4 ms·

If people are fine with college records from 20+ years ago influencing the likelihood of getting hired but want companies to ignore criminal convictions, or ban

by blfr 12y ago

If people are fine with college records from 20+ years ago influencing the likelihood of getting hired but want companies to ignore criminal convictions, or ban IQ test, I'd rather go with a machine making the decisions. Current process seems purely political with massive rents extraction ($100k for a degree, loan guarantees), almost naked votes buying (subsidies, "free" plan for whatever). And moral arguments are used mostly for cover (non-dischargeable debts?). Perhaps we can sidestep those problems, or at least escape from them for a while.

pron 12y ago
> Perhaps we can sidestep those problems, or at least escape from them for a while. But we can't. Any decision we make -- even one based purely on data -- is a political one, because we can choose to change the data by changing society. If you say we should make future decisions (which affect lives and future data) based on current correlations only, you're executing a conservative political policy of maintaining the status quo. If you program computers to just take into account existing data (and not, say, desired future outcomes for society), you're programming conservative computers.
- blfr 12y ago
  I'm pretty sure we can sidestep degree requirements and the associated mess with a better candidate screening technique. Why not? Also, the computer programs take into account the desired outcomes and the information they can obtain experimentally (through A/B testing for example), not just existing data.
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >I'm pretty sure we can sidestep degree requirements and the associated mess with a better candidate screening technique. Why not? Because feature-learning problems in the setting of nearly-unlimited sets of possible features are very hard.
theorique 12y ago
Part of knowing what college a person went to is a proxy for knowing their likely SAT scores which is a proxy for an (illegal) IQ test. So it's a moderately effective workaround. Of course, college can be gamed in a lot of different ways (family money, connections, hustle) that do not relate specifically to IQ or to job performance (and others that, of course, do).

by blfr 12y ago

pron 12y ago

> Perhaps we can sidestep those problems, or at least escape from them for a while. But we can't. Any decision we make -- even one based purely on data -- is a political one, because we can choose to change the data by changing society. If you say we should make future decisions (which affect lives and future data) based on current correlations only, you're executing a conservative political policy of maintaining the status quo. If you program computers to just take into account existing data (and not, say, desired future outcomes for society), you're programming conservative computers.

blfr 12y ago
I'm pretty sure we can sidestep degree requirements and the associated mess with a better candidate screening technique. Why not? Also, the computer programs take into account the desired outcomes and the information they can obtain experimentally (through A/B testing for example), not just existing data.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  >I'm pretty sure we can sidestep degree requirements and the associated mess with a better candidate screening technique. Why not? Because feature-learning problems in the setting of nearly-unlimited sets of possible features are very hard.

theorique 12y ago

Part of knowing what college a person went to is a proxy for knowing their likely SAT scores which is a proxy for an (illegal) IQ test. So it's a moderately effective workaround. Of course, college can be gamed in a lot of different ways (family money, connections, hustle) that do not relate specifically to IQ or to job performance (and others that, of course, do).