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"Orwellian" has become one of HN's least useful snarl words that now communicates nothing aside from "I disagree with this point of view and consequently the wa

by skwirl 12y ago

"Orwellian" has become one of HN's least useful snarl words that now communicates nothing aside from "I disagree with this point of view and consequently the way it is framed." If you were black, you might see it as "Orwellian" when someone claims an admissions policy is non-discriminatory when it results in a class that is 6% black and 29% Asian among U.S. students (this is CMU), while blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population and Asians make up 5.3%. You are trying to cloak your subjective opinion in the veneer of science and objectivity with nonsense about "verifiable and falsifiable," but it doesn't work. In your example - "Republicans feel that they're treated poorly by the media" - what would be a falsifiable and verifiable statement? "Republicans ARE treated poorly by the media?" How is that or any statement like it falsifiable or verifiable? Likewise, in what way are questions of racial fairness verifiable or falsifiable? If one policy is "race blind" and results in some minorities being seriously under-represented, is it fair because of its "race blindness" or unfair because of its outcome? If another policy takes race into consideration, is it unfair because it takes race into consideration in admissions or fair because its outcome results in a proportional representation? It's a question of values, not a question of science. Depending on your point of view you are going to see it very differently from someone else.

philwelch 12y ago
"To discriminate" means to draw distinctions and act upon them. Establishing a maximum quota of Jewish or Asian students at a university is, factually, discrimination. It may be morally justifiable discrimination, but it is discrimination. If the freshman class at Harvard University ends up being 30% Asian and 10% Jewish, maybe it's because people in East Asian and Jewish cultures value education more than people in other cultures. In that case, why isn't it fair for an educational institution to cater to individuals who have been raised to value education? If some minorities (and let's not dance around the issue; we mean black people) are underrepresented at these institutions, that is a wake up call. It means that the public school system in our country has, in aggregate, failed black children and that decades of racial injustice have forced black people into self-perpetuating cycles of generational poverty. It doesn't mean that Harvard is being racially discriminatory.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  That's not a useful definition of discrimination, as it would also mean that students with low test scores are being discriminated against. In fact, the only way to not discriminate would be to simply admit everyone.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    Well, if you begin from the premise that "discrimination" is first and foremost something bad, and only has any semantic content as a secondary affair, your comment might make sense. But usually you take words as you find them. Students with low test scores are being discriminated against, and everyone thinks that's fine. That's not racial discrimination, though -- a distinction which is specifically called out in the comment you respond to. The alternative to admitting everyone, if you're determined not to discriminate along any dimension, is to admit by lottery. This will produce results which are biased in various ways, but not because of any distinctions you drew.
    - ende 12y ago
      Hey that's not a bad idea. What if admissions were simply taken out of the hands of universities and conducted as a lottery by some independent third party. Then the purpose of universities is to simply educate those who come through their doors rather than engage in the business of trying to advance their position in college rankings through the admissions process.
      - thaumasiotes 12y ago
        I suspect that what you'd see is massive flight from the public system.
  - philwelch 12y ago
    Students with low test scores are discriminated against. That's what the word means. It has a negative connotation because usually people use it to describe discrimination based upon things that are usually unjust to discriminate based on, like sex and race.
jasode 12y ago
>If you were black, you might see it as "Orwellian" when someone claims an admissions policy is non-discriminatory when it results in a class that is 6% black and 29% Asian among U.S. students (this is CMU), while blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population and Asians make up 5.3%. That is not logical at all. How can it be discrimination when 2 racial groups are admitted in opposite class-to-population ratios? Blacks at 6% < 13% AND Asians at 29% > 5.3%? The AND conjunction is key. It would be clear discrimination if both groups' percentages were less than the representative population. And by the way, if such a hypothetical black person didn't know: the Asians are already an "undesirable" applicant group. It's somewhat of an open secret in admissions that "we don't want anymore Asians."[1] That the maligned group still gets 29% in the uphill battle against that condescension is astounding. Also, I'm not sure where the logic of blacks as 13% of population should or would translate to ~13% of Harvard student body. Let's look at each layer of qualifications for an elite school: Of the students that achieve SAT scores of ~2200+, are 13% of them black? Ok, let's pretend Harvard removes SAT scores from consideration and only looks at GPA. Out of all the valedictorians at high schools, are 13% of them black? Ok, let's eliminate SAT and GPA. Just evaluate students on course workload. Of the students that took AP (Advanced Placement) classes such as AP Calculus, AP English, etc, are 13% of those enrolled black? How is it Harvard's problem of discrimination if their student body doesn't happen to have ~13% blacks? The only way to do that would be to relax the tough academic standards until it's meaningless. No SAT, GPA, or course transcripts. I can't see how a black person with any dignity would feel pride about being "accepted" into Harvard with less qualifications than his peers of the last 100 years. The 6% blacks at an elite school may be low but hopefully, the vast majority of those 6% actually belong there by genuine academic qualifications. [1]http://cornellsun.com/blog/2011/11/14/no-asians-need-apply/ http://cornellsun.com/blog/2011/11/14/no-asians-need-apply/
- ritchiea 12y ago
  Posted this elsewhere in the thread but I'll say something similar again: I love that here on HN, where from working in the industry I can sensibly assume the posters are mostly white and Asian, no one questions whether the metrics are of any quality. Is SAT really a good measure of your talents as a human being? Are high school grades? Two things that vary based on your education before the moment of the test and the grades. The grades themselves being subjective evaluations from thousands of people with different standards. If the quotas were swapped and whites and Asians were getting the "bonus", how quickly would the arguments shift to the idea that the metrics aren't any good in the first place? You probably took the SAT, do you honestly think its' a great talent indicator or a mediocre one? How many courses are out there that promise to improve your score and how much money do they cost? Ask an SAT tutor and they'll tell you it's easy to take someone from a decent score to a good one. Is that a great metric to decide people's futures. Who has access to SAT prep courses? Wealthy people (and people who know the system well and budget to game it). Grades? You want to talk about grades? If the culture is overall discriminatory, how can we trust subjective evaluations from that culture? Not to mention if you approach the admissions officers at Ivies, particularly at Harvard, Princeton & Yale, they say that they easily could fill 3 freshman classes or more with the applicants they receive. That even most of the rejected applicants could succeed academically at their schools. So yes, I think it's okay to select for diversity. If the system is gameable why should we take its metrics seriously? And if we can't take the metrics seriously we shouldn't be upset about ignoring the metrics and making subjective choices.
patio11 12y ago
Likewise, in what way are questions of racial fairness verifiable or falsifiable? Straightforward: "Do American universities routinely intentionally discriminate against Asian applicants as a consequence of formal policies designed to ensure that happens?" Binary question with a single, verifiable answer. The objective, verifiably true answer to that question happens to be "Yes." You can be in favor of it, if you like, but disagreeing that it is actually policy beggars the imagination.
- ritchiea 12y ago
  Straightforward: Do you think the SAT and high school GPA are excellent metrics (note that I'm not asking are they decent metrics that measure something, I'm asking do you believe they are excellent metrics)? It seems to me that the SAT is a gameable system and that some groups (people who are wealthy, people inclined to spend money on education) are more likely to spend money on the types of things that help them game the system (SAT courses that guarantee certain score improvements because they teach the student how to game the system). If one group has less money they are less able to game the system. Or if you are from a less affluent family that doesn't even realize there are New England, SV, NYC & LA parents paying for multi-thousand dollar SAT prep courses that your child is competing with. And high school grades are subjective evaluations, often from mediocre teachers, that are likely to themselves be subject to bias because the subjective evaluators have many of the same biases as the culture at large.
  - raincom 12y ago
    I agree that SAT/GPA are gameable. Can you find an alternative that is not gameable, but which is better than the blacbox of HYP admission machine? If you can't, what is there to argue, except to favor the blackbox policies of HYP.
- leereeves 12y ago
  Flipping that argument: Do American universities routinely discriminate against African Americans and Latinos as a consequence of reliance on standardized tests and curricula on which they are known to receive lower scores? Adjustment for the bias in these measures might correct for discrimination, not create it.

by skwirl 12y ago

philwelch 12y ago

"To discriminate" means to draw distinctions and act upon them. Establishing a maximum quota of Jewish or Asian students at a university is, factually, discrimination. It may be morally justifiable discrimination, but it is discrimination. If the freshman class at Harvard University ends up being 30% Asian and 10% Jewish, maybe it's because people in East Asian and Jewish cultures value education more than people in other cultures. In that case, why isn't it fair for an educational institution to cater to individuals who have been raised to value education? If some minorities (and let's not dance around the issue; we mean black people) are underrepresented at these institutions, that is a wake up call. It means that the public school system in our country has, in aggregate, failed black children and that decades of racial injustice have forced black people into self-perpetuating cycles of generational poverty. It doesn't mean that Harvard is being racially discriminatory.

vinceguidry 12y ago
That's not a useful definition of discrimination, as it would also mean that students with low test scores are being discriminated against. In fact, the only way to not discriminate would be to simply admit everyone.
- thaumasiotes 12y ago
  Well, if you begin from the premise that "discrimination" is first and foremost something bad, and only has any semantic content as a secondary affair, your comment might make sense. But usually you take words as you find them. Students with low test scores are being discriminated against, and everyone thinks that's fine. That's not racial discrimination, though -- a distinction which is specifically called out in the comment you respond to. The alternative to admitting everyone, if you're determined not to discriminate along any dimension, is to admit by lottery. This will produce results which are biased in various ways, but not because of any distinctions you drew.
  - ende 12y ago
    Hey that's not a bad idea. What if admissions were simply taken out of the hands of universities and conducted as a lottery by some independent third party. Then the purpose of universities is to simply educate those who come through their doors rather than engage in the business of trying to advance their position in college rankings through the admissions process.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      I suspect that what you'd see is massive flight from the public system.
- philwelch 12y ago
  Students with low test scores are discriminated against. That's what the word means. It has a negative connotation because usually people use it to describe discrimination based upon things that are usually unjust to discriminate based on, like sex and race.

jasode 12y ago

>If you were black, you might see it as "Orwellian" when someone claims an admissions policy is non-discriminatory when it results in a class that is 6% black and 29% Asian among U.S. students (this is CMU), while blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population and Asians make up 5.3%. That is not logical at all. How can it be discrimination when 2 racial groups are admitted in opposite class-to-population ratios? Blacks at 6% < 13% AND Asians at 29% > 5.3%? The AND conjunction is key. It would be clear discrimination if both groups' percentages were less than the representative population. And by the way, if such a hypothetical black person didn't know: the Asians are already an "undesirable" applicant group. It's somewhat of an open secret in admissions that "we don't want anymore Asians."[1] That the maligned group still gets 29% in the uphill battle against that condescension is astounding. Also, I'm not sure where the logic of blacks as 13% of population should or would translate to ~13% of Harvard student body. Let's look at each layer of qualifications for an elite school: Of the students that achieve SAT scores of ~2200+, are 13% of them black? Ok, let's pretend Harvard removes SAT scores from consideration and only looks at GPA. Out of all the valedictorians at high schools, are 13% of them black? Ok, let's eliminate SAT and GPA. Just evaluate students on course workload. Of the students that took AP (Advanced Placement) classes such as AP Calculus, AP English, etc, are 13% of those enrolled black? How is it Harvard's problem of discrimination if their student body doesn't happen to have ~13% blacks? The only way to do that would be to relax the tough academic standards until it's meaningless. No SAT, GPA, or course transcripts. I can't see how a black person with any dignity would feel pride about being "accepted" into Harvard with less qualifications than his peers of the last 100 years. The 6% blacks at an elite school may be low but hopefully, the vast majority of those 6% actually belong there by genuine academic qualifications. [1]http://cornellsun.com/blog/2011/11/14/no-asians-need-apply/ http://cornellsun.com/blog/2011/11/14/no-asians-need-apply/

ritchiea 12y ago
Posted this elsewhere in the thread but I'll say something similar again: I love that here on HN, where from working in the industry I can sensibly assume the posters are mostly white and Asian, no one questions whether the metrics are of any quality. Is SAT really a good measure of your talents as a human being? Are high school grades? Two things that vary based on your education before the moment of the test and the grades. The grades themselves being subjective evaluations from thousands of people with different standards. If the quotas were swapped and whites and Asians were getting the "bonus", how quickly would the arguments shift to the idea that the metrics aren't any good in the first place? You probably took the SAT, do you honestly think its' a great talent indicator or a mediocre one? How many courses are out there that promise to improve your score and how much money do they cost? Ask an SAT tutor and they'll tell you it's easy to take someone from a decent score to a good one. Is that a great metric to decide people's futures. Who has access to SAT prep courses? Wealthy people (and people who know the system well and budget to game it). Grades? You want to talk about grades? If the culture is overall discriminatory, how can we trust subjective evaluations from that culture? Not to mention if you approach the admissions officers at Ivies, particularly at Harvard, Princeton & Yale, they say that they easily could fill 3 freshman classes or more with the applicants they receive. That even most of the rejected applicants could succeed academically at their schools. So yes, I think it's okay to select for diversity. If the system is gameable why should we take its metrics seriously? And if we can't take the metrics seriously we shouldn't be upset about ignoring the metrics and making subjective choices.

patio11 12y ago

Likewise, in what way are questions of racial fairness verifiable or falsifiable? Straightforward: "Do American universities routinely intentionally discriminate against Asian applicants as a consequence of formal policies designed to ensure that happens?" Binary question with a single, verifiable answer. The objective, verifiably true answer to that question happens to be "Yes." You can be in favor of it, if you like, but disagreeing that it is actually policy beggars the imagination.

ritchiea 12y ago
Straightforward: Do you think the SAT and high school GPA are excellent metrics (note that I'm not asking are they decent metrics that measure something, I'm asking do you believe they are excellent metrics)? It seems to me that the SAT is a gameable system and that some groups (people who are wealthy, people inclined to spend money on education) are more likely to spend money on the types of things that help them game the system (SAT courses that guarantee certain score improvements because they teach the student how to game the system). If one group has less money they are less able to game the system. Or if you are from a less affluent family that doesn't even realize there are New England, SV, NYC & LA parents paying for multi-thousand dollar SAT prep courses that your child is competing with. And high school grades are subjective evaluations, often from mediocre teachers, that are likely to themselves be subject to bias because the subjective evaluators have many of the same biases as the culture at large.
- raincom 12y ago
  I agree that SAT/GPA are gameable. Can you find an alternative that is not gameable, but which is better than the blacbox of HYP admission machine? If you can't, what is there to argue, except to favor the blackbox policies of HYP.
leereeves 12y ago
Flipping that argument: Do American universities routinely discriminate against African Americans and Latinos as a consequence of reliance on standardized tests and curricula on which they are known to receive lower scores? Adjustment for the bias in these measures might correct for discrimination, not create it.