site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32428 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 13, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

10
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

There exists an entire consulting industry that performs research on the benefits of DEI training, the benefits of a more diverse workforce, the success of organizations which have more women/LGBT people in leadership positions, etc. Here is the consulting company Accenture's summary of the benefits of DEI to companies and organizations that adopt their practices.

I am of the belief that it is people's knowledge, experience and competence that determines whether or not an organization will be successful in its goals. It seems extremely unlikely to me that any problem corporations are interested in solving becomes easier the more members of your project team possess a uterus. Likewise, it seems unlikely your organization will gain magical insight into any real problem of interest by virtue hand-selecting team members whose ancestors have a specific continent of origin. And I have a hard time believing there is a benefit to adding more members of your team who are sexually aroused by humans who share their same sex organs (or adding members of your team who wish to change their sex organs via surgery or chemical sterization).

My priors are stacked so incredibly hard against studies which demonstrate that there is actually a benefit to structuring teams based on hand-selecting people who are LGBT, people from Africa, or adding more women. Indeed, it feels like if you lower qualifications to hire people from these groups, it can only result in organizations which are less qualified.

I'm wondering how it is possible that these consulting companies succeed in designing studies that show the opposite of (what I believe to be) reality. Is it all publication bias and p-hacking? My intuition says that it is. But there are some pretty powerful-looking studies that seem to be hard to explain via that explanation alone. Looking at an example of one of the studies done by McKinsey in the above link:

Earnings Before Interests and Taxes (EBIT) margins

McKinsey & Company’s global study of more than 1,000 companies in 15 countries found that organizations in the top quartile of gender diversity were more likely to outperform on profitability—25% more likely for gender diverse executive teams and 28% more likely for gender-diverse boards. Organizations in the top quartile for ethnic/cultural diversity among executives were 36% more likely to achieve above-average profitability. At the other end of the spectrum, companies in the bottom quartile for both gender and ethnic/cultural diversity were 27% less likely to experience profitability above the industry average. Researchers measured profitability by using average EBIT margins

What is the plausible mechanism behind which research that shows these kind of results are created? Are they measuring something that is real (i.e. does a more diverse workforce actually make companies more money)? Or are the brilliant people at McKinsey meticulously hand-selecting the companies to design studies which will show the opposite of reality?

It could just be the wrong way around; established, profitable companies can afford to spunk money away on diversity hires and vanity projects like stuffing boardrooms for social goodboy points, and less or un-profitable companies who don't have that kind of capital would just go bust when they try to do so. The end result is that only the companies who can afford to shoulder X% of deadweight engage in this behaviour.

A more convincing metric would be if startups are more or less likely to fail due to being diverse, but even this can be skewed by things like grants for X-led companies or whatever.

I can believe the relation exists and causality goes the opposite way. Anecdote: the woke tech company I work for recently had a big layoff+bad stock market results and now suddenly there's just less of all this stuff.

Teams devoted to diversity/etc had fairly big cuts, while teams devoted to making money with tech had comparatively small cuts. Within the tech part of the org it's openly acknowledged that individual performance played a big role in who got cut. Most of the people whose names you recognize for woke stuff are gone and the people who remain you recognize because of what they shipped.

You sound like a 'character', is that right?

While I'd heard similar groups had gotten caught, I'd heard mixed things about performance. It would actually be encouraging if it were more performance based, and less random-seeming, as it does from the other side of the Atlantic, where the cuts aren't all through yet.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats