that’s a giant untapped pool. and to get more women into science, one way is to artificially seed the current system and add women who may not otherwise qualify, so that they can inspire the next generations. it’s not perfect but it’s something. that assumes we already fixed biases against women and what we need to solve now is just the fact that women are not as qualified yet
- shakow 5y ago
  > counter argument: to advance science we need to get more women into science Not really, just money: unfortunately, women don't have some magical sciencey abilities that make them outperform men. The thing with work is that it is sex-agnostic; whether the grunts^W PhD students collecting data, the penpushers^W profs. filling grant applications and the slaves^W postdocs computing stuff have a vagina or a penis, the whole machine will still go forward. You can e.g. compare the the US and the USSR/Russia; having the first woman in space and, generally, much more women in science, didn't make them scientifically dominate the West. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-russia-had-a-better-record-of-training-women-in-stem-than-america-does-today-180948141/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/soviet-russia-had-... https://shethoughtit.ilcml.com/essay/comrades-in-science-women-in-stem-fields-in-the-soviet-union/ https://shethoughtit.ilcml.com/essay/comrades-in-science-wom... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39579321 > basically half the population is not pursuing science That would only be true if the number of tenure tracks/stipends/grants/... were increasing in parallel. The only thing happening now is that the proportion of women is increasing, not necessarily the “science output”.

hvasilev 5y ago

Well at some point the rational people will have to step up and reject the "positive racism" trend. You cannot avoid forever this little "social Marxism" problem that you folks have in the West.

boppo1 5y ago
It could go on for generations. It is deeply ingrained in the ruling socio-economic class that it isn't marxism. I know several people who promote marxist ideas and policies, but refuse to recognize them as such because NYT told them it's not marxism.

irjustin 5y ago

This is why affirmative action was removed. And, it's also the exact same reason why affirmative action was put in place. Gender and racial bias will exist regardless of quotas nor lack of quotas. In the end the best way is just like a lot of hiring platforms, remove name, picture and any identifying references. As blind as possible is probably the most fair methodology. Problem is just like interviews, though, eventually you need to speak to the person/team. It's where all these issues show up. Better than nothing in my eyes.

awofford 5y ago
I think there has to be some kind of subjective measure in the hiring process. Two people could have similarly excellent credentials and experience, but one may have terrible social/communication skills that are likely not reflected in their resume. I’ve seen several people say that screening for “culture fit” just introduces bias in the process, which is likely true, but I don’t think that negates the reality of some people just not being good fits for certain teams. I agree that a blind-as-possible hiring process is probably the most fair, but I have doubts that it actually leads to the best hiring decisions. Although, quotas are fair to no one, in my opinion.

fmajid 5y ago

What they could do is retroactively fix injustices like this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/opinion/pulsars-jocelyn-bell-burnell-astronomy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/opinion/pulsars-jocelyn-b...

fmajid 5y ago
Also Rosalind Franklin, although her untimely demise to cancer complicates things.