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> clearly there is no causal relationship between lacrosse and job performance There's almost certainly a correlation due to success in lacrosse having a lot o

by retrac 4y ago

> clearly there is no causal relationship between lacrosse and job performance There's almost certainly a correlation due to success in lacrosse having a lot of crossover with success generally. A young man who plays lacrosse is probably going to be physically healthier than average. It's also a very upper middle class sport, typically played by wealthier types. And children who grew up in wealthier households tend to be ... well, better at everything, really. Hockey is a great indicator of that here in Canada; the equipment is expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if it's causative, either. Sports may improve cognitive performance, and they tend to teach cooperation and leadership. Plenty of studies suggest it helps academics. If I felt free to discriminate and if I knew nothing else about a candidate other than whether they had played a physically-demanding and expensive team sport within the last year, I would hire the ones who had over the ones who had not. It'd skew heavily towards fit 20-40 something guys from middle-class backgrounds with college educations. Surprise! Probably what the algorithm picked up, indirectly. Of course, it also blatantly skews white, male, and economically elite.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
That's great, but you're still making assumptions. And that's the whole problem with diversity and anti-diversity both.
- retrac 4y ago
  It's not an assumption that sports is associated with general success and intelligence. I felt it was well-established enough of a fact, that there's no need to link to studies showing that. It's even the basis for public policy in my country; we do sports-based interventions for troubled youth; such programs are one of the few things that seem to actually work to keep young men going to school and improve academics. Now if you mean I'm making an assumption about a candidate, based on nothing more than one weak indicator, well yes. That was the point of my thought experiment. If you only knew whether they played sports, while not a very good indicator, it's better than flipping a coin. Ultimately, that's what hiring is. You have some indicators like education and previous work experience, and you make an assumption based on those facts, none of which align 100% with how they're going to perform at the job you're hiring them for.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    >Now if you mean I'm making an assumption about a candidate That was even more obvious than the sports and cognition fact. Here's the thing: you're doing the exact thing that caused the problem in the first place. Creating thought experiments and narrating them at length regarding scenarios which are a rarity, given a problem which occurs frequently, in an environment with thousands of other variables. In a world where we do in fact have better indicators which are still not used, despite being well researched. We have plenty of options remaining before we need to be this nitpicky.
    - retrac 4y ago
      It's hard to imagine an indicator that wouldn't be closely correlated with family wealth and social status. Wealth and social status are the primary means to access the things that make a person more likely to be successful! Almost any indicator you pick will end up being a proxy for those, to some degree.
      - wegfawefgawefg 4y ago
        wealth and social status could be considered proxies for iq (g)
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > It's not an assumption that sports is associated with general success and intelligence. No, it isn't. The "dumb jock" trope is widely known for a reason. Healthy body is associated with intelligence, and for good reason.
pfisherman 4y ago
I can’t tell whether or not this is satire. Either way, this is utterly ridiculous. Now only hiring people from OxCam + Ivy + Stanford — that’s the big brain move.
- retrac 4y ago
  Not satire. Why do you consider it ridiculous?
  - pfisherman 4y ago
    Because it has about the same level of class and intellectual rigor as “hire a Jew because they are good with money” or “hire a chinaman because they are good with numbers”. Also not a lot of white guys named Jared playing lacrosse at Oxford or Cambridge (or Peking University).
    - retrac 4y ago
      If I knew nothing other than whether someone was Jewish or not, and if I felt free to discriminate, I would, of course, hire the Jewish person. On average they do better than typical Americans across the board. In reality, I don't feel free to discriminate. So it's a problem if I know that a candidate is Jewish, because I'm clearly biased and working off a stereotype there. So is the AI. Maybe that helps clarify the domain my thought experiment was operating in.
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  The promise of AI is that it will be able to find associations and figure out things that humans normally wouldn't - so the AI is now finding associations and figuring out things that humans previously didn't notice, and we're dismissing it.
  - pfisherman 4y ago
    Are any of these previously unnoticed associations? I think the problem here is that they are not typically informative or predictive of “success” — whatever that means here. I don’t need a model that is essentially a shitty heuristic (or collection of them) because I can get that for free - ex. “we only recruit / hire from the ivys”.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by retrac 4y ago

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

That's great, but you're still making assumptions. And that's the whole problem with diversity and anti-diversity both.

retrac 4y ago
It's not an assumption that sports is associated with general success and intelligence. I felt it was well-established enough of a fact, that there's no need to link to studies showing that. It's even the basis for public policy in my country; we do sports-based interventions for troubled youth; such programs are one of the few things that seem to actually work to keep young men going to school and improve academics. Now if you mean I'm making an assumption about a candidate, based on nothing more than one weak indicator, well yes. That was the point of my thought experiment. If you only knew whether they played sports, while not a very good indicator, it's better than flipping a coin. Ultimately, that's what hiring is. You have some indicators like education and previous work experience, and you make an assumption based on those facts, none of which align 100% with how they're going to perform at the job you're hiring them for.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  >Now if you mean I'm making an assumption about a candidate That was even more obvious than the sports and cognition fact. Here's the thing: you're doing the exact thing that caused the problem in the first place. Creating thought experiments and narrating them at length regarding scenarios which are a rarity, given a problem which occurs frequently, in an environment with thousands of other variables. In a world where we do in fact have better indicators which are still not used, despite being well researched. We have plenty of options remaining before we need to be this nitpicky.
  - retrac 4y ago
    It's hard to imagine an indicator that wouldn't be closely correlated with family wealth and social status. Wealth and social status are the primary means to access the things that make a person more likely to be successful! Almost any indicator you pick will end up being a proxy for those, to some degree.
    - wegfawefgawefg 4y ago
      wealth and social status could be considered proxies for iq (g)
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > It's not an assumption that sports is associated with general success and intelligence. No, it isn't. The "dumb jock" trope is widely known for a reason. Healthy body is associated with intelligence, and for good reason.

pfisherman 4y ago

I can’t tell whether or not this is satire. Either way, this is utterly ridiculous. Now only hiring people from OxCam + Ivy + Stanford — that’s the big brain move.

retrac 4y ago
Not satire. Why do you consider it ridiculous?
- pfisherman 4y ago
  Because it has about the same level of class and intellectual rigor as “hire a Jew because they are good with money” or “hire a chinaman because they are good with numbers”. Also not a lot of white guys named Jared playing lacrosse at Oxford or Cambridge (or Peking University).
  - retrac 4y ago
    If I knew nothing other than whether someone was Jewish or not, and if I felt free to discriminate, I would, of course, hire the Jewish person. On average they do better than typical Americans across the board. In reality, I don't feel free to discriminate. So it's a problem if I know that a candidate is Jewish, because I'm clearly biased and working off a stereotype there. So is the AI. Maybe that helps clarify the domain my thought experiment was operating in.
commandlinefan 4y ago
The promise of AI is that it will be able to find associations and figure out things that humans normally wouldn't - so the AI is now finding associations and figuring out things that humans previously didn't notice, and we're dismissing it.
- pfisherman 4y ago
  Are any of these previously unnoticed associations? I think the problem here is that they are not typically informative or predictive of “success” — whatever that means here. I don’t need a model that is essentially a shitty heuristic (or collection of them) because I can get that for free - ex. “we only recruit / hire from the ivys”.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]