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Is Donald Trump personally carrying out all the acts he's condemned for? Is it really unreasonable to say that pushing for diversity was a notable goal of the

Is Donald Trump personally carrying out all the acts he's condemned for? Is it really unreasonable to say that pushing for diversity was a notable goal of the Obama administration?

explodes 2y ago
Based on the signed executive orders yes.
- anonymars 2y ago
  What about the signed executive order promoting diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce? https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/president-signs-order-promote-diversity-and-inclusion-federal-workforce https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/president-signs-order-promote-... It is okay to admit that leaders you agree with are also imperfect. Of course Obama didn't deliberately want to destroy the ATC pipeline, but clearly it was an unintended consequence. I think it's important to understand where people who disagree politically are coming from. Believe me, when Trump spouted all that schlock after the crash, it was humbling to find the element of truth to it. I don't think it caused that crash: it was a disaster waiting to happen in that airspace. But when I saw in black and white a slide from the FAA discussing how much performance they were willing to sacrifice for diversity, do I really disagree with those who think the answer should be "none"?
  - rainsford 2y ago
    "Promoting diversity" only equates to "sacrificing performance" if you accept the premise that white men are by default the most qualified for everything. Or maybe to be slightly more generous, the premise is that the prior state of affairs where mostly white men were being hired was colorblind and based on merit, so anything else must be sacrificing merit based hiring. I see no reason to buy that framing though and plenty of reason to think it's bunk. Even liberals can fall into the trap though, because policies to promote diversity are explicitly stated while it's been a bit (although not all that long in the grand scheme of things) since the biases that can lead to prioritizing white men are actually written down. That's how the "tradeoff" ends up in things like the FAA slides. It's unclear what factual support that slide had, but clearly the author just took it as a given, as do a lot of other people.
    - anonymars 2y ago
      I don't think it's a wild take to think that poor socioeconomic upbringing could result in worse performance. One doesn't need to think this is a result of melanin content I believe one of the comment threads on the post summed it up best. There's an issue with the water pressure, and we're attempting to fix it by mucking about with the faucet rather than upstream at the source (https://open.substack.com/pub/tracingwoodgrains/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring?comments=true&commentId=91046659 https://open.substack.com/pub/tracingwoodgrains/p/the-full-s...) The author provided various footnotes backing up his assertions > Why not ditch it altogether? Simple: the test worked. It had “strong predictive validity,” ... On average, people who performed better on the test actually did perform better as air traffic controllers, and this was never really in dispute. When they tested alternative measures like biographical data, they found that the test scores predicted 27% of variance in performance, while the “biodata” predicted only 2%. It just didn’t do much.9 See also e.g. https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1754214242956235132 https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1754214242956235132
      - rainsford 2y ago
        > I don't think it's a wild take to think that poor socioeconomic upbringing could result in worse performance. One doesn't need to think this is a result of melanin content I don't think that's a wild take at all and actually agree with you. But I also don't think it's a wild take to think there may be barriers to attracting or hiring good minority candidates independent of whether or not there is also a pipeline problem, and there is no reason you'd have to pick just one or the other. The water pressure analogy only works if you presuppose the water pressure issue is exclusively upstream, and of course in the real world faucets can be the source of waterflow problems as well. I should also add that I'm not defending the particular case discussed by the blogger, although I'm less sold on the idea that it was clearly bad than a lot of other people seem to be. But even a bad example would not strongly support the idea that an EO or other push to promote diversity and equal opportunity must inevitably lead to lower performance.
        anonymars 2y ago
decimalenough 2y ago
Donald Trump is, indeed, personally signing the executive orders instructing the US government to do a lot of questionable things. Obama, by contrast, did not sign an executive order directing the FAA to hire unqualified air traffic controllers. Of course, bureaucrats do stupid shit when they are attempting to please their masters, and this is a prime example. But that does not absolve them of their responsibility in dreaming it up and executing it.
- anonymars 2y ago
  Of course he didn't sign an executive order saying to hire unqualified controllers. But guess what executive order he did sign: promoting diversity and inclusion in the federal workplace. This feels like a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid criticizing Obama. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/president-signs-order-promote-diversity-and-inclusion-federal-workforce https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/president-signs-order-promote-...

Is Donald Trump personally carrying out all the acts he's condemned for? Is it really unreasonable to say that pushing for diversity was a notable goal of the Obama administration?

explodes 2y ago

Based on the signed executive orders yes.

anonymars 2y ago
What about the signed executive order promoting diversity and inclusion in the federal workforce? https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/president-signs-order-promote-diversity-and-inclusion-federal-workforce https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/president-signs-order-promote-... It is okay to admit that leaders you agree with are also imperfect. Of course Obama didn't deliberately want to destroy the ATC pipeline, but clearly it was an unintended consequence. I think it's important to understand where people who disagree politically are coming from. Believe me, when Trump spouted all that schlock after the crash, it was humbling to find the element of truth to it. I don't think it caused that crash: it was a disaster waiting to happen in that airspace. But when I saw in black and white a slide from the FAA discussing how much performance they were willing to sacrifice for diversity, do I really disagree with those who think the answer should be "none"?
- rainsford 2y ago
  "Promoting diversity" only equates to "sacrificing performance" if you accept the premise that white men are by default the most qualified for everything. Or maybe to be slightly more generous, the premise is that the prior state of affairs where mostly white men were being hired was colorblind and based on merit, so anything else must be sacrificing merit based hiring. I see no reason to buy that framing though and plenty of reason to think it's bunk. Even liberals can fall into the trap though, because policies to promote diversity are explicitly stated while it's been a bit (although not all that long in the grand scheme of things) since the biases that can lead to prioritizing white men are actually written down. That's how the "tradeoff" ends up in things like the FAA slides. It's unclear what factual support that slide had, but clearly the author just took it as a given, as do a lot of other people.
  - anonymars 2y ago
    I don't think it's a wild take to think that poor socioeconomic upbringing could result in worse performance. One doesn't need to think this is a result of melanin content I believe one of the comment threads on the post summed it up best. There's an issue with the water pressure, and we're attempting to fix it by mucking about with the faucet rather than upstream at the source (https://open.substack.com/pub/tracingwoodgrains/p/the-full-story-of-the-faas-hiring?comments=true&commentId=91046659 https://open.substack.com/pub/tracingwoodgrains/p/the-full-s...) The author provided various footnotes backing up his assertions > Why not ditch it altogether? Simple: the test worked. It had “strong predictive validity,” ... On average, people who performed better on the test actually did perform better as air traffic controllers, and this was never really in dispute. When they tested alternative measures like biographical data, they found that the test scores predicted 27% of variance in performance, while the “biodata” predicted only 2%. It just didn’t do much.9 See also e.g. https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1754214242956235132 https://x.com/tracewoodgrains/status/1754214242956235132
    - rainsford 2y ago
      > I don't think it's a wild take to think that poor socioeconomic upbringing could result in worse performance. One doesn't need to think this is a result of melanin content I don't think that's a wild take at all and actually agree with you. But I also don't think it's a wild take to think there may be barriers to attracting or hiring good minority candidates independent of whether or not there is also a pipeline problem, and there is no reason you'd have to pick just one or the other. The water pressure analogy only works if you presuppose the water pressure issue is exclusively upstream, and of course in the real world faucets can be the source of waterflow problems as well. I should also add that I'm not defending the particular case discussed by the blogger, although I'm less sold on the idea that it was clearly bad than a lot of other people seem to be. But even a bad example would not strongly support the idea that an EO or other push to promote diversity and equal opportunity must inevitably lead to lower performance.
      - anonymars 2y ago

decimalenough 2y ago

Donald Trump is, indeed, personally signing the executive orders instructing the US government to do a lot of questionable things. Obama, by contrast, did not sign an executive order directing the FAA to hire unqualified air traffic controllers. Of course, bureaucrats do stupid shit when they are attempting to please their masters, and this is a prime example. But that does not absolve them of their responsibility in dreaming it up and executing it.

anonymars 2y ago
Of course he didn't sign an executive order saying to hire unqualified controllers. But guess what executive order he did sign: promoting diversity and inclusion in the federal workplace. This feels like a lot of mental gymnastics to avoid criticizing Obama. https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/president-signs-order-promote-diversity-and-inclusion-federal-workforce https://www.eeoc.gov/newsroom/president-signs-order-promote-...