4 ms·

This presumes the existence of systemic bias in the first place, not to mention the fact that overt racism and sexism is the way to overcome that. In any DEI c

by pc86 2y ago

This presumes the existence of systemic bias in the first place, not to mention the fact that overt racism and sexism is the way to overcome that. In any DEI conversation you end up with people making convoluted examples like the one you gave. Nobody is getting a job based on a 80 vs. 79 on a single exam. It's farcical. What you end up with at the end of the DEI road is making promotion, hiring, and firing decisions based on immutable characteristics of people. Okay if you really, really think that being a descendant of a slave from 300 years ago puts you at a material disadvantage today, argue to have public services available to verified descendants of slaves regardless of racial identity, and regardless of current socio-economic status. But DEI doesn't want to help descendants of slaves. It wants to help black and brown people whether they're actually impacted or not, and it wants to avoid helping white and asian people even if they are at a socio-economic or educational disadvantage. You can't tell me with a straight face that a white person who could verify they have family lineage of slaves from the 1700s would be included as a minority in any DEI program. Look at any conversation where newspeak like "white-passing" is used unironically and this blatant racism is on clear display.

latexr 2y ago
My comment was not an example, it was an analogy. It was purposefully exaggerated to drive a point, and I feel that was quite clear. It’s absurd to call an obviously made up story “farcical”. What you are doing is conflating my point—which was to illustrate that true merit is more than what you see on the surface—with other conversations you’ve seen somewhere and attacking those. You’re arguing against something, but not any point I made.
- pc86 2y ago
  You're completely right that I kind of got off track there and thank you for calling me out on it. But in this comment I think you're conflating merit with potential. If we're comparing those two hypothetical people, the one with the lower score clearly has more potential as they overcame all those obstacles and did almost as well as the one who had a ton of advantages. But if (and I'm not saying this is an objectively good goal) you want to hire strictly off of merit, you hire the 80 because 80 > 79. If you want to hire on potential, it's a pretty clear choice to hire the 79. Not every job needs to be 100% merit-focused, but some should. A pretty good, and IMO relevant, example would be basically any job in the national defense / intelligence circles. We should not care what obstacles you had to overcome to get that 79, if someone else got an 80 they're the ones that should be working at the CIA/NSA/whatever. But there are plenty of jobs where potential is as important or more so than merit. That's part of why there's no such thing as the "two equally qualified candidates" thing that both sides like to use as examples so much.

by pc86 2y ago

latexr 2y ago

My comment was not an example, it was an analogy. It was purposefully exaggerated to drive a point, and I feel that was quite clear. It’s absurd to call an obviously made up story “farcical”. What you are doing is conflating my point—which was to illustrate that true merit is more than what you see on the surface—with other conversations you’ve seen somewhere and attacking those. You’re arguing against something, but not any point I made.

pc86 2y ago
You're completely right that I kind of got off track there and thank you for calling me out on it. But in this comment I think you're conflating merit with potential. If we're comparing those two hypothetical people, the one with the lower score clearly has more potential as they overcame all those obstacles and did almost as well as the one who had a ton of advantages. But if (and I'm not saying this is an objectively good goal) you want to hire strictly off of merit, you hire the 80 because 80 > 79. If you want to hire on potential, it's a pretty clear choice to hire the 79. Not every job needs to be 100% merit-focused, but some should. A pretty good, and IMO relevant, example would be basically any job in the national defense / intelligence circles. We should not care what obstacles you had to overcome to get that 79, if someone else got an 80 they're the ones that should be working at the CIA/NSA/whatever. But there are plenty of jobs where potential is as important or more so than merit. That's part of why there's no such thing as the "two equally qualified candidates" thing that both sides like to use as examples so much.