The-WideningGyre
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User ID: 1859
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
People are never exactly the same. Standards are lowered. As the pressure rises on recruiters, the scales are pushed on ever harder. And typically, for the good jobs, you're punishing people who didn't benefit from their 'privilege' (more than their peers) and rewarding people who never suffered.
Competence matters, and it's hurting.
And really, come on -- you've seen the 300 pts on the SAT and the 80% of Berkeley professors being pitched on the diversity statement. Hell, we had the supreme court justice primarily selected on her identity. Apparently the question wasn't if a black woman would be taken, it was which one. It's not just tie-breakers, it's nowhere close, even if that were meaningful.
In a sense, it really is a motte and bailey, to harken back to the sub/site's name -- the motte is "when things are exactly equal, it's a small tie-breaker to help out" and the bailey is 300 points on the SAT and men being on 40% of college graduates, but women are the victims because there are still a few majors where there are more men.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Sadly the ACLU has completely betrayed its principles. It makes me sad; I was so impressed by them as a teen, and now they're up there with the UN Women's Twitter account.
The-WideningGyre
10mo ago
You nail this 100%. I see it play out at my woke tech company. I find it incredibly tiresome and annoying, and while I'm sympathetic to people who've had a shitty experience, and I think everyone should be judged on their own merits, the constant whining without evidence is so tedious, and I have no patience for it.
The-WideningGyre
7mo ago
Agreed. I wouldn't say I'm hopeful yet, but I just visited with some very historically progressive friends in CA, and all were sort of hinting at things having gone too far, which I don't think they ever would have dared to do a year ago.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
The most obvious thing is reversed causality -- only profitable companies can afford the extra cost of DEI efforts and useless people on the board.
My understanding is that when studies actually follow changes to diversity -- such as when Norway mandated a certain percent of women on corporate boards -- you actually see a drop in profit. I'm not sure how robust that is, as one could imagine the overall economic situation changed, but still, AFAIK none of the studies that claim to show diversity helps profit do anything about causality.
But don't take my word for it: even the HBR (very DEI supportive) acknowledges it: https://hbr.org/2020/11/getting-serious-about-diversity-enough-already-with-the-business-case
Let’s start with the claim that putting more women on corporate boards leads to economic gains. That’s a fallacy, probably fueled by studies that went viral a decade ago reporting that the more women directors a company has, the better its financial performance. But those studies show correlations, not causality. In all likelihood, some other factor—such as industry or firm size—is responsible for both increases in the number of women directors and improvement in a firm’s performance.
In any case, the research touting the link was conducted by consulting firms and financial institutions and fails to pass muster when subjected to scholarly scrutiny. Meta-analyses of rigorous, peer-reviewed studies found no significant relationships—causal or otherwise—between board gender diversity and firm performance. That could be because women directors may not differ from their male counterparts in the characteristics presumed to affect board decisions, and even if they do differ, their voices may be marginalized. What is more pertinent, however, is that board decisions are typically too far removed from firms’ bottom-line performance to exert a direct or unconditional effect.
- As for studies citing the positive impact of racial diversity on corporate financial performance, they do not stand up to scrutiny either.* Indeed, we know of no evidence to suggest that replacing, say, two or three white male directors with people from underrepresented groups is likely to enhance the profits of a Fortune 500 company.
The economic argument for diversity is no more valid when it’s applied to changing the makeup of the overall workforce. A 2015 survey of Harvard Business School alumni revealed that 76% of those in senior executive positions believe that “a more diverse workforce improves the organization’s financial performance.” But scholarly researchers have rarely found that increased diversity leads to improved financial outcomes. They have found that it leads to higher-quality work, better decision-making, greater team satisfaction, and more equality—under certain circumstances. Although those outcomes could conceivably make some aspects of the business more profitable, they would need to be extraordinarily consequential to affect a firm’s bottom line.
The-WideningGyre
5mo ago
I don't think that's true, as there seems to be a cap on human longevity -- so it seems it's more like you have a larger population dying potentially decades earlier, and then 'the rest' living essentially to near the cap, which seems to have a LEGG effect.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
FWIW, I think it's a really interesting topic, and it touches on a number of things.
I don't think the narcissism is the key point -- I think you've got those on both sides.
I think the willingness, and push, to break tradition and authority is certainly a part of it. There's an assumption that convention is bad, and to be subverted, which is pretty inherently anti-conservative.
However, I think the biggest aspect is the ... well, to be a bit politer, let's say a good creative is providing services for the upper layers of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- entertainment, mental stimulation, belonging. And most can only do so on largesse of people who fulfill the lower layers (safety, food, shelter, wifi). So they don't have to worry about how things will work, they just sort of assume it will be there, and they just need to persuade people to give it to them. Someone else characterized it as childlike empathy, and I think that's a part of it too, but to me it's more this idea of things not having consequences -- if people are poor, give everyone a million dollars.
I think that's also where a lot of the frustration with them comes from; maybe that's an area the not-psycho left should work on -- explaining why the things they propose will make the world a worse place, rather than a better one.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
That completely changes things. Without it, very creepy and no borders. With it, sure, betrayal of honesty experiment.
The-WideningGyre
10mo ago
There is occasional hand-wringing, but no actual changes to, e.g. scholarships. And they can always find a few majors that are mostly men, and hold that up as a reason to keep discriminating.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Minor note: for me "to go Dutch" means to split the bill, not to avoid paying. I guess in the sense of date your phrasing fits too.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
The sad part is, apparently many prisons do stop most rapes from happening. It's entirely feasible, but many don't make the apparently not-too-large effort. I'm sorry, I don't have my source handy for it, but it's something that's been looked into.
It's maybe weird -- my only real reason not to support the death penalty is that the justice system makes too many mistakes -- but I really think it's barbaric that this is such an issue in US prisons, and we should be able to do better.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I think there's the significant point that the job of person making a poll on sexual satisfaction with partners is offering sexual satisfaction as a non-partner. Yes, maybe he could have used another word, but the point was (primarily) to draw attention to that.
Right -- and I'd expect Johns to be more extreme, since they are essentially paying for appearance only (vs a relationship, where you're going to have a whole bunch of other factors influencing your choices).
I think part of the rage is that the woke belief system can't hold up to any scrutiny, so it needs to be extremely aggressive to any questioning of it. That's why in addition to calling people racist and sexist for very small thing, you also get meta-attacks on trying to get to truth, e.g. being devil's advocate, "just asking questions", sea-lioning, or providing nuance/accuracy ("Well Akshuallly,").
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Well, for one, the statistics I've seen for divorce is that there is a very large class difference. My first result of a Google search was this that says overall only 30% of middle and upper class couples get divorced, 41% of the working class, and 46% of the poor (which also disagree with 50% overall).
Result #3 says the overall divorce rate is 44%. It also notes many professions (including SW devs) have a divorce rate around 20%.
Aella's readers are a very non-representative sample. Perhaps not quite as non-representative as the lobby of a divorce lawyer, but not too much worse, IMO, and yes, selling very skewed data as representative data is worse than NO data, IMO.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
I don't think it's worth spending a lot of time on, but this sounds bat-shit crazy neurotic unhealthy self-flagellating.
Or do you just have something against imagination and fiction entirely?
The-WideningGyre
7mo ago
If you add two spaces at tend of a line, that will cause a line break in Markdown.
Very useful for poetry.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
FWIW, I didn't think this was a low-effort sneer, and I thought it was very much relevant and on-topic for what the person brought up. It's the core criticism.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
He has the perfect recent example in the OneCoin mogul, Ruja Ignatova, where it's unclear what's happened. Top theories are hiding in the Arab world somewhere, or killed by the Bulgarian mafia (or is that cover for the hiding?).
She arranged a diplomatic passport to Dubai a while before her disappearance.
The-WideningGyre
10mo ago
Isn't the "intent to intimidate" the big part? It seems hard to prove (and should be), and could be applied to a candlelight vigil as well, which would usually be a bad thing, IMO.
I didn't pay that much attention, but in the images I saw, the torches seemed an incidental thing. If they were waving them in people's faces, sure, fire is serious business. But if they were just walking holding them, no I don't think the law should be stretched that way. It's like if there were a law about wearing military clothes to intimidate, so anyone with a camou-colored backpack, or rangers baseball hat got charged with an extra serious crime.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
No, but high testosterone and being willing to be daring in any form do go together.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
Just wanted to say, awesome engagement here and elsewhere in the thread. It is very much appreciated, and I think this particular post is strong evidence for good faith discussion that was sometimes disputed elsewhere.
I tend to fall into the "the average woman doesn't realize how massively privileged she is" camp (or perhaps more "the average woman doesn't realize how comparatively unprivilegeg the average man is"), but I'd like (1) I'd like us to figure out how make things better, rather than just yell at each other and (2) somehow I still think i wouldn't like to switch (although when I was younger, maybe), which is an indication of something....
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
You kind of give the impression that you're playing at ignorance, but to address the "but IQ test must be easily learnable", I'll point you towards various standardized tests (SATs, GREs, MCAT, LSAT). They are incredibly important for getting into various schools, and people fight very hard to get to those schools. While training courses exist, they generally don't do much, and if it were as easy as you seem to think, everyone would have 100% anyway.
Seriously, have you ever taken a standardized test? Did you ace it? If not, do you think it's only because you couldn't be bothered?
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
100% Most conservatives also agree, but, stereotypically, see it as the church helping widows and orphans.
We are a rich society, and I think that behooves us to help the less fortunate. The trick is how much, and doing it in a way that doesn't encourage too much becoming an 'unfortunate'. I think that's a really complex topic, and one, unfortunately that seems hard to talk about.
E.g. I think having decent unemployment insurance and welfare is a net social good, reduces stress, making people more willing to change jobs, and even reducing crime (as you have more to lose). OTOH, it of course incentivizes people who could work, but just don't, which parasitizes society. I don't think you can have the one side without some of the other, and the key to good policy is finding the balance, and ways decrease the bad effects in ways that don't decrease the good effects more.
The-WideningGyre
1yr ago
FWIW, I think that says more about your world than the larger cultural one. I'm kind of involved in that sector and burning man is barely on the radar.
We're not in the US, which perhaps plays something of a role, but BM seems more known for drugs, garage creative, and rich folk cosplaying as creative.
I agree there's a lot of creativity there, but I don't think it's made it out much into the larger world.
FWIW this comes across as quite condescending. You're so sure you're right you don't to actually provide any evidence of it, or even an argument.
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