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How is this not DEI? This was a deliberate and conscious attempt to create a test that would pass DEI candidates at higher rates, with question that had nothing

by ars 2y ago

How is this not DEI? This was a deliberate and conscious attempt to create a test that would pass DEI candidates at higher rates, with question that had nothing to do with the actual needed skills. And they did it because they were pressured to "increase diversity".

scott_w 2y ago
As I’ve said twice now: it was the actual thing that was done (in this case, lowering standards and throwing qualified people to the wolves) that was lazy and stupid, not the umbrella “DEI” itself. That’s because the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time. It’s things like outreach, financial support, changing societal attitudes. Instead of that, they took the lazy option and just threw out white candidates from the pipeline. I also include “setting hiring targets” as a lazy and stupid way of “achieving DEI,” just for clarity.
- wand3r 2y ago
  This is kind of like the argument that communism is great but no one has been able to implement it correctly yet. "Setting targets" having highly paid DEI consultants, and identity based hiring is what DEI is. Lowercase diversity and inclusion are good ideals, which I think is what you are saying. Uppercase DEI are the exact policies we are talking about here.
  - scott_w 2y ago
    I’ve provided a list of DEI hiring policies that don’t fit into your list here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 I said at the top of my thread that the refusal of people in power to engage with criticisms like this thoughtfully has allowed the far right to toxify these debates and I think the downvotes and responses to my comments are minor, but perfect, examples of my point. Instead of discussing the issues and how they should be fixed, the “debate” breaks down into “DEI bad” on your side and “saying DEI bad is racist/sexist/etc.” on the other side.
    - dbspin 2y ago
      Blind reviews (and even interviews) are great ways of making hiring more fair. They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches. DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background. That's the E and I part. The entire premise is that certain groups require special support (fair - e.g.: blind people, wheel chair users), and have been historically excluded because of bias (sometimes true, often wholly false - much of the time differential hiring is path dependent with fewer qualified applicants from a given group).
      - scott_w 2y ago
        > They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches. This is essentially a No True Scotsman fallacy. If it's DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by definition, not part of DEI. > DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background. The first part of this is incorrect. Good DEI is about creating a level playing field (as you correctly point out for blind people or wheelchair users). Obviously, this isn't possible in all cases: I think everyone agrees we wouldn't want a blind taxi driver. > The entire premise is that certain groups require special support This is correct. Fair criticism of DEI initiatives can be levied at those which don't do this effectively and instead shortcut by using, say, hiring quotas. I've said multiple times that things like this are lazy and stupid because they don't address the lack of opportunity for disadvantaged backgrounds. > and have been historically excluded because of bias (sometimes true, often wholly false This is an inaccurate stating of the situation. Some groups (e.g. black people in the USA) are excluded due to bias. Some have been excluded due to situational factors (young white men in the UK have worse outcomes due to poverty). Good DEI initiatives attempt to counter these, with varying levels of success. Let me take the article as an example. They identified an advantage for people on CTI programmes, which also happened to turn out good ATC operators. This may have advantaged people who could afford to attend the programmes, which could have skewed white male. A good DEI initiative might have been to put the work into outreach in under-represented areas to get more people of colour into CTI programmes. Instead, the FAA banned CTI programmes, threw the students there to the wolves, and seemed to sneak in a test designed to hit hiring quotas. Not only was this discriminatory, it also actively reduced the number of qualified ATC operators. Nowhere in this scenarios did I need to fall back on "DEI bad," because I tried to discuss the specific issues within the article.
  - thomastjeffery 2y ago
    Where do you think communism has been implemented correctly?
    - RIMR 2y ago
      China is an economic giant that strongly competes with the the supremacy of the United States. "Correctly" is a hard test to pass, because everyone is going to have a different opinion of what is "correct", but it's impossible to honestly say that China's government hasn't been effective and successful, policy disagreements notwithstanding.
      - thomastjeffery 2y ago
        Yes, but is China actually communist? That's the point that needs to be contended with, and you seem rather intent on avoiding it instead. Everyone does in fact have a different opinion on what communism is or should be. That means that we should not pretend that China has exhaustively implemented the entire subject! Yes, we can point to China as an example of what can happen when a specific group of people implements their specific idea of what communism means. No more, no less. That is literally the point you brought up.
        int_19h 2y ago
        Not even China says that it is communist. It's officially "socialist with Chinese characteristics". In fact, no country in the world ever claimed to have been communist in a sense of having a communist society. They were all "building communism", rather, with socialism as "intermediate stage".
        tstrimple 2y ago
        And there it is. When China needs to be a scary enemy of the US then it’s a communist hell hole. When trying to explain their successes, it’s because they aren’t really communist.
- subpixel 2y ago
  > That’s because the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time On the demand side (where placement or acceptance or hiring is contingent upon qualifications) the "actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds" cannot be done equitably. Selective institutions are a reflection of the society from which they draw candidates. As society produces more kinds of qualified candidates, the makeup of selective organizations will change. Change 'at the top' is a trailing indicator, it is the result of a process and not the start of one. I don't even know what 'outreach' and 'financial support' mean in this context, but I disagree that societal attitudes must change more than they already are changing. In the US, people expect the most qualified candidates to get the job, and they (increasingly) reject discrimination on the basis of race and background. That is why they cry foul when systems and programs are put in place that discriminate against qualified applicants.
  - scott_w 2y ago
    I put together some more concrete examples here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 None of them are “programs that discriminate against qualified applicants.”
    - janalsncm 2y ago
      This works if your demand is small enough. In the case of the FAA they are hiring thousands of ATCs. The fundamental issue is that due to upstream inequalities (e.g. worse schools) there are downstream inequalities you can’t smooth out. There are literally fewer black people who know how to read or have graduated high school. So the correct solution is to concentrate resources upstream.
      - scott_w 2y ago
        While I don’t disagree, we should remember a few things: Diversity isn’t just about skin colour. Getting more women in expands opportunities for women, who still suffer pay gaps, and this would help close that. Even black people who do have enough education suffer discrimination (conscious or not), so working to improve things is a net good. That’s not to say the FAA did the right thing (it appears not) but it’s important to not just throw our hands up and keep saying it’s someone else’s problem!
- adolph 2y ago
  > As I’ve said twice now: it was the actual thing that was done (in this case, lowering standards and throwing qualified people to the wolves) that was lazy and stupid, not the umbrella “DEI” itself. No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one modifies a prior claim in response to a counterexample by asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition. Rather than admitting error or providing evidence to disprove the counterexample, the original claim is changed by using a non-substantive modifier such as "true", "pure", "genuine", "authentic", "real", or other similar terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
  - scott_w 2y ago
    Copied from another comment: At no point do I say these bad initiatives are not “DEI,” since they clearly fit under the umbrella of DEI. I simply say they’re bad initiatives. You might be confused by me saying “DEI isn’t the core of the problem,” but that’s not the same thing as saying “these bad things are not DEI.” I hope this clarifies things for you.
    - adolph 2y ago
      No, that doesn’t clarify anything. Copy-pasting irrelevant responses is spam, please stop.
      - scott_w 2y ago
        >> asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition > At no point do I say these bad initiatives are not “DEI,” I highlighted the relevant points where I addressed your criticism. I hope this helps but feel free to copy-paste from Wikipedia again.
- typewithrhythm 2y ago
  Spending any tax money on programs designed to only help "DEI" causes is racist. From rich to poor I see as ethical, but there are current programs that are gated on race. This is taking from all to give to a chosen race, all DEI practices should be eliminated from government actions.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    > Spending any tax money on programs designed to only help "DEI" causes is racist. DEI has only one cause, and that is avoiding discrimination on non-germane axes, particulalry by subtle, non-obvious means, such as relying on biased funnels.
    - typewithrhythm 2y ago
      This does not align with any published goal of a dei program, or the actions of people who are saying "I am doing DEI".
      - BeetleB 2y ago
        This is (anti)-wishful thinking. The goal of the DEI program in my company was along the lines of: "Last year, 20% of all PhDs in areas we hire for were women. Yet only 7% of our actual PhD hires were women. Why?" Whether the actual implementation solved this problem is a different matter. The goal, however, was to reduce bias.
        bbreier 2y ago
        This aligns with my experience with a couple of DEI (or similar) programs at large tech as well. Coupled with really basic training that amounted to "Unconscious bias exists and it can happen to you, make sure you judge candidates by their performance and nothing else", which always seemed pretty reasonable to me.
    - greenchair 2y ago
      wrong, it doesn't avoid discrimnation, it enforces it. companies are doing stuff like 'must include candidates from <minority race> for open reqs at grade XX or above'
- janalsncm 2y ago
  > the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time Yes, it’s lazy and stupid for the FAA to believe they can fix inequality by biasing hiring practices. The fundamental problem is that the US has severe wealth inequality, which for historical reasons is correlated with race, and for structural reasons (property taxes fund schools, meaning poor kids get worse education) is made even worse. All of the “wholistic evaluation” doublespeak and weird qualification exams in the world can’t fix that.
- javajosh 2y ago
  Complex philosophy has a way of devolving almost inevitably into a kind of "four legs good two legs bad" sort of way a la Animal Farm. In the same way dei seems to inevitably devolve into white people bad non-white people good. It doesn't really matter what it was originally. Philosophies that become popular will always devolve into some easy to understand but wrong version of itself. I personally believe this is the single biggest argument in favor of color blindness since it's relatively unambiguous.
- hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
  From my perspective, the issue is the activists/most motivated to work in jobs focused on and implement DEI appear to judge the outcome and speed of that outcome as the only important metrics of success in any and all fields. The methods of getting there can't be questioned without being cast a racist or right wing or anti-DEI in these circles so its self-reinforcing, and if you aren't in these circles you aren't listened to either.

by ars 2y ago

scott_w 2y ago

As I’ve said twice now: it was the actual thing that was done (in this case, lowering standards and throwing qualified people to the wolves) that was lazy and stupid, not the umbrella “DEI” itself. That’s because the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time. It’s things like outreach, financial support, changing societal attitudes. Instead of that, they took the lazy option and just threw out white candidates from the pipeline. I also include “setting hiring targets” as a lazy and stupid way of “achieving DEI,” just for clarity.

wand3r 2y ago
This is kind of like the argument that communism is great but no one has been able to implement it correctly yet. "Setting targets" having highly paid DEI consultants, and identity based hiring is what DEI is. Lowercase diversity and inclusion are good ideals, which I think is what you are saying. Uppercase DEI are the exact policies we are talking about here.
- scott_w 2y ago
  I’ve provided a list of DEI hiring policies that don’t fit into your list here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 I said at the top of my thread that the refusal of people in power to engage with criticisms like this thoughtfully has allowed the far right to toxify these debates and I think the downvotes and responses to my comments are minor, but perfect, examples of my point. Instead of discussing the issues and how they should be fixed, the “debate” breaks down into “DEI bad” on your side and “saying DEI bad is racist/sexist/etc.” on the other side.
  - dbspin 2y ago
    Blind reviews (and even interviews) are great ways of making hiring more fair. They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches. DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background. That's the E and I part. The entire premise is that certain groups require special support (fair - e.g.: blind people, wheel chair users), and have been historically excluded because of bias (sometimes true, often wholly false - much of the time differential hiring is path dependent with fewer qualified applicants from a given group).
    - scott_w 2y ago
      > They are explicitly the inverse of DEI approaches. This is essentially a No True Scotsman fallacy. If it's DEI, it's bad so any good approach is, by definition, not part of DEI. > DEI is predicated on outcome diversity, rather than treating applicants equally irrespective of background. The first part of this is incorrect. Good DEI is about creating a level playing field (as you correctly point out for blind people or wheelchair users). Obviously, this isn't possible in all cases: I think everyone agrees we wouldn't want a blind taxi driver. > The entire premise is that certain groups require special support This is correct. Fair criticism of DEI initiatives can be levied at those which don't do this effectively and instead shortcut by using, say, hiring quotas. I've said multiple times that things like this are lazy and stupid because they don't address the lack of opportunity for disadvantaged backgrounds. > and have been historically excluded because of bias (sometimes true, often wholly false This is an inaccurate stating of the situation. Some groups (e.g. black people in the USA) are excluded due to bias. Some have been excluded due to situational factors (young white men in the UK have worse outcomes due to poverty). Good DEI initiatives attempt to counter these, with varying levels of success. Let me take the article as an example. They identified an advantage for people on CTI programmes, which also happened to turn out good ATC operators. This may have advantaged people who could afford to attend the programmes, which could have skewed white male. A good DEI initiative might have been to put the work into outreach in under-represented areas to get more people of colour into CTI programmes. Instead, the FAA banned CTI programmes, threw the students there to the wolves, and seemed to sneak in a test designed to hit hiring quotas. Not only was this discriminatory, it also actively reduced the number of qualified ATC operators. Nowhere in this scenarios did I need to fall back on "DEI bad," because I tried to discuss the specific issues within the article.
- thomastjeffery 2y ago
  Where do you think communism has been implemented correctly?
  - RIMR 2y ago
    China is an economic giant that strongly competes with the the supremacy of the United States. "Correctly" is a hard test to pass, because everyone is going to have a different opinion of what is "correct", but it's impossible to honestly say that China's government hasn't been effective and successful, policy disagreements notwithstanding.
    - thomastjeffery 2y ago
      Yes, but is China actually communist? That's the point that needs to be contended with, and you seem rather intent on avoiding it instead. Everyone does in fact have a different opinion on what communism is or should be. That means that we should not pretend that China has exhaustively implemented the entire subject! Yes, we can point to China as an example of what can happen when a specific group of people implements their specific idea of what communism means. No more, no less. That is literally the point you brought up.
      - int_19h 2y ago
        Not even China says that it is communist. It's officially "socialist with Chinese characteristics". In fact, no country in the world ever claimed to have been communist in a sense of having a communist society. They were all "building communism", rather, with socialism as "intermediate stage".
      - tstrimple 2y ago
        And there it is. When China needs to be a scary enemy of the US then it’s a communist hell hole. When trying to explain their successes, it’s because they aren’t really communist.
subpixel 2y ago
> That’s because the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time On the demand side (where placement or acceptance or hiring is contingent upon qualifications) the "actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds" cannot be done equitably. Selective institutions are a reflection of the society from which they draw candidates. As society produces more kinds of qualified candidates, the makeup of selective organizations will change. Change 'at the top' is a trailing indicator, it is the result of a process and not the start of one. I don't even know what 'outreach' and 'financial support' mean in this context, but I disagree that societal attitudes must change more than they already are changing. In the US, people expect the most qualified candidates to get the job, and they (increasingly) reject discrimination on the basis of race and background. That is why they cry foul when systems and programs are put in place that discriminate against qualified applicants.
- scott_w 2y ago
  I put together some more concrete examples here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42945302 None of them are “programs that discriminate against qualified applicants.”
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    This works if your demand is small enough. In the case of the FAA they are hiring thousands of ATCs. The fundamental issue is that due to upstream inequalities (e.g. worse schools) there are downstream inequalities you can’t smooth out. There are literally fewer black people who know how to read or have graduated high school. So the correct solution is to concentrate resources upstream.
    - scott_w 2y ago
      While I don’t disagree, we should remember a few things: Diversity isn’t just about skin colour. Getting more women in expands opportunities for women, who still suffer pay gaps, and this would help close that. Even black people who do have enough education suffer discrimination (conscious or not), so working to improve things is a net good. That’s not to say the FAA did the right thing (it appears not) but it’s important to not just throw our hands up and keep saying it’s someone else’s problem!
adolph 2y ago
> As I’ve said twice now: it was the actual thing that was done (in this case, lowering standards and throwing qualified people to the wolves) that was lazy and stupid, not the umbrella “DEI” itself. No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one modifies a prior claim in response to a counterexample by asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition. Rather than admitting error or providing evidence to disprove the counterexample, the original claim is changed by using a non-substantive modifier such as "true", "pure", "genuine", "authentic", "real", or other similar terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
- scott_w 2y ago
  Copied from another comment: At no point do I say these bad initiatives are not “DEI,” since they clearly fit under the umbrella of DEI. I simply say they’re bad initiatives. You might be confused by me saying “DEI isn’t the core of the problem,” but that’s not the same thing as saying “these bad things are not DEI.” I hope this clarifies things for you.
  - adolph 2y ago
    No, that doesn’t clarify anything. Copy-pasting irrelevant responses is spam, please stop.
    - scott_w 2y ago
      >> asserting the counterexample is excluded by definition > At no point do I say these bad initiatives are not “DEI,” I highlighted the relevant points where I addressed your criticism. I hope this helps but feel free to copy-paste from Wikipedia again.
typewithrhythm 2y ago
Spending any tax money on programs designed to only help "DEI" causes is racist. From rich to poor I see as ethical, but there are current programs that are gated on race. This is taking from all to give to a chosen race, all DEI practices should be eliminated from government actions.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Spending any tax money on programs designed to only help "DEI" causes is racist. DEI has only one cause, and that is avoiding discrimination on non-germane axes, particulalry by subtle, non-obvious means, such as relying on biased funnels.
  - typewithrhythm 2y ago
    This does not align with any published goal of a dei program, or the actions of people who are saying "I am doing DEI".
    - BeetleB 2y ago
      This is (anti)-wishful thinking. The goal of the DEI program in my company was along the lines of: "Last year, 20% of all PhDs in areas we hire for were women. Yet only 7% of our actual PhD hires were women. Why?" Whether the actual implementation solved this problem is a different matter. The goal, however, was to reduce bias.
      - bbreier 2y ago
        This aligns with my experience with a couple of DEI (or similar) programs at large tech as well. Coupled with really basic training that amounted to "Unconscious bias exists and it can happen to you, make sure you judge candidates by their performance and nothing else", which always seemed pretty reasonable to me.
  - greenchair 2y ago
    wrong, it doesn't avoid discrimnation, it enforces it. companies are doing stuff like 'must include candidates from <minority race> for open reqs at grade XX or above'
janalsncm 2y ago
> the actual work to get more candidates from diverse backgrounds is difficult and takes time Yes, it’s lazy and stupid for the FAA to believe they can fix inequality by biasing hiring practices. The fundamental problem is that the US has severe wealth inequality, which for historical reasons is correlated with race, and for structural reasons (property taxes fund schools, meaning poor kids get worse education) is made even worse. All of the “wholistic evaluation” doublespeak and weird qualification exams in the world can’t fix that.
javajosh 2y ago
Complex philosophy has a way of devolving almost inevitably into a kind of "four legs good two legs bad" sort of way a la Animal Farm. In the same way dei seems to inevitably devolve into white people bad non-white people good. It doesn't really matter what it was originally. Philosophies that become popular will always devolve into some easy to understand but wrong version of itself. I personally believe this is the single biggest argument in favor of color blindness since it's relatively unambiguous.
hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
From my perspective, the issue is the activists/most motivated to work in jobs focused on and implement DEI appear to judge the outcome and speed of that outcome as the only important metrics of success in any and all fields. The methods of getting there can't be questioned without being cast a racist or right wing or anti-DEI in these circles so its self-reinforcing, and if you aren't in these circles you aren't listened to either.