alchemist
1yr ago
Our company keeps hiring DEI folks, and it worries me -- they seem a net negative, beyond just their salary.
It is so tiring. And then combined with people saying things like "women dominated early programming and computer science". Agh. I'm sure there were a number of important and talented women in computer science. I'm also pretty sure, from what I know of history, interests by sex, and the breakdown by sex over the 30 years I've been in the field, that it's pretty likely there were more men than women. (Yes, I know much of the original 'programming' work, which was like connecting cables in a telephone switchboard was mainly done by women, as were many of the clerical calculations. That's something different).
The Lovelace one is particularly annoying, since it appears both Babbage and someone else had made algorithms (a word from Arabic from waaay back) before her. But sure, all of the credit is hers, and men have just been stealing the idea from her.
Grace Hopper seems to have been pretty kick-ass. Ada Lovelace too. We don't need to make up shit so that they are even more kick-ass. It's deceptive and sad.
alchemist
1yr ago
So, I watched the first two episodes of the Rings of Power -- and it wasn't that bad.
For the record, I thought Wheel of Time was pretty horrible, and while it was far from the only problem, the woke aspects (forced diversity, all men have to suck, all women have to rock) was definitely a big part of the issue. RoP has some forced diversity as well, but it's somehow not as bad. The black elf is one of the few elves who actually seems attractive and somehow beyond human -- the others come across as Roman Senator types.
Galadriel is a Mary Sue, but I guess she is in the books too. We'll see how her story develops.
I'm not happy with the proto-hobbits, and of course, the one who pushes the rules and is clever and daring is a woman, but that's mostly okay.
Dwarves -- well, of course the woman gives wise council to her buffoon husband, but it was still fairly well done I thought.
The visuals were great, and you did somehow get a sense of fleshed out, interesting and complex world. I'm very cautiously optimistic. Miles and miles ahead of Wheel of Time.
For the record, I'm /u/The-WideningGyre on reddit, but felt like grabbing one of the more common usernames I use on the new Motte.
I'm really disappointed by the weird groupthink shitshow I feel like 'normal' reddit has become, so I will do what I can to support this new Motte. Thanks /u/ZorbaTHut and other creators!
alchemist
1yr ago
I think you're missing the sweet grift factor. By doing this, you can get rewarded quite a bit, moreso than if you weren't special status.
Recently the "first 'first Nations' provincial Supreme Court Justice in Canada (for Saskatchewan) was revealed to be 'trans-racial'".
Canada has a bunch of juicy jobs only available to particular minorities. Get rid of those, or introduce mandatory DNA tests.
This frustrates me a lot, as someone who has watched Wheel of Time (absolute shit) and Rings of Power (kinda meh, but visually impressive).
I don't mind black elf -- he's in the army, army draws from all over the place, and he's kinda elven (vs most of the other elves, who look like roman senators in a cheap community drama, but with pointy ears). Black dwarf lady is potentially okay -- we can imagine different kingdoms, although that's not what they said, and we haven't seen the kids. The storyline for the dwarves is more engaging, which helps.
But the black hobbits (Harfeet) just doesn't make sense. Do genetics not hold any more? Do children not look like their parents? Do no men worry about cuckolding then? This changes a huge dynamic in the whole species! If genetics don't hold, can Harfeet have elves for kids? Dwarves, humans, sheep? I would say, even if we don't know genetics deeply, we have an intuitive sense (likely at least somewhat honed by the whole cuckolding thing) about kids looking like parents. "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree" "Oh, you're the spitting image of your grandfather at that age". Apparently it's true across almost all cultures for there to be more comments made about how a kid looks like the dad than the mom (presumably to soothe fears). We've been breeding animals for longer. We know something is up if a kid doesn't look like either parent.
Or if genetics still hold (doesn't really work in RoP, where the mother with very broad black features has a very fair Irish child), does that mean that in isolated communities (like in Wheel of Time) the Maori family has been inbreeding for hundreds of generations? (As have the Chinese, Nigerian, Spanish and Celtic families?)
It just requires throwing out a whole lot, and you can't just say, "oh, you accept dragons, but not X" because it means the world doesn't make any sense. A big part of fantasy and science fictions, is asking "what if?" and following where it takes you. If you don't do that (or it immediately makes no sense), it's not a convincing story, it's just a stream of words or scenes (which kinda describes Rings of Power).
It's a bit like modern stories where a single phone call with a cell phone would solve the problem (often they are problems normal people have encountered). The story needs to address why that phone call wasn't made, or it won't be an engaging story. You're not a 'techno-fetishist' or something if you ask why a character didn't use their cell phone, you just want a somewhat consistent world!
alchemist
1yr ago
So, first off, thank you for posting, and apologies in advance if the criticism I'll give comes across as too harsh. You seem to be trying to get more seen and read, so I'm going to try to help.
First -- your writing style doesn't work well for me. It's too abstract, and you don't clearly state your point. For example, your point #1 "Heritability simply does not mean what a lot of HBDers want it to mean - because of the phenotypic null hypothesis." What is your point here? What do you think "HBDs want it to mean"? What is the "phenotypic null hypothesis"? It's not good writing to make me chase down you thoughts, especially on other sites, especially before you've proven you're worth the work. I went to that site, and am not much more enlightened. You seem to somewhere make the point "Things influenced by genes often go though non-biological channels". Or maybe "things that look inherited aren't always". Sure, I'd say both are fairly non-controversial. A classic example of the second is, e.g. "speaking French" which looks inherited on the surface, but is clearly not biological. And yes, our environment and society mediate all kinds of things, we live in a complex interconnected world.
Do you have more of a point? I couldn't really tell (of course, that can be on me, but ... I've read and understood a fair number of others on this topic, but not your writing...) I really don't know what your code and diagrams at the end are supposed to show. Summarize your cool conclusion! E.g. "Even though X is not directly responsible, in a naive analysis it looks like it is, exactly like QQQ, which actually is directly responsible. Here's how that can play out ...". I think you're saying something like that, but you don't bother actually saying it (or I missed it).
In any case you sort of seem to be saying "we can't figure anything out" which both seems wrong, and kind of useless. Do you apply this to all such studies? Maybe we should -- I admit, I tend to write off almost of all psychological and sociological studies these days, because they seem so ideologically captured. On the other hand, between statistics, twin studies (and separated twin studies), and sibling studies, we seem to be able to do a pretty good job on some things.
Second -- you seem to be coming at this from a place of significant bias. "Rightist inclined people want to preserve racial inequality of outcomes," is an incredibly weak straw-man, it's basically "Everyone I disagree with is a racist". Is that really the best you can do, in terms of extending charity to the people you disagree with? I personally, like most of the others here, see the acknowledgement of group differences (and for what it's worth, I don't really care much if it's culture or biology, and both seem taboo anyway) as primarily an alternative for differing outcomes, without discrimination being the ONLY explanation.
I'm in tech. There aren't many women, nor many black people. This is ascribed to sexism and racism, which doesn't match what I've seen, experienced, or heard from the affected people (from women at least; I haven't asked many black colleagues about racism). I see my company following policy to massively privilege both groups, and to blame white cis-men for all the problems, and those both seem wrong, and even damaging to me (and to a number of people in the targeted groups, e.g. women who just want to be SWEs, and not feel they got their role because of their sex, and no, I'm not concern trolling, the suspicion around the privileging is real). I see differing interests (and maybe ability at the margins) and degrees as the main reasons for the differing representation, but we're not allowed to notice that, as "It's not the pipeline". James Damore got fired for trying to make this point.
You also see this censorship of blasphemy in the US, especially around crime, where apparently pointing out some choice statistics around violent crime is considered a hate crime. (Again, FWIW, I'd consider those stats more a cultural issue, but it's a pretty important one, upstream of the 'getting shot by police' issue).
So anyway, what I'd like from you, and I think would benefit you, is to tighten up your writing -- make your point first, then provide an explanation of it (it's a classic academic / systemic thinker error to do it the other way around). Make things more concrete. Work from a specific example and tie your points back to it. People are reluctant to trust generic models, as they are often used to lie (see Abigail Thompson's dissection of Hong-Page's "mathematical proof that diversity trumps ability". There's a nice discussion of it here
Also, try to be more charitable to your outgroup.
Also, as per the community rules, "don't attempt to build consensus", as you do when you write "... which claimed to find that effort does not matter for IQ scores. This obviously massively contradicts common sense,"
No, this doesn't "obviously massively contradict" my common sense, and I think many would disagree. In fact, I thought one of the main points of IQ tests, rather than "effort tests", is that neither effort nor prep makes much of a difference to them. Otherwise, for example, they wouldn't stay very stable over time (which I understand they do). Prep courses would also have more value, which I don't think do. Do you think when people can't make intellectual leaps others do, they just aren't trying hard enough in that particular moment? I think most would agree effort plays some role -- if I don't care or try at all on an IQ tests, and answer at random, I'll have a low score. If I try to be fast and disciplined, and use all my test-taking savvy, I'll probably (?) do better than if I just breeze through (although I wonder). But basically, once you're trying to do well, it's not really clear what "trying harder" even means on IQ test. It's not like pushing on a bar (and honestly, even for that the range where trying, vs training and genes and drugs, makes a difference, is pretty small in that moment. If I can barely do one pull-up, trying really hard might mean I do one, or two, but I'm generally not going to be able to do 10). So anyway, stop claiming consensus on things people will disagree on (especially things where your "consensus" seems to go against standard definitions).
I can't really comment on your main article, because I don't understand it beyond "assigning causation back to genes is tricky", which, I agree with, but, if that is your point, isn't a very exciting one, nor is the the pwn you seem to think it is. But if you have a different point, please state it clearly and simply, with a concrete example, and I'll try to address it.
alchemist
1yr ago
It is the UN (Women's) official tweet. That gives it some gravity_.
Yes, I know that channel has posted other braindead things (is it weird that I can probably write that on reddit, but not 'retarded'?), but it's still kind of shocking to me that something so clearly bad got posted.
alchemist
1yr ago
For what it's worth, I feel like I'm drowning in woke, but mainly due to my American FAANG company. And I grew up quite left wing (I walked a strike line with my parents when I was child, I went canvassing with them for the NDP). I still consider myself liberal, and believe a social safety net is a good thing (while still be a fan of regulated capitalism). I did grow up fairly poor, which has shaped my attitudes to some degree (e.g. made me a fan of meritocracy).
I'm doing pretty well, but I was lucky and am fairly old. I worry for my sons, and the madness and reality-denying of the Identarians really does set me off. They so often seem to do the opposite of what they preach. And I do see real unfairness at my work.
alchemist
1yr ago
What kid would ever say "you can call me by my name"? That's just miles from how kids speak (in my experience).
alchemist
1yr ago
Hey, I'm sorry you went through that.
We managed to be friends with both rabid vaxxers and anti-vaxxers, but it wasn't always easy. I even (gasp) played volleyball with some unvaccinated. They were fairly young and healthy, I was vaccinated and healthy. I don't share your anger at the mask mandates, but I see where it comes from after hearing how your own family treated you (especially given you'd had it, which was generally thought to be better than a vaccination, I thought).
I think something about the fear of death, and maybe plagues, triggered something deeply primal in a lot of people ("broke their brains") and we got a lot of extremism out of something that was comparatively mild (especially once a vaccine was available).
alchemist
1yr ago
I'm reminded of Bill Burr on Lance Armstrong: "Our 'roided up asshole beat your 'roided up asshole!"
alchemist
11mo ago
I'm reasonably on the inside, and this does not seem to be the case. HR (and DEI) was hit harder than most other areas, for example.
alchemist
1yr ago
Yes, that men and women have different personalities and interests is one of the largest and most replicated results in psychology. I realize this is somewhat discouraged knowledge, but it's not too hard to find, e.g.:
Men and things, women and people: a meta-analysis of sex differences in interests
The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality
Note that the differences tend to be actually larger than many of these suggest at first glance, as there tend to multiple, at-least-partially-independent, so if you take multiple traits at once, the means move further apart.
Scott also has a great discussion on it in Contra Grant on Exaggerated Differences
I also think the 'greater variability hypothesis', namely that men tend to have greater variability in most traits, is both true, and explains a lot of the differences we see (more homeless men, more Nobel prize winners), because it means many more men at the extremes.
If you look at top scores in the math SATs, for example (over 750?) you see many more men than women. Sorry, I don't have a source easily on hand for this one, but I've verified it a few times, and welcome you to do so. (Women tend to outscore on the verbal, and their scores tend to be more correlated, which has implications for chosen careers.)
alchemist
1yr ago
"Confidence - 100% - I don't get these things wrong"
Do you know that saying something like that makes me lose confidence in you? No one should be 100% confident about vague future things, and not realizing that is a pretty big strike against you.
(FWIW, I agree that any housing drop won't be that big -- I think also because there's a global move to finding 'safe assets' (still) and real estate is a pretty good one, at least in bigger cities. I'm only about 60% confident though, because I really don't do much in that economic space.)
alchemist
1yr ago
I'll just say I've known a number of excellent women programmers. My personal opinion is that the main issue is just different interests (and often other options). Research seems to support that (roughly, women are interested in people, men are interested in things), it's one of the most repeated findings with biggest effect sizes in psychology.
As to teaching CS, I can't really remember what worked well for me. My sense is to focus on solving problems, and building out the world of tools, knowledge, and techniques that allow you to solve larger and more complex problems. I think it's important to have something concrete to attach abstract things to when learning. But that's just a first thought.
alchemist
1yr ago
No, model 1 isn't "debunked" and shouting "phenotypic null hypothesis" isn't the argument winner you seem to think it is.
alchemist
1yr ago
I think the biggest thing to me would be not wanting to be a chump. I have a pretty strong aversion to cheating, but if my class were grading on a curve, and I knew most of the others were cheating, and the administration knew and weren't doing anything, I would feel the honest people shouldn't be punished.
alchemist
1yr ago
Yes! My company wants to increase the representation of "Indigenous+" in Europe, and make no effort to explain what that means. I'm in Germany, so I assume they want more Neanderthals....
alchemist
1yr ago
FWIW, "sight words" can complement phonics, it doesn't have to replace them. I think it's actually a good thing both for some tricky spelling, and for quicker reading -- as long as it doesn't exclude phonics.
Sadly, there was a similar movement in Germany, where regarding spelling they allowed all manner of misspelling -- as long as it "looked like it would sound" (which doesn't really make sense as a concept). This has led to a ton of kids who can't spell properly, for no apparent gain (and lasting surprisingly late in life). It's really annoying. I see it in my kids, where I'm a much better German speller, even if they are better speakers (as they are native, and I'm not).
alchemist
1yr ago
Thank you for doing the legwork (I'm assuming you did :D, too lazy to verify).
Didn't Mark Twain say something like "It's not the things you don't know that get you, it's the things you know and are wrong"?
alchemist
1yr ago
The problem is, some -- too many -- do treat them that way, and have banished the use/mention distinction. It's like the Jehovah scene in Monty Python. So rather than risk crazy people trying to ruin your life, people avoid the words.
I prefer to take it further, and talk about either Voldemort or "the letter-after-m word". Well, actually I generally prefer not to talk about it at all, since there are too many rabid, crazy people out there. (yet here I am, oops)
alchemist
11mo ago
The short form for me (okay, happily married, not in the dating pool, but reasonably charismatic), is that you can't trust / believe what 95% of women say. The saying is "Ask a fisherman, not fish, how to catch fish".
Most women seem generally unwilling or unable to introspect when it comes to attraction, or feel they can't be honest about it. So they say the usual platitudes like "be yourself!" "don't try, it'll happen!" "don't try to treat me differently" "just be nice!". Hollywood is just awful.
I was a late bloomer. My success took off when I just started going for it -- leaning in for the kiss, just making things happen, taking things a step further. I admit, this is all a while ago, so it's possible it's all changed, but I think it's human nature, so I rather doubt it.
In terms of your "how much interest to show", I think the answer is, show interest -- you want this -- but don't be creepy, i.e. if she's not interested, no big deal, you'll move onto the next thing.
My take -- be genuinely interested in her, and make her feel special. Do interesting things, and be willing to be a bit traditionally masculine (be competent, show initiative, be strong).
Good luck -- modern dating seems like a messed-up, sad, confused scene. Try to straighten it, and not get sucked in by the bullshit that's been painted on top recently.
alchemist
11mo ago
While I mostly agree with you, I think there are also tipping points that are bad -- things like the great depression, which fucked up the whole world for a decade, the oil crisis in the 70s, and the financial crisis in 2008. It does seem like we've gotten better at handling things, but part of me worries that we've been lulled into a false sense of security.
Minor related note -- I'd say only now, a good year after the initial Ukraine invasion, has the product offering in supermarkets mostly levelled out. Until recently, it seemed like there was always something out -- sunflower oil, catfood, dijon senf (that was something else), what have you. So my sense is that we are more connected, and have less resilience, so an unexpected shock can have surprising ripples.
I still tend towards optimism, but I don't think we can just rely on things working out.
alchemist
1yr ago
Amen, brother. I just so don't give a shit. I realize that's a luxury that some don't have (gotta check that privilege), but where I live, there are no masks, no vaccine requirement, you can get one if you want. Yes, it was bad for a while, but they never actually forced it (except maybe for healthcare workers, which was something of an own-goal, and also reasonably understandable to me).
I think Covid broke people's brains in both direction (Bill Gates is implanting chips, and if you don't double-mask outdoors you want to kill my Grandma and give me long Covid).
I learned this around various DEI claims. Every single one I investigated more deeply fell apart (interruptions, benefits of diversity, women on the board, insignificant differences in interests, implicit bias test, growth mindset, pay gap, names on resumes) and sadly just about anything in relation to historical women in tech (Lovelace first algorithm, Hopper creating Cobol, women 'used to be the majority of computer scientists' ("programmers" in a historical, different sense, yes), Margaret Hamilton wrote all this code, etc. Most of the women involved were plenty awesome without inflating their claims to fame!)
It's sadly at the point that my first instinct is to disbelieve pretty much any psych or sociology 'study', especially if it points in a way the current narrative wants.
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