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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15585 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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I had a good discussion regarding the case of Sam Brinton, buried deep in last week's thread. I am reposting here so that more people can see it and possibly participate. I hope this is appropriate and doesn't constitute self-promotion.

I wrote:

What would even constitute evidence that Brinton was hired based solely or primarily on his identity? He has a master's degree in the relevant field (from MIT, though other comments are telling me that doesn't really matter) and has co-authored several research papers. To me it looks like he's about as qualified as anyone.

@Astranagant replied:

Well this is the problem with identity hiring, isn't it? How does anyone know you didn't get the edge over your competitors because of that? Unless he was literally the only applicant for the job, I'd find it hard to swallow that the topic of his... presentation... never came up. Meaning the department most likely consciously chose him, and whether this is in spite of or because of his affectations would largely come down to whether he was wildly head-and-shoulders better than his competition. Employers will overlook some affectation for a genuine rockstar employee, but there's a limit proportionate to how irreplaceable you are.

So either Brinton is hyper-competent and got the job in spite of his affectations, which according to the rest of the thread -- and your own comment "as qualified as anyone" -- his education history and performance on the job doesn't bear out. So if it's not that, can we then assume that the affectations served the purpose of the administration somehow? This is a government job, it's impossible... alright, improbable to believe they didn't do their due diligence.

To which I replied:

If the employer has whittled down the list of applicants to a group of people with similar qualifications, and more detailed information that might help the decision is impossible or infeasible to attain, then the choice of whom to hire will be arbitrary. In this case, I don't see how hiring Brinton because of his unusual presentation is any worse than rolling a die or flipping a coin to make the final choice.

To me, the phrase "hired for your identity" implies that standards have been lowered and the candidate was picked over someone more qualified but with a less-favoured identity. As far as I can tell, this is not true in Brinton's case.

One form of affirmative action that I've heard about is that, when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen. As I said above, when it comes down to this kind of decision, the choice is arbitrary, and I don't see any harm in the affirmative action method. Indeed, if the group to which the candidate belongs really does face some kind of disadvantage, picking them is the rational choice for the self-interested employer, as it indicates that the candidate has achieved the same qualifications despite more difficult circumstances. Of course, simply considering a few categories such as race and gender can never provide the full picture: for example, among two candidates there may be a woman from a rich family and a man whose family was poor growing up; overall, the man had it worse, but an application generally includes gender but not family circumstances, so applying the method here would lead to the wrong choice. It is just a heuristic, and no heuristic is perfect, but as I said, at some point acquiring more information about the candidates becomes impossible or infeasible; except for some very specific positions, an employer won't hire a personal investigator to carefully investigate the candidate's past: this is where heuristics come in.

The above method is very different from lowered standards for different groups, or straight-up quotas, both of which I vehemently oppose. Finally, it must be noted that:

  1. In the real world, "historically marginalized" groups have been granted various advantages, which might reduce the method's accuracy.
  1. Situations where several candidates are, in fact, equally qualified, and only one belongs to a historically marginalized group, are not actually that common.
  1. The heuristic requires that the candidates' identity not be considered until the final choice: a woman must be just as good as a man, without considering the fact that she is a woman. Otherwise, we would be adjusting for identity twice, which would result in a lower standard for women.

One form of affirmative action that I've heard about is that, when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen. As I said above, when it comes down to this kind of decision, the choice is arbitrary, and I don't see any harm in the affirmative action method.

Let's play a game. We both roll dice. If your number is higher, I give you money. If my number is higher, you give me money. If we both roll the same number, you also give me money. Let's go for 100 rolls at 100$ a roll. Fair?

The assumptions are:

  1. The marginalized groups really are marginalized. In your example, this would mean you have a significantly larger amount of money than me.

  2. We're looking at this dispassionately, from behind a veil of ignorance. Of course the group that benefits from inequality would support inequality. I usually cringe at this saying because it's so frequently abused by the left, but it does apply in this case: when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

I just want to add the usual switcheroo between marginalized people and historically marginalized people. As other people say, women now have 50% higher college enrolment compared to men. But if one grants argument that they were historically marginalized, this remains the same even if women are 100% of enrollment and no men are allowed.

when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

This is just a call to epistemic humility, it implies one cannot actually know for certain where they sit on the oppression scale which also applies to those who are currently receiving affirmative action. If we're being epistemically humble then innaction and thus not placing a thumb on the scale is the prudent move. If you want to claim you know who is oppressed you cannot use this tactic.

Yeah, relying on the whole "oppressed groups have epistemic advantage" argument in order to substantiate a claim of oppression always leads to some variant of the following horror: "I'm oppressed and you're privileged, thus I have a superior knowledge which allows me to tell you that I'm oppressed and you're privileged and you have no such standing. How can I be sure that I'm oppressed and you're privileged? Because I'm oppressed and you're privileged".

The fact that people genuinely use this circular argument and see no problem with the foundational logic behind it is shocking.

The fact that people genuinely use this circular argument and see no problem with the foundational logic behind it is shocking.

I have tried to get this exact point across to a group of ostensibly smart academics for months now. To very little avail.

You cannot logic people out of believing something they haven't been logicked into. Or something. As long as a belief is socially beneficial to have, people will revert to it almost immediately. It sometimes does feel like talking to an NPC.

All I wanted to get at with that post is for you to admit that tie-breakers are discriminatory. Once we have common ground there, we can discuss whether that discrimination is justified.

when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression

That goes both ways. The root of the privilege here is of course the unassailable and unfalsifiable assumption of oppression that calls for never-ending special treatment. Become accustomed to that and equal opportunity starts to feel like oppression.

The problem with your argument is that the premise is faulty. Especially 1). First of all, we are more and more dealing with an "adversity of the gaps", where unequal treatment is nowhere to be found but outcome disparities are taken as sufficient proof of a lack of procedural fairness. Which is then countered with tampering of the procedure in the favour of the "oppressed", often with unintended consequences. Of course, the medicine not working is proof that we need more medicine and round it goes.

But even if you disagree with me on this one, the fact remains that membership of protected identity groups is a really bad proxy for adversity where others are readily available. Once you get to the point where you are considered for a high-level government position, chances are that you did not struggle in the same way other identity group members are (ostensibly) struggling. At that point it becomes rich kid #1 with accidental characteristics P vs. rich kid #2 with accidental characteristics Q. P means rich kid #1 must have faced adversity, therefore we need to stack the deck in her favour. I would have much, much less trouble with quotas for people growing up poor.

The marginalized groups really are marginalized. In your example, this would mean you have a significantly larger amount of money than me.

No. Your modification to the example is flawed. The correct modification would be, "this would mean that you belong to a demographic group that, on average, has a significantly larger amount of money than the demographic group that I belong to."

Is it mean of me to say that right now it looks like the marginalised and under-represented groups as represented by Brinton are "gender-fluid kleptomaniacs"? The "white and cis and male" parts of their identity, even as a bisexual, would normally be held to be totems of privilege, were it not for the "gender-fluid/non-binary" thing.

"All ties go to the marginalized group" in fact gives privilege to the marginalized group. It certainly isn't equality.

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