9 ms·

I haven't formed a strong opinion on affirmative action yet. > You cannot justify holding Asian-Americans to a higher level because "they can handle it." The

by Mavvie 5y ago

I haven't formed a strong opinion on affirmative action yet. > You cannot justify holding Asian-Americans to a higher level because "they can handle it." The person you're replying to didn't say anything like that. > It disgusts me that you can say "this is good for America" when Asian-American children have to go through a nightmare to have a chance at opportunities comparable to their peers, simply because of the color of their skin. I agree, but I think I understand what they meant. They're suggesting that the benefit to society of having more diversity in the higher educated (and then higher income, etc) brackets outweighs the harm to society from unfair admissions. It's certainly a way start rebalancing the race distribution of the "upper classes" of society.

notch656a 5y ago
How do we know what 'race' someone is, do we just ask them or do we test for DNA. The more you drill down into the race question the more absurd it seems, and you quickly realize people either mean culture or some DNA pseudo-science.
- SamReidHughes 5y ago
  Both those ways of determining race get the same answer 99.9999% of the time.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Taking at face they're 99.9999% the same, are you opting towards the self selection option, the DNA option, or some combination of the two? Can you walk me through which DNA algorithm you're referring to that matches self-reported 'race' 99.9999% of the time?
    - SamReidHughes 5y ago
      I'm not a bioinformaticist. Try the 23andme algorithm, or whatever they used in the research that compared self-reported race to genetically measured ancestry. (The objective definition of your race is defined by where your ancestors come from, which, due to how babies get made, can be measured from your DNA. You can read more about this "DNA pseudo-science" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis ) College admissions departments already check to see if applicants are lying about race, e.g. by looking up their social media. Instead of scanning DNA, they could ask for some documentary evidence if they think an applicant is lying.
      - Mordisquitos 5y ago
        I am a biologist and a bioinformatician, though not currently active in those fields. There is no such thing as an "objective definition of race", and claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science.
        SamReidHughes 5y ago
        Then why can you tell what race people are by looking at them? I claimed you can predict 99.9999% of people's self-identified race from their DNA. Is that wrong? How high does that number have to be before you'd call it non-pseudo-science?
        carrionpigeon 5y ago
        > claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science. That's taking it way too far. Genotyping populations identifies variation, and in cases where populations that have been reproductively isolated for tens of thousands of years (e.g. western Europeans and west/central Africans) are now in proximity, there will be substantial variation that is idiosyncratic to each population. In the US, reproductively isolated populations were suddenly placed in the same territory, and taboos on inter-racial mating persisted until very recently (50% toleration in the mid-1990s). One can accurately tell whether an American is phenotypically white versus black (or mixed) by DNA. That isn't to say that our ability to predict accurately black-vs-white will remain. The more race-mixing, the less ability to accurately categorize. We'll instead move to a situation similar to the one in which 'white' people find themselves today, where they are mixes of x percent of a variety of populations and not categorically 'Dutch,' 'Irish,' 'Finnish,' etc. Race is a sociological concept, yes, but it reflects reality in that people are visibly different. These differences are genetic in origin. It just so happens that in some cases, (e.g. two reproductively isolated and visibly distinct populations suddenly in contact with one another), these social categorizations will map to biological ones. In other cases where there is convergent evolution in terms of physical appearance, they won't.
      - notch656a 5y ago
        Can you refer me to the 23andme algorithm that determines race with 99.9999% parity with self-reported race? Where do they report this outcome? I'm unable to determine the algorithm or find this claim by 23andme just from the reference to '23andme algorithm.' I've been totally unable to find such claims made by 23andme, suggesting they predict 'race' with any certainty to self-reported 'race.' I know what meiosis is, that isn't in dispute here. >College admissions departments already check to see if applicants are lying about race, e.g. by looking up their social media. Isn't that just checking for consistency? Say I change my mind about what race I am due to it being typically poorly defined. Many children have changing views about race over time, so it seems quite absurd to expect a literal child applying for college applications to fully understand and stay consistent about a topic that is constantly evolving and often nebulous. What you know at age 13 when opening your first facebook may not match your understanding of yourself at 17 when applying for college. And it's not clear to me what objective definition we are using of 'races' to make sure every applicant is following the same standard for determining when the applicant is lying and when they are not.
- carrionpigeon 5y ago
  I remember reading about Brazil resorting to head measurements to see if one were one's claimed race and were not cheating to get an advantage. Just a cursory search seems to show the practice is ongoing. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/for-affirmative-action-brazil-sets-up-controversial-boards-to-determine-race https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/... https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-with-blackness-affirmative-action/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-wit...
- Tenoke 5y ago
  Just because a measure is imperfect it doesn't mean it's pseudoscience. Sure, race is not fully concrete but denying that there are any differences between people of sufficiently different populations is just demonstratably wrong.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    The pseudo-science comes when claims are made as fact without evidence. >of sufficiently different populations is just demonstratably wrong. The difficult lies in translating 'race' to 'populations.' A population of 'people born in India' is extremely well defined and lends itself to stochastic and scientific analysis. Many ideas of race are not so well defined, and can't be put into clearly laid out population of persons. The slight of hand here is your use of the word 'population' when we were speaking of 'race.'
- Mavvie 5y ago
  Yeah, I agree with this. At a high level it sounds obvious ("there's black people, white people, asian people, aboriginal people, ..."), but it gets impossibly complicated (and invasive) when you look closer.
lenkite 5y ago
Out of curiosity, when will your affirmative action actually stop ? At what magical point will diversity be considered as "complete" ?
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  According to tandymodel100, the user with all the dead comments, when the upper echelons of society match the racial demographics. I'm not sure why their comments are dead. I don't necessarily agree, but it's a valid point of view.

by Mavvie 5y ago

notch656a 5y ago

How do we know what 'race' someone is, do we just ask them or do we test for DNA. The more you drill down into the race question the more absurd it seems, and you quickly realize people either mean culture or some DNA pseudo-science.

SamReidHughes 5y ago
Both those ways of determining race get the same answer 99.9999% of the time.
- notch656a 5y ago
  Taking at face they're 99.9999% the same, are you opting towards the self selection option, the DNA option, or some combination of the two? Can you walk me through which DNA algorithm you're referring to that matches self-reported 'race' 99.9999% of the time?
  - SamReidHughes 5y ago
    I'm not a bioinformaticist. Try the 23andme algorithm, or whatever they used in the research that compared self-reported race to genetically measured ancestry. (The objective definition of your race is defined by where your ancestors come from, which, due to how babies get made, can be measured from your DNA. You can read more about this "DNA pseudo-science" here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiosis ) College admissions departments already check to see if applicants are lying about race, e.g. by looking up their social media. Instead of scanning DNA, they could ask for some documentary evidence if they think an applicant is lying.
    - Mordisquitos 5y ago
      I am a biologist and a bioinformatician, though not currently active in those fields. There is no such thing as an "objective definition of race", and claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science.
      - SamReidHughes 5y ago
        Then why can you tell what race people are by looking at them? I claimed you can predict 99.9999% of people's self-identified race from their DNA. Is that wrong? How high does that number have to be before you'd call it non-pseudo-science?
      - carrionpigeon 5y ago
        > claiming that so-called race can be determined from one's DNA is indeed pseudo-science. That's taking it way too far. Genotyping populations identifies variation, and in cases where populations that have been reproductively isolated for tens of thousands of years (e.g. western Europeans and west/central Africans) are now in proximity, there will be substantial variation that is idiosyncratic to each population. In the US, reproductively isolated populations were suddenly placed in the same territory, and taboos on inter-racial mating persisted until very recently (50% toleration in the mid-1990s). One can accurately tell whether an American is phenotypically white versus black (or mixed) by DNA. That isn't to say that our ability to predict accurately black-vs-white will remain. The more race-mixing, the less ability to accurately categorize. We'll instead move to a situation similar to the one in which 'white' people find themselves today, where they are mixes of x percent of a variety of populations and not categorically 'Dutch,' 'Irish,' 'Finnish,' etc. Race is a sociological concept, yes, but it reflects reality in that people are visibly different. These differences are genetic in origin. It just so happens that in some cases, (e.g. two reproductively isolated and visibly distinct populations suddenly in contact with one another), these social categorizations will map to biological ones. In other cases where there is convergent evolution in terms of physical appearance, they won't.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      Can you refer me to the 23andme algorithm that determines race with 99.9999% parity with self-reported race? Where do they report this outcome? I'm unable to determine the algorithm or find this claim by 23andme just from the reference to '23andme algorithm.' I've been totally unable to find such claims made by 23andme, suggesting they predict 'race' with any certainty to self-reported 'race.' I know what meiosis is, that isn't in dispute here. >College admissions departments already check to see if applicants are lying about race, e.g. by looking up their social media. Isn't that just checking for consistency? Say I change my mind about what race I am due to it being typically poorly defined. Many children have changing views about race over time, so it seems quite absurd to expect a literal child applying for college applications to fully understand and stay consistent about a topic that is constantly evolving and often nebulous. What you know at age 13 when opening your first facebook may not match your understanding of yourself at 17 when applying for college. And it's not clear to me what objective definition we are using of 'races' to make sure every applicant is following the same standard for determining when the applicant is lying and when they are not.
carrionpigeon 5y ago
I remember reading about Brazil resorting to head measurements to see if one were one's claimed race and were not cheating to get an advantage. Just a cursory search seems to show the practice is ongoing. https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/for-affirmative-action-brazil-sets-up-controversial-boards-to-determine-race https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2016/09/29/495665329/... https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-with-blackness-affirmative-action/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/04/05/brazils-new-problem-wit...
Tenoke 5y ago
Just because a measure is imperfect it doesn't mean it's pseudoscience. Sure, race is not fully concrete but denying that there are any differences between people of sufficiently different populations is just demonstratably wrong.
- notch656a 5y ago
  The pseudo-science comes when claims are made as fact without evidence. >of sufficiently different populations is just demonstratably wrong. The difficult lies in translating 'race' to 'populations.' A population of 'people born in India' is extremely well defined and lends itself to stochastic and scientific analysis. Many ideas of race are not so well defined, and can't be put into clearly laid out population of persons. The slight of hand here is your use of the word 'population' when we were speaking of 'race.'
Mavvie 5y ago
Yeah, I agree with this. At a high level it sounds obvious ("there's black people, white people, asian people, aboriginal people, ..."), but it gets impossibly complicated (and invasive) when you look closer.

lenkite 5y ago

Out of curiosity, when will your affirmative action actually stop ? At what magical point will diversity be considered as "complete" ?

SyzygistSix 5y ago
According to tandymodel100, the user with all the dead comments, when the upper echelons of society match the racial demographics. I'm not sure why their comments are dead. I don't necessarily agree, but it's a valid point of view.