3 ms·

How do you measure that other than equality of outcomes?

PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
You measure how many people with different backgrounds (measured by a variety of metrics) gain entry to the pipelines that are recognized as the most common ways to gain power, wealth and prestige in a society. You don't require that they all actually gain power, wealth and prestige (since that measures something else, which could be equally important or not, depending on your perspective). If the only way to become a SCOTUS justice is to get into one of 2 or 3 law schools, and only people with a narrowly defined profile ever get into such schools, you pretty clearly do not have equality of opportunity. You can establish this even though in reality almost nobody ever becomes a SCOTUS justice.
- ConspiracyFact 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - KPGv2 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - ConspiracyFact 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        Group level differences are of little to no value when evaluating a specific candidate. It is widely understood and accepted that males and females differ in their physiology in ways that have dramatic impacts on their capabilities. However, the two groups form overlapping bell curves, and if you're seeking someone for a task you'd be a lot better off focusing on the attributes of the individual, which may be at either end of their group bell curve or anywhere in between. Put differently, my wife, when she was a serious triathlete, would never have been able to beat the best males at any distance. But she could beat most of the males in a half ironman. So if you were interviewing her and some male to do something like a half ironman, you'd better make sure you ask a lot more than "what sex are they?". You'd better find out if the male is in the top X%, because if not, you should be hiring her instead. All of that is true despite the group differences being real and significant. Hiring is never about groups ... unless you're a racist/sexist/*ist ...
        ConspiracyFact 2y ago
        I mean, all of this is obvious. Group-level differences will still lead to the composition of individuals in a given profession differing from the composition of the general population, even if no hiring managers discriminate.
        PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        That's not necessarily true, for many kinds of complex sociological, economic and demographic reasons. The nature of the working population is different than the general population. The skills required from the working population vary across time and space, and may very well consist of a set in which different groups vary only slightly. Etc. etc. Frankly this just reads like a cover story for "I don't want to have to care about this".
        ConspiracyFact 2y ago
        Well yeah, it’s an extremely complex system. If we’re just going to leave it at that, then you have no basis for insisting that working populations are proportional to the general population. But you seem to want to have it both ways.
        account42 2y ago
        > Group level differences are of little to no value when evaluating a specific candidate. Somehow that doesn't go for trying to determine how (dis)advantaged someone is though?
- skellington 2y ago
  Yes, you do everything except measure merit. Equal outcomes for everybody. This is how you get 100lb women in the fire department who can't even control a fire hose at full pressure.
  - defrost 2y ago
    > This is how you get 100lb women in the fire department who can't even control a fire hose at full pressure. \1 Is this a real problem in actual fire deployments or simply a made up bit of Fox News DEI outrage? \2 Here in the Western Australian rural bush fire service 100lb women and people in wheelchairs are valuable members that operate GIS terminals, coordinate aircraft, work as administrators and bookkeepers, etc.
    - skellington 2y ago
      It is a thing that happens and it also includes small women (and sometimes men) who aren't able to carry the weight they should be able to. It is verifiable fact that the LAFD has lowered the strength requirements considerable in order to allow for smaller people. And with the current fires, there is a plenty of footage of small people not being able to do the heavy physical stuff. And certainly women (and small men) can do many other useful things, but they people that operate GIS terminals would not be "firefighters" in the categorical sense even if they are valuable parts of the fire fighting team.
  - Animats 2y ago
    This is the actual test to get into firefighter training in California.[1] This is just to get into training. Graduating is tougher. Eight test events in 10 minutes 20 seconds. All events must be passed. No breaks. Candidates wear 50 pounds of weight through the whole test. Plus an additional 25 pounds for the stair climb. The events are all firefighting-related. Here's a woman firefighter passing this test.[2] With two minutes to spare. LA City Fire is about 3% female.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh3EoE1yJnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh3EoE1yJnQ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0sUjZ8Abuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0sUjZ8Abuc [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiUAWBuIWDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiUAWBuIWDE
- raffraffraff 2y ago
  Let's say you have a company in Warsaw full of lovely people who want what's best for the company. They have an opening for an infrastructure engineer and need somebody with particular skills, but are willing to interview candidates who don't have those skills but show aptitude , interest and a willingness to learn. They throw the doors open wide and interview everybody who applies. They only get white males applying for the job. If they're measuring the diversity and inclusion of the pipeline, they'll still end up failing. Warsaw (one of the most diverse Polish cities) doesn't have a significant black population. They might get a handful of Chinese or Vietnamese applicants. The bulk of the "foreign" population are Ukrainian (by a wide margin) followed by European. The trouble with any metric used to prove DEI credentials is that the org starts changing behaviour to boost that metric. Perhaps the metric should be aligned with availability. No idea how that would work in practice though.
  - tjpnz 2y ago
    You don't have to practice American-style DEI. Removing blockers for women and people from working class backgrounds is IME far more productive.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
    Well the first thing to do would to acknowledge that the responsibility for representation in a given workforce roughly matching that of the broader population does not fall solely on the shoulders of "a company in Warsaw". The second thing to do would be to ask why only white makes are applying, and consider what (if anything) might be done to alter that. That might involve some changes at the company, but more likely would require changes in the broader society. The third thing to do would be to note that essentially no serious advocate of DEI goes beyond the idea that an ideal scenario is on average having work place representation roughly match the distribution in some broader social unit. If you have 0% black people in that broader social unit, nobody but people trying to ridicule DEI would suggest that you need to work towards more black people. The criteria for what characteristics are considered by DEI efforts in a given context will vary. Gender, religion, "race", language, age ... these are others are all valid things that you might want to try to even up in workplaces to match the broader social context.
Manuel_D 2y ago
Send applications that are identical save for identifying characteristics (e.g. names, ethnic extracurriculars) and observe of there are disparities in call back rates. Or anonymize applications and observe if the rates change. Equality of outcome is absolutely not a measure that ensures nondiscrimination. An extreme example, but imagine if we instituted a policy mandating equal outcomes in murder convictions with respect to gender. Would that make the justice system fairer?

You measure how many people with different backgrounds (measured by a variety of metrics) gain entry to the pipelines that are recognized as the most common ways to gain power, wealth and prestige in a society. You don't require that they all actually gain power, wealth and prestige (since that measures something else, which could be equally important or not, depending on your perspective). If the only way to become a SCOTUS justice is to get into one of 2 or 3 law schools, and only people with a narrowly defined profile ever get into such schools, you pretty clearly do not have equality of opportunity. You can establish this even though in reality almost nobody ever becomes a SCOTUS justice.

ConspiracyFact 2y ago
[flagged]
- KPGv2 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ConspiracyFact 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
      Group level differences are of little to no value when evaluating a specific candidate. It is widely understood and accepted that males and females differ in their physiology in ways that have dramatic impacts on their capabilities. However, the two groups form overlapping bell curves, and if you're seeking someone for a task you'd be a lot better off focusing on the attributes of the individual, which may be at either end of their group bell curve or anywhere in between. Put differently, my wife, when she was a serious triathlete, would never have been able to beat the best males at any distance. But she could beat most of the males in a half ironman. So if you were interviewing her and some male to do something like a half ironman, you'd better make sure you ask a lot more than "what sex are they?". You'd better find out if the male is in the top X%, because if not, you should be hiring her instead. All of that is true despite the group differences being real and significant. Hiring is never about groups ... unless you're a racist/sexist/*ist ...
      - ConspiracyFact 2y ago
        I mean, all of this is obvious. Group-level differences will still lead to the composition of individuals in a given profession differing from the composition of the general population, even if no hiring managers discriminate.
        PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
        That's not necessarily true, for many kinds of complex sociological, economic and demographic reasons. The nature of the working population is different than the general population. The skills required from the working population vary across time and space, and may very well consist of a set in which different groups vary only slightly. Etc. etc. Frankly this just reads like a cover story for "I don't want to have to care about this".
        ConspiracyFact 2y ago
        Well yeah, it’s an extremely complex system. If we’re just going to leave it at that, then you have no basis for insisting that working populations are proportional to the general population. But you seem to want to have it both ways.
      - account42 2y ago
        > Group level differences are of little to no value when evaluating a specific candidate. Somehow that doesn't go for trying to determine how (dis)advantaged someone is though?
skellington 2y ago
Yes, you do everything except measure merit. Equal outcomes for everybody. This is how you get 100lb women in the fire department who can't even control a fire hose at full pressure.
- defrost 2y ago
  > This is how you get 100lb women in the fire department who can't even control a fire hose at full pressure. \1 Is this a real problem in actual fire deployments or simply a made up bit of Fox News DEI outrage? \2 Here in the Western Australian rural bush fire service 100lb women and people in wheelchairs are valuable members that operate GIS terminals, coordinate aircraft, work as administrators and bookkeepers, etc.
  - skellington 2y ago
    It is a thing that happens and it also includes small women (and sometimes men) who aren't able to carry the weight they should be able to. It is verifiable fact that the LAFD has lowered the strength requirements considerable in order to allow for smaller people. And with the current fires, there is a plenty of footage of small people not being able to do the heavy physical stuff. And certainly women (and small men) can do many other useful things, but they people that operate GIS terminals would not be "firefighters" in the categorical sense even if they are valuable parts of the fire fighting team.
- Animats 2y ago
  This is the actual test to get into firefighter training in California.[1] This is just to get into training. Graduating is tougher. Eight test events in 10 minutes 20 seconds. All events must be passed. No breaks. Candidates wear 50 pounds of weight through the whole test. Plus an additional 25 pounds for the stair climb. The events are all firefighting-related. Here's a woman firefighter passing this test.[2] With two minutes to spare. LA City Fire is about 3% female.[3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh3EoE1yJnQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh3EoE1yJnQ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0sUjZ8Abuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0sUjZ8Abuc [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiUAWBuIWDE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiUAWBuIWDE
raffraffraff 2y ago
Let's say you have a company in Warsaw full of lovely people who want what's best for the company. They have an opening for an infrastructure engineer and need somebody with particular skills, but are willing to interview candidates who don't have those skills but show aptitude , interest and a willingness to learn. They throw the doors open wide and interview everybody who applies. They only get white males applying for the job. If they're measuring the diversity and inclusion of the pipeline, they'll still end up failing. Warsaw (one of the most diverse Polish cities) doesn't have a significant black population. They might get a handful of Chinese or Vietnamese applicants. The bulk of the "foreign" population are Ukrainian (by a wide margin) followed by European. The trouble with any metric used to prove DEI credentials is that the org starts changing behaviour to boost that metric. Perhaps the metric should be aligned with availability. No idea how that would work in practice though.
- tjpnz 2y ago
  You don't have to practice American-style DEI. Removing blockers for women and people from working class backgrounds is IME far more productive.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  Well the first thing to do would to acknowledge that the responsibility for representation in a given workforce roughly matching that of the broader population does not fall solely on the shoulders of "a company in Warsaw". The second thing to do would be to ask why only white makes are applying, and consider what (if anything) might be done to alter that. That might involve some changes at the company, but more likely would require changes in the broader society. The third thing to do would be to note that essentially no serious advocate of DEI goes beyond the idea that an ideal scenario is on average having work place representation roughly match the distribution in some broader social unit. If you have 0% black people in that broader social unit, nobody but people trying to ridicule DEI would suggest that you need to work towards more black people. The criteria for what characteristics are considered by DEI efforts in a given context will vary. Gender, religion, "race", language, age ... these are others are all valid things that you might want to try to even up in workplaces to match the broader social context.

Manuel_D 2y ago

Send applications that are identical save for identifying characteristics (e.g. names, ethnic extracurriculars) and observe of there are disparities in call back rates. Or anonymize applications and observe if the rates change. Equality of outcome is absolutely not a measure that ensures nondiscrimination. An extreme example, but imagine if we instituted a policy mandating equal outcomes in murder convictions with respect to gender. Would that make the justice system fairer?