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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30981 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 16, 2023

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Prediction challenge: The NYT recently released an article on the likely result of the supreme court ending affirmative action. What is the most common sentiment in the comments? (As measured by "reader picks", most recommended comments.)

To play, make a prediction regarding the NYT readership's first thought on ending affirmative action, in your head (easy mode) or in a reply to this comment (hard mode). Then read the most recommended comments here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/15/us/affirmative-action-admissions-scotus.html#commentsContainer Without editing your original prediction, reflect on how you did.

I'm not familiar with the U.S, is affirmative action (ethinicity aside) a misandrist law that apply only for women and not for men for places where men are underepresented or worses, for places where a previous asymmetry is reversed and men become underrepresented? (see the catastrophic number of men failing or rejecting education in the U.S, IIRC there are twice as much women or something close?)

Sweden had a gender neutral non-degenerate law (although only focused on places where women were underepresented), the result? Since women now completely dominate the sweden scores they have removed the law since it helped to slow the continuous educational regress of the other half of humans, men (which are now largely underepresented in sweden education IIRC).

IMHO the suicide gender gap (300-400%) will continue to increase and the number of men transitioning to become women will also keep increasing fast despite its barrier to entry.

I'm going to also not read other comments yet.

I would guess that the editor endorsed comments will consider AA to still be a regrettable necessity. And trot out some disparity stats as to why. I would guess the reader picks would be mixed, overall less supportive, but still with some of the 'regrettable necessity' getting votes, but also some "don't fix discrimination with more discrimination also doing well".

I'll play on hard mode. I think NYT readership hates SCOTUS but is ambivalent about affirmative action or even openly supportive of dismantling it. Racial preferences are extremely unpopular.

I could be wrong. Racial preferences are unpopular, but NYT readers are exactly the demographic that would support them, and I could imagine NYT's "recommended comments" methodology being crafted to enable the most Sulzberger-adjacent element of the readership. But my prediction stands. I'll go read the comments and then include any edits below the line.

Edit: I think I was right, assuming "recommended comments" are the "Reader picks" tab.

Great idea. My guess is general lament of the SC, accusations of racism and/or white supremacy, calls for solidarity. Certainty: medium. Time spent: 3 minutes.

Results: totally wrong. The top 10 reader picks seemed to endorse reform, make AA a class issue, and talked about the unfairness to Asians.

I would assume that the NYT readership would reply along almost pure (blue) tribal lines - affirmative action helps Black people, thus it is good & people who opppse it are racists.

I’ve thought about this a bit and my initial response was probably like everyone else’s. These would be things like:

  • Don’t you care about diversity? We’re robbing our students by not having diverse classes.

But that is the legal argument and most of them don’t actually realize that.

  • Some appeal to affirmative action as a correction of prior injustice.

Sure, I think this is closer to what they actually believe, but it’s not knee jerk enough for internet hate. They would want to say something nastier.

So my guess that it’s probably something both stupid and nasty. I’ll go with “something racist about Asians.”

Huge whiff

Most of them are either Asians expressing the unfairness of the current system or people saying that race-based programs should be replaced with socio-economic based programs.

Prediction before reading is that they think affirmative action is no big deal as far as getting low IQ blacks - ("it's about the underfunded schools!") into college but also totally essential to overcome the inherent systemic racism enshrined in powerful institutions such as college admissions committees.

Affirmative action has repeatedly lost on the ballot in California. It might be one of the least popular ongoing policies in the US, probably on par with legalizing heroin and criminalizing Coca Cola.

... come on, I posted a poll. Different senses of AA get different results - "affirmative action", the word, gets 60% endorsing, while prioritizing diversity over candidate quality in hiring gets 72% oppose. By comparison, 86% oppose legalizing heroin.

Political incentives to 'motivate the base' and the idea that 'the people's voice matters, and we're the people' lead to all political outlets exaggerating the number of people who support their cause. Conservatives think there's a silent, moral majority behind them, socialists think that the people naturally dislike the elites and jobs, both think they just have to hear the truth and they'll rise up. But this isn't true, and believing it confuses you.

So its a policy with between 25 and 40% support? That is pretty bad for a thing practiced by just about every governmental institution in the country.

no, he said "gets 60% endorsing". Here's how these polls go: Do you want affirmative action/help the poor/stop climate change ? Yes! 70%. Do you want to give the job to less qualified candidates/raise taxes/suffer any inconvenience at all? No! 70%.

Perhaps you've heard of the Motte and Bailey fallacy?

OP (bailey):

It might be one of the least popular ongoing policies in the US, probably on par with legalizing heroin and criminalizing Coca Cola

I noted this isn't actually true.

Motte:

between 25 and 40% support? That is pretty bad for a thing practiced by just about every governmental institution in the country.

I'm not, exactly, a fan of affirmative action, or anti-racism generally. But accurately understanding anything requires not making things up when they make my side look like it's the "side of the people". The people are often wrong (as you'd expect from, say, 50% being below average IQ). A corollary is that if 'the people' oppose something, and the government does it - maybe that's just good, and the people are wrong, and this is a success of 'federalism', i.e. democracy-driven oligarchy, over 'direct democracy'. It isn't, but 'if the policy polls at 35%, abolish it, if it's popular do it' fails when the people support inflation!. Or - they oppose inflation, but support the policies that caused it. "The people oppose X, but it happens, so it's bad" is a bad democratic idea!

The problem for the right is that these people also see Republicans as idiotic religious hicks who want to enforce the pro-life position on them and “hate science” and believe the earth is 6000 years old, so even if SCOTUS scraps affirmative action and it makes them happy, they won’t vote for the GOP.

It's thoroughly mutual. The GOP hates the PMCs and elites that dominate colleges as much as said wokes hate them. I assume their goal is to break their power, not get them to vote for them. EDIT: Because they'll pivot to "defending" Asians and minorities but mainly to attack the woke.

Or, that would be the wise course. This generation at least is a lost cause.

If the GOP hated college administrators they could get rid of them in red states with the stroke of a pen. I wish they did but I think they mostly see colleges as trustworthy but infiltrated by a few marxist professors.

The GOP's agenda is not written by the sorts of people who think about administration, it's written by religious and business interests. Now religious interests are slowly growing more opposed to public education's administration, but it's not a major focus compared to the gays.

It's thoroughly mutual. The GOP hates the PMCs and elites that dominate colleges as much as said wokes hate them.

Is it really? I think the GOP has a sort of mournful regret as to what has happened to colleges, media, government agencies, etc. Most of the GOP would press the "fix them nicely" button. Those who have fallen into hatred seem to largely have done so out of repeated beatings and exposure to their preferences being ignored or even worse.

I think the GOP has a sort of mournful regret as to what has happened to colleges

Sure, and I've heard leftists lament about the days of reasonable conservatives or how workers in Kansas have allowed the GOP to make them degenerate politically ("how can vote against their interests like this?" is the general tone)

Who here thinks the Left doesn't loathe conservatives because of that?

The GOP is on the outs in college and media. Of course they would mourn losing their position and of course they would prefer to regain it with minimal sacrifice. Doesn't mean hate hasn't flourished. Quite the opposite: that's precisely the issue.

Most of the GOP would press the "fix them nicely" button.

I'm sure the Left would say this too. Especially since I think they trend towards rejecting direct aggression and tit-for-tat as a value more than conservatives (while finding ways to rationalize doing it)

Everybody has a theory about how the other side drew first blood and they really didn't want to do this and they want to go back to when everyone got along but they were forced to be this way their opponents.

It's not of much concern to me today, because partisans will either line up with the more hate-filled, malicious comrades or they will be those comrades. So the polarization and the Culture War will continue, no matter what self-serving tales each side spins as they strike the other.

There's an enormous difference between a party wanting to fix an ostensibly-neutral institution (nicely or otherwise), and a party wanting to fix their opponent. That is, the GOP wanting to fix colleges is not paralleled by the Democrats wanting to fix the GOP. (And I suspect the Democrats mostly want to fix the GOP in the sense that you fix a pet)

I'm sure the Left would say this too. Especially since I think they trend towards rejecting direct aggression and tit-for-tat as a value more than conservatives (while finding ways to rationalize doing it)

I don't even know what a "nicely fixed" GOP would look like to Democrats. They certainly didn't think John McCain or Mitt Romney were anything but racist sexists when they were running for president.

There's a group which hates the PMCs (largely blue collar Trump Republicans), but the establishment GOP would definitely press "fix them nicely". There's a fairly small group which has figured out that there is no "fix them nicely" button but it's rather insignificant, with the major exception of DeSantis.

The one group who might oppose Affirmative Action and have the power to stop it in practice - middle aged predominantly white college administrators - get preferred admission (as employees of the college) for their own children

No, it's much broader than that. The donor/legacy system is geared towards all alumni (legacy) and wealthy elites (donor). So the buy-in is far more comprehensive. This also helps explain why affirmative action hasn't been acted on for all these years. It never touched wide swaths of the elite. College administrators per se don't really matter. If they had unique advantages then the system would have fallen apart long ago and you're overestimating their importance in maintaining it, in terms of political legitimacy.

This is why I think there should be an additional way to get into an elite college. You can still get in because you're an Olympic swimmer, or won an international math competition for high schoolers four years in a row, or because you're the daughter of a sitting U.S. President. But for mere mortals willing to put everything on the line...

I was thinking about an idea for Ivy League admissions reform: the ruling class and those that wind up hanging around them don't have to take much personal risk to get there. In ages past, until a few months into WWI, aristocrats were expected to take personal risk by going to war; many of the sons of aristocrats pulled strings to get sent to the trenches. War is more dangerous now than it was in 1900, and warmongering isn't exactly a good or necessary thing for the United States.

Therefore, I propose Admission of the Hock. Those with SATs over 1300 or ACTs over 27 who are in the top 15 percent of their high school class are eligible for the Hock. In early March, participants are parachuted onto a frozen lake in a boreal forest in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. They're allowed anything they can carry on their back except for firearms, maps, and communication devices. No rescue beacons, either. If they survive by making it back to civilization under their own power, they receive admission to an Ivy League school.

If you want something - if you truly, honestly believe in something - that means being willing to risk your life for it and to suffer for it. There's very little of that nowadays in America outside of the combat arms. The likes of Harvard and Yale and by extension the American aristocracy would thus be leavened by large numbers of people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to ascend the class ladder. These people would know suffering and want as they had not in their sheltered childhoods. They would understand the whims of Mother Nature; they would know viscerally for the rest of their lives that the universe will not bend to their will.

What do you think?

TL;DR If you can do the work at Fancy Elite College and graduate, but you're not a rockstar, you can get dumped into the Alaskan wilderness in winter. Make it out alive and you're in.

I have never read NYT comments, so I don't have a high-confidence model of what the commentariat would say, but the vague order of (object-level) thoughts I had up to writing this post:

  1. Would they cope that this isn't a big deal? But how could you spin it like that?

  2. (Seeing a little bit of a post below that starts by indicating that the circumstance someone made this post on here carries nontrivial information)

  3. Right, a priori, given no top-level post about this, the natural thing to expect would be that the commenters are upset and expecting the return of Jim Crow or something.

  4. Given the post was made, perhaps they could argue that nothing much will change on the basis that by now everyone that matters should have realised that the outcome it would produce is the meritocratically optimal one anyway.

  5. Could I imagine a scenario in which I've mispegged the NYT commentership enough that they just straight up cheer the abolition? (...) No, that would be extremely surprising. Someone would have raised a stink by now and I would've noticed.

  6. Wait, given what I know about the Motte these days, what's the likelihood that OP is a right-winger who wants to reverse bamboozle and it is actually 3.?

(7. Perhaps I am focussing on the wrong thing and they are actually talking about something different than what they expect the outcome on hiring to be. Whatever. Let's hit submit and be done with this.)

edit: After looking at it, my impression is that most of the top comments talk meta about other comments or pounce on some small detail, with "it's not a big deal" perhaps being fair as a directional gloss only on the basis of people not thinking that the most important thing to talk about is how terrible its abolition will be.

Prediction before reading: if you hadn't made a post about it on here, my default assumption would have been some of them leaning in favor of keeping affirmative action, but the commenters being surprisingly moderate overall despite the overall left politics of NYT readers. Since you posted about it here my gotcha sense is tingling and is now assuming that the comments are overwhelmingly in favor of abolishing AA.

Edit after reading about 20 top level comments: my initial idea was more or less right, my gotcha sense was wrong.

This exchange reminds me of this sketch:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=9kB7Byoe_Uo

I should write a blog post about the philosophy of sketch comedy or something.

I would read that! Make sure you link it in the Friday fun thread if you do.

That's exactly what I expected too. I noticed I was trying to update my prediction based on the existence of this challenge towards "comments are surprisingly against AA"

Prediction before reading: The result will be an artefact of the recommendation statistics. The overwhelming sentiment of NYT readers (say 80%) will be "Oh no not my poor little African Americinos, don't you dare end AA!", but there will be so many comments to this effect that the upboats are diluted across all of them, yielding a mediocre average score for a pro-AA comment. Conversely, so few anti-AA people are willing to stick their head over the parapet for a probable public drubbling / witch hunt / costing them their job for doing a racism, that the handful of anti-AA comments absorb all the upboats from the 20% of anti-AA people, yielding an evaporative cooling effect that makes the anti-AA comments, ironically, the most upboated.

After reading: It's different flavours of "didn't build this institution but want to benefit its patrimony" ethnic groups squabbling over their slice of the spoils system. Well, that's not incompatible with my prediction, but I accept defeat in that it is at best noncentral with my prediction.

The overwhelming sentiment of NYT readers (say 80%) will be "Oh no not my poor little African Americinos, don't you dare end AA!", but there will be so many comments to this effect that the upboats are diluted across all of them, yielding a mediocre average score for a pro-AA comment.

I don't think dilution works this way -- hardly anyone reads all the comments, mostly they're going to look at "most recent" comments or "most upvoted" comments. Neither of those are going to push towards dilution.

It's different flavours of "didn't build this institution but want to benefit its patrimony" ethnic groups squabbling over their slice of the spoils system.

This is it - it's still short-sighted selfish crap overall. Whites being shit on was never and still isn't a problem - but the hard working Asians missing out is just too much to stomach.

Saying that they still want socio-economic diversity is plugging a fist-size hole in the dike that protects meritocracy with a finger. It's always going to be an end run for ethnic spoils. The real "solution" to improve equality by stopping the cost disease in higher education is so far away and difficult to implement that I guess this is the best anyone can stomach.

Guess: Surprisingly anti-AA primarily at the behest of Asians. Progressives are in a bind on this issue because they want to keep up the illusion that AA doesn't actually have much of an impact while behind closed doors supporting it. "we need to keep this because blacks can't compete otherwise is a very bad look.

edit: here's an archive link to bypass paywall

Edit 2 - post reading articles and comments: I feel like I predicted this pretty well. The inclusion of getting rid of legacy admissions I think helps a lot

Unfun guess - lots will be anti-AA, because you wouldn't ask otherwise. I googled for older affirmative action pieces in the NYT - a blog in 2014, an article in 2019, where as in OP, many but not most commenters are anti-AA and pro color-blindness. Polling finds that AA support has been increasing over the past 20 years, but isn't that popular (as usual wording matters, 60% endorse "affirmative action", while 72% oppose "tak[ing] a person's race and ethnicity into account, in addition to their qualifications, in order to increase diversity").

Based on the fact that you want us to guess, I suspect that it's going to be counterintuitive and that the NYT commentariat is supportive of ending affirmative action (with some caveats like also getting rid of legacy admissions). Affirmative action is pretty unpopular and even with moderate liberals isn't all that popular IME. I'll update this comment in a minute after checking.

After checking, I think my guess was decent. The commenters like the idea of income-based affirmative action, which I didn't consider. But without you asking us to guess, there's a good chance I would have figured they all love to defend affirmative action the way woke college students do.

Pre-registered prediction - most recommended comments selected by NYT editorial staff will be solidly pro-AA and treat the idea of SCOTUS banning it as monstrous. Most upvoted comments based on user sentiment will be AA sceptical but will avoid saying nice things about SCOTUS.

Ground truth - I didn't realise that the NYT had stopped including staff-recommended comments, so that is irrelevant.

Highest voted comments are half Asians complaining about AA

and half people saying AA should be by class, not race and

it is indeed the case that nobody is willing to say anything nice about SCOTUS

Seconded, with the caveat that the absolute top comments on both sides will be playing ‘well actually it’s a nuanced issue with no clear answer’.

Edit- grading myself 2/4 here. More detailed breakdown midday tomorrow, after more people have had time to read the comments(for a fun meta, guess which two predictions I graded right and which ones wrong).

Accurate- predictions that the reader recommended comments were far more hostile to AA than the overall recommended, and that no one would defend the supreme court. Inaccurate- overall recommended comments would support AA, and people playing "well actually".

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