The key point of the article appears at the end of the second paragraph, and pretty much explains everything that follows:
>...I simply can’t discern features of the field itself that have been put in place to perpetuate inequities.
If you don't understand how systemic inequity can persist without overt bigotry, then any kind of affirmative action is going to seem counterproductive to you. But bias is self-reinforcing; once it happens for any significant amount of time, it persists even among people with no conscious bias. If you don't actually see a minority doing a job, it becomes slightly more difficult to imagine them doing that job, and that small difference, aggregated across millions of people, adds up to a significant ongoing effect. Add in the economic consequences, and you have a further reinforcement. It's like a traffic jam that persists long after the accident that caused it is cleared. And of course, that assumes that there is no longer any conscious bigotry and clearly there is: there are still organized groups in the US publicly advocating white supremacy, for instance.
Your response imposes a specific view of "systemic equity", one that not everyone buys into, and one that has not been empirically verified. Furthermore, the author has consistently blogged about his support for affirmative action, so I'm not sure your rhetoric makes any sense.
The notion of bias being self-enforcing is questionable as well. Unconscious bias here seems like a catch-all for any kind of perceived injustices. For all you know, the effects of unconscious bias could have been reasonably mitigated by education, personality, and sound policies. I'm not stating that biases don't exist, or that they are inconsequential. My point is that using unconscious bias as a catch-all is not intellectually honest as it gives unearned merit to claims made without evidence. The way forward is more empirical work, not more rhetoric.
> The notion of bias being self-enforcing is questionable as well.
It seems obvious, to me at least, that people don't pursue careers in areas where no one looks like them, therefore creating a self fulfilling prophecy.
> one that has not been empirically verified
Historically women were excluded from many scientific fields. The effect of female role models has been studied (a lot [1][2]) and there's no denying the real world impact representation (or lack of it) can have.
Except affirmative action is not the solution either because now you’ve put less meritorious people where they shouldn’t be (I apologize for the phrasing, but I think it’s important not to sugar coat this) as representatives of their disenfranchised group. As far as I can tell, in every environment I’ve been in, this often only serves to reaffirm and even intensify the bias. And the beneficiaries of affirmative action are furthermore made to feel like human asterisks, even if they’re talented and entirely deserving of an opportunity.
> Except affirmative action is not the solution either because now you’ve put less meritorious people where they shouldn’t be...
There is a risk of this, true. But that same risk exists if you stick with the status quo, as better-qualified minorities are overlooked in favor of less qualified majority candidates. Certainly that happened in the past as well, when biases were enshrined in law.
There is no “silver bullet”. Tweaking one parameter and expecting a systemic problem to resolve is unrealistic (i dont care if you dont buy into it..consider the alternatve and read some history)
What's funny that women are already a majority of STEMM undergraduates (in addition to being a majority of undergraduates overall).
Which leads to organizations contorting themselves to define STEMM in some way that excludes all the female dominated majors: biology, nursing, psychology, social science...
They can't admit that women are already winning at education, so they have to keep drilling down to find sub-sub groups where they're a minority.
I think that some of what's at play is that, with an undergraduate degree, engineering and tech are the only STEM majors that give a good chance of actually working in STEM. So you even a majority of STEM degrees may not lead to a majority of STEM workers.
For what it's worth, I also don't think that most people would consider psychology or social science to be STEM and this is the first time I've heard of STEMM to include "medicine". So that may factor in as well.
Could you expand on how this article is poorly written?
I think the poor responses on hacker news is much more likely a consequence of hyper-partisan politics, rather than the quality of the submission. Topics that touches on race always seem to elicit dogmatic responses from across the spectrum.
What stood out to me was "I can't say woke I say progressive because if I said woke X would freak out". I can't say exactly why, but that immidiately tipped me off to the fact that the article wasn't in the best frame.
Also, I skimmed the thing looking for substance, points being made about actions being taken, and it appeared to all be about ethics and ideals.
It would be disastrous in any field. When you replace metric with arbitrary quotas then you're maximizing the odds for a suboptimal outcome.
People conflate social and individual trends with structural restrictions. The best we can do is ensure that the opportunities are not restricted so you have equality of opportunity. The equity crowd seems to restrict opportunities and pretend they can guarantee equality of outcome and still have a free and vital society.
There are no fed scholarships or special funding for stem students. You get the same for degrees that have no market. Many of these people could not do much with stem in school because of their living situation/school being poorly operated.
If we want stem, we have to pay for it. The fed does not do this. They won't even fund student programs. All of that money goes into luxurious bio/chem labs used for overwhelmingly useless research. It turns out that none of this is about student education, it's for furthering the careers of "researchers".
Colleges are looking for a more diverse faculty but cant keep them as they leave frustrated with the same old system that kept them out before. You cant just fix one piece and expect everything to resolve. Education is a stubborn profession and discrimination is a hard problem.
Readit News
>...I simply can’t discern features of the field itself that have been put in place to perpetuate inequities.
If you don't understand how systemic inequity can persist without overt bigotry, then any kind of affirmative action is going to seem counterproductive to you. But bias is self-reinforcing; once it happens for any significant amount of time, it persists even among people with no conscious bias. If you don't actually see a minority doing a job, it becomes slightly more difficult to imagine them doing that job, and that small difference, aggregated across millions of people, adds up to a significant ongoing effect. Add in the economic consequences, and you have a further reinforcement. It's like a traffic jam that persists long after the accident that caused it is cleared. And of course, that assumes that there is no longer any conscious bigotry and clearly there is: there are still organized groups in the US publicly advocating white supremacy, for instance.
The notion of bias being self-enforcing is questionable as well. Unconscious bias here seems like a catch-all for any kind of perceived injustices. For all you know, the effects of unconscious bias could have been reasonably mitigated by education, personality, and sound policies. I'm not stating that biases don't exist, or that they are inconsequential. My point is that using unconscious bias as a catch-all is not intellectually honest as it gives unearned merit to claims made without evidence. The way forward is more empirical work, not more rhetoric.
It seems obvious, to me at least, that people don't pursue careers in areas where no one looks like them, therefore creating a self fulfilling prophecy.
> one that has not been empirically verified
Historically women were excluded from many scientific fields. The effect of female role models has been studied (a lot [1][2]) and there's no denying the real world impact representation (or lack of it) can have.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2020/10/09/seeing...
[2] https://thesocietypages.org/trot/2017/02/22/the-role-of-fema...
There is a risk of this, true. But that same risk exists if you stick with the status quo, as better-qualified minorities are overlooked in favor of less qualified majority candidates. Certainly that happened in the past as well, when biases were enshrined in law.
Deleted Comment
Which leads to organizations contorting themselves to define STEMM in some way that excludes all the female dominated majors: biology, nursing, psychology, social science...
They can't admit that women are already winning at education, so they have to keep drilling down to find sub-sub groups where they're a minority.
For what it's worth, I also don't think that most people would consider psychology or social science to be STEM and this is the first time I've heard of STEMM to include "medicine". So that may factor in as well.
This is three layers of not very constructive all piled on top of each other.
I think the poor responses on hacker news is much more likely a consequence of hyper-partisan politics, rather than the quality of the submission. Topics that touches on race always seem to elicit dogmatic responses from across the spectrum.
Also, I skimmed the thing looking for substance, points being made about actions being taken, and it appeared to all be about ethics and ideals.
[...scrolls down...]
"Oh no"
People conflate social and individual trends with structural restrictions. The best we can do is ensure that the opportunities are not restricted so you have equality of opportunity. The equity crowd seems to restrict opportunities and pretend they can guarantee equality of outcome and still have a free and vital society.
Deleted Comment
If we want stem, we have to pay for it. The fed does not do this. They won't even fund student programs. All of that money goes into luxurious bio/chem labs used for overwhelmingly useless research. It turns out that none of this is about student education, it's for furthering the careers of "researchers".