6 ms·

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 exclusiv

by 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”.
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    To be fair, Russian science was very productive. It didn't outcompete the west in the end, but kept up with far fewer resources. It is amazing what they achieved with what little they had compared to relatively prosperous western nations. I agree though that quotas will not increase output at all. There are limiting factors that reach far beyond gender and of course they did not have quotas, nor did they treat women better than in the west. Expectations were different but people not having to work was obviously seen as a luxury possible through productivity.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    There is a bigger differnece between men and women than there are between us and most other animals. The sexes' motivations and perspectives are almost alien to one another. Results will differ, even if the same subject is studied because all science is self-exploration.
    - shakow 5y ago
      > There is a bigger differnece between men and women than there are between us and most other animals Says someone who never opened a biology textbook. > The sexes' motivations and perspectives are almost alien to one another. Because you really think that the M/F dichotomy is a peculiarity of the human species and has not been deeply studied in many other species?
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
  > ...add women who may not otherwise qualify... This will and already is undermining credibility of women who got into science through their own merit.
- Bobylonian 5y ago
  It seems a very US centric view, because in Eastern Europe there are countries with more women than men in science and education and where even women receive bigger salary(tbh, not a good configuration for countries, that need many improvements and stability at this point is stagnating), yet for some reason even there also are parrots present who locally are repeating same dumb ideas, without looking on statistics. The problem mostly is that there is no interest from women to join male dominated natural sciences - most of those that excell are loners. But, anyway - as a male with IT background I assure, that many guys would not mind, if there were even more women studying. I had probably rare chance of working in a job, where all my colegues were women, who were writing software... it would be very insulting to them and me to know that they had to study less to receive the same salary and job!!! Ideologies seems to be a necessity for young and dumb people - so they can look back on their stupid mistakes when they will grow wiser(unless they don't), but since the fail of communism in USSR there seems to be not enough effort and brainwork involved to spread these ideologies with style and feeling of selfimportance and it all just relies on making opponents dumb with never ending BS, to compensate for something else.
fallingknife 5y ago
As a society, we should have a mission to lower the representation of lawyers in politics.
madeofpalk 5y ago
> Like do you think institutions should award exclusively on merit, or on some other aspects of their mission? Lets approach this a bit differently - Is there something inherit within a segment of our population that makes them more meritable and "better scientists"? The answer is either: - Yes, a subset of our population is superior and awards like Nobel Prize should be dominated by them - No, everyone is generally of equal skill and merit (or potential), and the Nobel Prize should roughly, on average, be awarded to people that look like the population. Then, considering your answer above, how does that match to reality? What accounts for this mismatch? Why are fields (and awards like this) underrepresenting our populations? If you want "the best science" and to be continuously improving the field, don't you want to make sure you're not shutting the door on whole demographics? To say "focus exclusively on merit" seems to suggest that you think that merit favors one demographic.
- Knufen 5y ago
  > Then, considering your answer above, how does that match to reality? What accounts for this mismatch? Why are fields (and awards like this) underrepresenting our populations? Isn't that obvious? Nobel prices (especially science) often have a lag time of 50 years (semi random number) and is also often given to middle aged people. So since science has been dominated by white guys we will see almost all Nobel prizes given to white guys. I expect this to change in 100 years as more women enter STEM and then with some added lag time.
- MagnumOpus 5y ago
  There very obviously is a good reason why European and Anglo-Saxon populations dominate cutting edge science, even without going into "inherit" factors: The GDP/capita and incomes of these countries/ethnicities were and are far higher than those of Africans or Asians (especially 40 years ago when current laureates where educated), so more people can go into science careers that need 18+ years of schooling and have uncertain payoffs compared to industry careers. These countries also have far better funded universities and science institutes to make science without immediate payoff possible.
- evandijk70 5y ago
  How would you the question if some segment in our population is inherently 'more meritable'? There are many obvious confounding factors (culture, education, opportunity, racism) that are very hard to correct for. The Nobel prize is only given to people with exceptional performance, so the sample size will be quite small. Regardless of the answer to the question posed by you, it seems to me that we should stay true to the wishes of Alfred Nobel, who stated that a series of prizes should be conferred to those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind". Since he is the one that provided the funding for this award, I think this award should be awarded according to that measure.
ganzuul 5y ago
Merit is subjective which is why diversity is critical to an organization's survival. Gender and ethnicity are not a guarantee of diversity. The Nobel Prize organization operates on a very dated model of merit.
- bluecalm 5y ago
  We already went through this kind of thinking and narrative in Soviet Union and countries under its influence. Additional admission points for where you were raised and what social/economic class you came from. We know how it ends: resentment, friends of friends being promoted, people trying to get to chosen classes (in America you already see attempts to get on affirmative action train by being 1/32 black etc.). It's all very destructive and it breeds nothing but hostility. We also went through this kind of language: "merit is subjective" may sound clever to you but it sounds awfully Orwellian to anyone raised in a communist country. As do quotas and the whole newspeak around diversity. If you ever wonder why people coming from Russia, Poland, Hungary and all other Soviet block countries are very against modern American left ideas the explanation is that we have already lived through it and we know where it ends. If I could point to one instance of "please learn from history instead of repeating it" it would be this one. It's good to see a rare display of sanity from Nobel Prize committee but it's also scary to see the mildest stance already getting flak from diversity radicals.
  - ganzuul 5y ago
    Russian communism was a farce. You are stretching your experience way too far.
    - nobodyandproud 5y ago
      Why do you say it was a farce?
      - ganzuul 5y ago
        In addition to what GP said, first and foremost they fought expansionist wars. They had readied 28 000 tanks before WW2. - Think about what that means. Their social progress pales in comparison to the evil they were planning.
captainmuon 5y ago
To me, the purpose of quotas or affirmative action is to undo a previous distortion. In my experience, if you look at young kids, no matter the gender, ethnicity or class, they are all equally interested in science. But as they grow older, they start to move apart. Many boys who want to study but don't know what choose physics or computer science as a "default" (like I did). Girls are more likely to default to humanities or a teaching career. The really passionate kids are less affected by this, and choose what they want, but I know a bunch of people who chose the supposed "safe default" and were miserable or dropped out. It is not just bad for them, but also for society, if we are training some additional mediocre men, and missing some talented women in a field. Same applies to other categories. When I look at my kid's classmates, you can tell unfortunately who's parents have the time and money and energy (and habit from their own upbringing) to support them properly in school, to read to them, and so on. The difference is minimal in Kindergarten, but kids drift apart quickly. What I'm trying to say is there is a funnel in life. People who are not as priviliged as maybe I am, often "play in hard mode". To me, quotas etc. are not exactly about achiving justice or fairness or equality (you could do that by disadvantaging the priviliged, so that everybody is equally bad off. I think that is what many people fear when they think of affirmative action!). It is about righting a systematic wrong. And it is not like AA means we will be giving stupid people scholarships. Right now we are often accidentially prefering less qualified people just because they are white or men. Trying to steer against that can only be a net win for society.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Neither study is a safe default as that would mean there would be an abundance of people that actually finished studying physics or computer science. The internet might heavily distorts reality here. The standard academic career of today is still economics and chosen by men and women in rather similar amounts. I heard some guys saying they chose economics for the girls, but I think this is an edge case... It is true that few men go into teaching and few women into computer science. But I don't think you should force people or even worse, attest discrimination. Surprisingly mostly men get implicated, so much about sexism, so I also would dispute this comment: > Right now we are often accidentially prefering less qualified people just because they are white or men I don't believe being white nets you anything, on the contrary. Educated parents are indeed a huge advantage but that certainly isn't for the "system" to fix, even if it could do that somehow.
tomp 5y ago
There's two problems with this. (1) It puts you at odds with everyone who doesn't share your moral calculus. E.g. Hitler did a great job advancing his mission, despite ultimately losing the war (because too many people found his mission morally revulsive). Things like "justice" and "fairness" are the minimum standard upon which we can (sometimes, to some degree) agree to as a society, so any mission that breaks those standards (as racism/affirmative action does) will rightfully experience a large push-back. (2) Does the action actually advance the mission? Sometimes it might backfire. E.g. I know people (that live in America) that don't like going to black doctors, not because they're racist, but simply because they know that they were subject to affirmative action, so might be less skilled than non-blacks (using doctors is a good example, as it usually invokes a strong rational response "would you rather take your child to the best doctor, or to the second-best doctor?")
- alecst 5y ago
  I gave two historical examples on lieu of writing a much longer comment. These are real examples of institutions that made diverging decisions. I’m more interested in the reasons behind the decisions, whereas you seem to be more interested in qualifying the outcomes of those decisions. I don’t see how your comment is a rebuttal.

by alecst 5y ago

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”.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  To be fair, Russian science was very productive. It didn't outcompete the west in the end, but kept up with far fewer resources. It is amazing what they achieved with what little they had compared to relatively prosperous western nations. I agree though that quotas will not increase output at all. There are limiting factors that reach far beyond gender and of course they did not have quotas, nor did they treat women better than in the west. Expectations were different but people not having to work was obviously seen as a luxury possible through productivity.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  There is a bigger differnece between men and women than there are between us and most other animals. The sexes' motivations and perspectives are almost alien to one another. Results will differ, even if the same subject is studied because all science is self-exploration.
  - shakow 5y ago
    > There is a bigger differnece between men and women than there are between us and most other animals Says someone who never opened a biology textbook. > The sexes' motivations and perspectives are almost alien to one another. Because you really think that the M/F dichotomy is a peculiarity of the human species and has not been deeply studied in many other species?
nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
> ...add women who may not otherwise qualify... This will and already is undermining credibility of women who got into science through their own merit.
Bobylonian 5y ago
It seems a very US centric view, because in Eastern Europe there are countries with more women than men in science and education and where even women receive bigger salary(tbh, not a good configuration for countries, that need many improvements and stability at this point is stagnating), yet for some reason even there also are parrots present who locally are repeating same dumb ideas, without looking on statistics. The problem mostly is that there is no interest from women to join male dominated natural sciences - most of those that excell are loners. But, anyway - as a male with IT background I assure, that many guys would not mind, if there were even more women studying. I had probably rare chance of working in a job, where all my colegues were women, who were writing software... it would be very insulting to them and me to know that they had to study less to receive the same salary and job!!! Ideologies seems to be a necessity for young and dumb people - so they can look back on their stupid mistakes when they will grow wiser(unless they don't), but since the fail of communism in USSR there seems to be not enough effort and brainwork involved to spread these ideologies with style and feeling of selfimportance and it all just relies on making opponents dumb with never ending BS, to compensate for something else.

fallingknife 5y ago

As a society, we should have a mission to lower the representation of lawyers in politics.

madeofpalk 5y ago

> Like do you think institutions should award exclusively on merit, or on some other aspects of their mission? Lets approach this a bit differently - Is there something inherit within a segment of our population that makes them more meritable and "better scientists"? The answer is either: - Yes, a subset of our population is superior and awards like Nobel Prize should be dominated by them - No, everyone is generally of equal skill and merit (or potential), and the Nobel Prize should roughly, on average, be awarded to people that look like the population. Then, considering your answer above, how does that match to reality? What accounts for this mismatch? Why are fields (and awards like this) underrepresenting our populations? If you want "the best science" and to be continuously improving the field, don't you want to make sure you're not shutting the door on whole demographics? To say "focus exclusively on merit" seems to suggest that you think that merit favors one demographic.

Knufen 5y ago
> Then, considering your answer above, how does that match to reality? What accounts for this mismatch? Why are fields (and awards like this) underrepresenting our populations? Isn't that obvious? Nobel prices (especially science) often have a lag time of 50 years (semi random number) and is also often given to middle aged people. So since science has been dominated by white guys we will see almost all Nobel prizes given to white guys. I expect this to change in 100 years as more women enter STEM and then with some added lag time.
MagnumOpus 5y ago
There very obviously is a good reason why European and Anglo-Saxon populations dominate cutting edge science, even without going into "inherit" factors: The GDP/capita and incomes of these countries/ethnicities were and are far higher than those of Africans or Asians (especially 40 years ago when current laureates where educated), so more people can go into science careers that need 18+ years of schooling and have uncertain payoffs compared to industry careers. These countries also have far better funded universities and science institutes to make science without immediate payoff possible.
evandijk70 5y ago
How would you the question if some segment in our population is inherently 'more meritable'? There are many obvious confounding factors (culture, education, opportunity, racism) that are very hard to correct for. The Nobel prize is only given to people with exceptional performance, so the sample size will be quite small. Regardless of the answer to the question posed by you, it seems to me that we should stay true to the wishes of Alfred Nobel, who stated that a series of prizes should be conferred to those who confer the "greatest benefit on mankind". Since he is the one that provided the funding for this award, I think this award should be awarded according to that measure.

ganzuul 5y ago

Merit is subjective which is why diversity is critical to an organization's survival. Gender and ethnicity are not a guarantee of diversity. The Nobel Prize organization operates on a very dated model of merit.

bluecalm 5y ago
We already went through this kind of thinking and narrative in Soviet Union and countries under its influence. Additional admission points for where you were raised and what social/economic class you came from. We know how it ends: resentment, friends of friends being promoted, people trying to get to chosen classes (in America you already see attempts to get on affirmative action train by being 1/32 black etc.). It's all very destructive and it breeds nothing but hostility. We also went through this kind of language: "merit is subjective" may sound clever to you but it sounds awfully Orwellian to anyone raised in a communist country. As do quotas and the whole newspeak around diversity. If you ever wonder why people coming from Russia, Poland, Hungary and all other Soviet block countries are very against modern American left ideas the explanation is that we have already lived through it and we know where it ends. If I could point to one instance of "please learn from history instead of repeating it" it would be this one. It's good to see a rare display of sanity from Nobel Prize committee but it's also scary to see the mildest stance already getting flak from diversity radicals.
- ganzuul 5y ago
  Russian communism was a farce. You are stretching your experience way too far.
  - nobodyandproud 5y ago
    Why do you say it was a farce?
    - ganzuul 5y ago
      In addition to what GP said, first and foremost they fought expansionist wars. They had readied 28 000 tanks before WW2. - Think about what that means. Their social progress pales in comparison to the evil they were planning.

captainmuon 5y ago

To me, the purpose of quotas or affirmative action is to undo a previous distortion. In my experience, if you look at young kids, no matter the gender, ethnicity or class, they are all equally interested in science. But as they grow older, they start to move apart. Many boys who want to study but don't know what choose physics or computer science as a "default" (like I did). Girls are more likely to default to humanities or a teaching career. The really passionate kids are less affected by this, and choose what they want, but I know a bunch of people who chose the supposed "safe default" and were miserable or dropped out. It is not just bad for them, but also for society, if we are training some additional mediocre men, and missing some talented women in a field. Same applies to other categories. When I look at my kid's classmates, you can tell unfortunately who's parents have the time and money and energy (and habit from their own upbringing) to support them properly in school, to read to them, and so on. The difference is minimal in Kindergarten, but kids drift apart quickly. What I'm trying to say is there is a funnel in life. People who are not as priviliged as maybe I am, often "play in hard mode". To me, quotas etc. are not exactly about achiving justice or fairness or equality (you could do that by disadvantaging the priviliged, so that everybody is equally bad off. I think that is what many people fear when they think of affirmative action!). It is about righting a systematic wrong. And it is not like AA means we will be giving stupid people scholarships. Right now we are often accidentially prefering less qualified people just because they are white or men. Trying to steer against that can only be a net win for society.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Neither study is a safe default as that would mean there would be an abundance of people that actually finished studying physics or computer science. The internet might heavily distorts reality here. The standard academic career of today is still economics and chosen by men and women in rather similar amounts. I heard some guys saying they chose economics for the girls, but I think this is an edge case... It is true that few men go into teaching and few women into computer science. But I don't think you should force people or even worse, attest discrimination. Surprisingly mostly men get implicated, so much about sexism, so I also would dispute this comment: > Right now we are often accidentially prefering less qualified people just because they are white or men I don't believe being white nets you anything, on the contrary. Educated parents are indeed a huge advantage but that certainly isn't for the "system" to fix, even if it could do that somehow.

tomp 5y ago

There's two problems with this. (1) It puts you at odds with everyone who doesn't share your moral calculus. E.g. Hitler did a great job advancing his mission, despite ultimately losing the war (because too many people found his mission morally revulsive). Things like "justice" and "fairness" are the minimum standard upon which we can (sometimes, to some degree) agree to as a society, so any mission that breaks those standards (as racism/affirmative action does) will rightfully experience a large push-back. (2) Does the action actually advance the mission? Sometimes it might backfire. E.g. I know people (that live in America) that don't like going to black doctors, not because they're racist, but simply because they know that they were subject to affirmative action, so might be less skilled than non-blacks (using doctors is a good example, as it usually invokes a strong rational response "would you rather take your child to the best doctor, or to the second-best doctor?")

alecst 5y ago
I gave two historical examples on lieu of writing a much longer comment. These are real examples of institutions that made diverging decisions. I’m more interested in the reasons behind the decisions, whereas you seem to be more interested in qualifying the outcomes of those decisions. I don’t see how your comment is a rebuttal.