alchemst

According to the recent "Task Force on Standardized Testing" from the UCs (https://senate.universityofcalifornia.edu/_files/committees/... page 23) SATs are better predictors than GPAs for most demographics, although both together is unsurprisingly better than either alone.

This seems natural to me, as GPA seems inherently less objective (different schools, different teachers).

I think it's fairly strange that universities are getting rid of using them. One explanation is that it helps protect them from lawsuits like those against Harvard, as there is less incriminating evidence. I fail to see how it actually helps students.

I think you just summarized most of this list and this movement (not all! but most).

Isn't it Berkeley where 80% of applications for faculty positions are filtered on their diversity statement (even for things like particle physics)? Or consider Stuart Reges being disciplined by UW for not putting the boilerplate land acknowledgement on his course's syllabus.

You are woefully uninformed, or willfully misrepresenting things if you don't think using such lists to punish people aren't already being used today. It's not harmless, and it seems dishonest to me to paint it as such.

I would say that McCarthy and his acolytes, was also motivated to do good (protect America).

The villagers burning 'witches' were motivated to do good (protect the village, and incidentally get their neighbours lands / jobs ... hmmm)

The students in the Cultural Revolution in China were motivated to do good (bring us forward into the utopia ... hmmm).

There is a nice saying, present in many languages: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".

And while I think intention does actually matter (vs. the a frequent claim by the woke), results matter more. (Intention matters because, e.g., it influences how you treat the action.)

And isn't there in implicit insult in that? That an entire group is so fragile, that seeing a mere word on paper, in a completely different context, will somehow reduce them to emotional rubble?

Aren't many of these making things worse, e.g. "calling a spade a spade" or "blackbox" by implying that any distant possible connection to 'black' makes something so horrible that its use must be suppressed? What does that imply about that color?

These lists are actively harmful, not to mention wasteful, but I guess they are good at creating demand for DEI officers and giving them work to do.

It is, but don't worry, they don't care about that group.

Why not just ask him when he stopped beating his wife, and be done with it?

Yes, but then isn't it clear that he isn't to be trusted (or how much he is to be trusted), and that's really what most people care about, they don't care why.

I think that's part of why the mental health acceptance movement is quite tricky, and not super-successful.

It seems about the weakest one possible, in that it allows accepting either only tiny amounts of responsibility, or almost total responsibility.

We (humans, AlphaZero) are both distilling the rules down. Some rules are easily distilled (a queen is worth more than pawn) some are more difficult (mobility, knight vs bishop). I would expect the easily distilled rules to be discovered by both of us.

What I think would be cool is trying to distill or revise better guidelines from what AlphaZero does.

FWIW, I think it already has, actually, multiple times.

My guess there are few factors in place -- people recognized motivated reasoning -- there are many studies the authors clearly want to be true, e.g. "People I disagree with are evil ugly dum-dums" is a recurring one.

There's also the studies that go against our experience, or what seems obviously right "Mormons are more likely to be alcoholics". These have a tendency to grab headlines (and likely grant money), and while occasionally are true, generally seem not to be.

Super minor note: it's "sow" (as in spread seeds, "reap what you sow" "sow wild oats) as opposed to "sew" (needle and thread...)

There is something at best blind, and more likely to my mind, dishonest about the "It's just a trivial change" argument. It's used to bludgeon dissent. "You can't possibly be such a jerk you'd not do this small thing"

It isn't such a small thing - beyond making a bunch more work for a bunch of people, beyond picking which N other colors get recommended, beyond complicating UIs for all messaging apps, you've now raised the stakes and potentially introduced race into every message. Why didn't Sarah use the slightly darker thumbs up for me, when I'm slight darker than average? She must be a racist!

This really does happen -- I recently had someone complain about a person who only spoke somewhat broken English (as a second language), for not using inclusive language, and they specifically held it against them when selecting them for service (which has nothing to do with DEI issues).

I actually think more generic worker's rights is better than expanding protected classes, which will always have holes.

It seems to be a pretty unhealthy thing, psychologically. It's why 'gaslighting' is its own special term. It's what's often used in psychologically breaking people down.

I think people can cultivate a "I'm keeping my cover up" mentality that helps, but I really do believe it has more costs than you're presenting, and it's not just about "ego" which is a very negatively loaded phrasing.

Yes, but historically it was a joke, or surprise. Now it's a moral failing.

You need to compare jobs you can get with same qualifications, of course. That's why we don't compare surgeons with janitors.

Of course, most gender pay gap comparison do in fact compare surgeons with kindergarten teachers, but that seems done intentionally to mislead.

That's not true. Obstetricians are mostly women and are better paid (on average) than internal medicine, which is mostly men. There are other examples.

If you assume men are willing to give up more (life span, time, stress, risk) for money than women, it has an amazing amount of explanatory power.

Why on earth would you say "you have to know this isn't true"?

If you see similar patterns across many different cultures, including ones considered to be more gender-egalitarian, I would have honestly thought the conclusion would be, in fact, varying interests.

Or do you think there are no biological differences (on average) between men and women, in which case, I can provide you with large, multi-national studies that come to a different conclusion.

I can see how there could be debate about how much the difference is, and what the causes of it are, but "you have to know that isn't true" seems like saying "Come on, everyone knows the world is flat, stop arguing in bad faith".

Oh come on, Thrasymachus is the OG strawman. All he does is go around saying how smart Socrates is, and how wrong he himself is.

It doesn't really -- I don't think any business say "well, I'm paying for surgeons rather than pediatricians, which have more men, so I'll pay more." This would ignore obstetricians (more women) getting paid more than internal medicine (mostly men). Jobs tend to pay what the market works out is the lowest amount people will take the role for. This is the basic principle of supply and demand.

Men tend to go to the jobs that pay more, the jobs don't pay more because men go to them. Not seeing this seems to be a massive willful ignoring of economics.

Men tend to work longer hours. They negotiate more at hiring, as they are willing to take the chance that the request for more money fails and apply somewhere else.