Because widget polishing proficiency is uniformly distributed among Wookiees, Rodians, and Twileks.
The same thing can be said about Rodians and Twileks. Most of them decide to do something other than widget polishing as well.
I agree. As I stated:
That is, a proportionate workforce is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the most productive workforce.
That’s your assumption, which may or may not be accurate. (In many real-world cases, it isn’t.)
But even if it’s accurate, that still doesn’t mean you would’ve been better off hiring 8 Wookiees instead. There is a correlation between applying for the job and being good at the job: those who went to widget-polishing school, or who have previous widget-polishing experience, are more likely to apply for jobs polishing widgets than those who went to hyperspace academy and became co-pilots instead.
The same thing can’t be said about them: they can’t all be disproportionately good at co-piloting. Rodians and Twileks could be disproportionately good at something else. They might even be disproportionately good at polishing widgets.
Perhaps the Galaxy’s top widget-polishing school is on Rodio Drive, right next to the Rodio City Music Hall, and the mostly-Rodian locals get a discount on tuition. Maybe Twilekistan had a bustling widget-polishing industry thanks to its rich deposits of widget wax, but the industry crashed when the wells ran dry, and now the sector is full of experienced Twileks scrambling to find widget-polishing work.
You can’t assume that everyone is equally likely to be good at any given job, equally likely to have experience or education in any given job, equally interested in any given job, and equally likely to have better alternatives elsewhere. Or, if you’re asking us to imagine a world where those are all equal, then your scenario is so specific that you may as well flip over all the cards and tell us what those Wookiees are doing instead and why.
You haven’t shown it to be necessary either, in your hypothetical or in the real world.
And I’ll agree to disagree on that.
I think the fact that Trump’s spokeswomen is giving examples of DEI that are mostly false, that if you search “DEI” on politifact you get 1 half-truth…versus 13 false, 1 mostly false, 1 pants on fire and 1 full flop (whatever that means).
This tells me that even if DEI in the US is flawed – and I remain skeptical – the actual stories that people are outraged about are…full flop (it’s going to be part of my vernacular now)
Sounds like you still haven’t looked at how the FAA’s quiz was scored.
Did you even look at the headlines? The vast majority have nothing to do with what we have been discussing, and their report of the FAA story is misleading:
No mention of the nonsensical way it was scored, or the fact it was used to eliminate 85% of the most qualified applicants for no justifiable reason, no mention of how the FAA blew up their recruitment pipeline of specialised college courses as a result of their changes.
Other reasons they give for Trump’s claims being false are that the biographical assessment was not revived under Biden, which is correct and not something anyone here was claiming, and that he did not eliminate DEI at the FAA, which is hardly helping your argument:
It’s easy for anyone to debunk Trump’s rambling nonsense, but doesn’t disprove the real story at all.
This was a work of art…
Well help me out then with a true DEI story because right now we only have this FAA one which seems dubious and anyway seems to only home come to light in the aftermath of this incident. What’s the basis for “actual DEI … has divided and angered people”?
I’m aware that that’s what the article alleges, but went down a bit of a rabbit hole following the links trying to find evidence.
It sure is frustrating to hear this over and over from you, while you ignore every reply that points out the shady way it was scored or asks what you think is so dubious about it. Surely you’re interested in learning the facts about this issue we’re all discussing, right?
I coulda swore the issue was DEI and not how the FAA does or does not implement it.
But, clearly, that’s just me.
Okay, I found it. In the older version of the story, Trace links to a google drive folder with documents from the legal case:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17Vi9dDtZvbwHDafrygRGYcG888f-6PDs
You need to download 139.zip and look at 139-26.pdf. This has the answers to the biographical questionnaire, including mentioning that many questions are worth 0 points and are ‘informational only’ - aka just there as camouflage to make it look more normal and relevant.
Thanks for doing the legwork, but this of course doesn’t support the claims of the article.
So what if some questions are just establishing the cut of one’s jib? Isn’t that largely the point of the job interview?
Anyway, let’s just try to get this back on track because I think we’re getting into the weeds: I’ve already conceded that DEI might not be implemented perfectly in all cases. We’ll see if the FAA is such a case, as there is an investigation ongoing.
My points remain simply that:
Among other things, we’ve been discussing whether there were any examples of DEI being used to elevate less qualified candidates over more qualified ones. The FAA hiring scandal was a prime example of that. Thus, frustration arises when the person insisting there are no examples refuses to read the basic facts of the example that’s been cited.
Well it could be an example as a determination hasn’t been made.
In the meantime it is like saying that if RW media is selling the idea that doctors make people more sick, it’s validated by this one case where a doctor frucked up.
I’m Zimbabwean, and South African. I support Black Economic Empowerment in both countries but the Zimbaweans just went fully insane, and the South Africans are not doing what I want, at all.
I’m nominally white, though I do not identify with my skin colour. Who honestly carea if I am pinkish?
I don’t technically get to vote in Zim due to stupid rules involving reverse racism.
But I vote for the ANC in South Africa. In my opinion, they are cunts. But the best cunts we have. We don’t have much choice.
No, it is an example. The documents and emails are there for you to read, if someday you feel inclined to do so. You don’t need to wait for a court to give you a green light to learn about what happened.
There are other examples, such as the ones I mentioned earlier in the thread along with the FAA hiring scandal.
Yes, that is a part of what I trying to address.
Except for a very few populations doing a few very specific jobs (Sherpas as mountain guides, for example) which I will now ignore, every population has the same distribution of inherent advantages. When a particular position like widget polishing has a disproportionate workforce, it means that there is untapped human potential. Because every human population has the same distribution of inherent advantages, any deviation from proportionality is an indicator of a failure to utilize widget polishing potential.
Of course, much of that failure is beyond the scope of what a single company can address, but that still impacts its productivity. Some people don’t polish widgets because they live in the wrong city–that reduces the company’s productivity because it can’t hire those people. Some people don’t polish widgets because they’re better at something else–that reduces the company’s productivity. Some people don’t polish widgets because their religion thinks it’s a sin–that reduces the company’s productivity. Some people don’t polish widgets because their parents couldn’t afford to put them in a polishing club–that reduces the company’s productivity. Some people don’t polish widgets because their ancestors were enslaved by widget polishers–that reduces the company’s productivity. Etc, etc, for many different reasons and there’s little the company can do about it.
But little is not the same as nothing. The company can provide moving expenses so that more people can move to the city. The company can improve working conditions so that more people want to polish widgets. The company can supply a polish that don’t run afoul of religious taboos. The company can support polishing clubs so that more kids learn about the career. The company can be welcoming and distance themselves from its slaver past. None of these will fix the underlying issues, but that’s not the company’s goal.
The company’s goal is to hire and retain the most productive workforce possible, which can be advanced by increasing the pool of skilled widget polishers available to be hired and then treating them respectfully. When the number of employees from out of town drops from 20% to 10% over a decade, you know you have a problem. Simply hiring a bunch of out-of-towners to bring it back up to 20% doesn’t fix the problem. Proportionality is not a goal, it’s a metric.
This “productivity” goal seems to be a red herring, or a mis-guided hook upon which to hang one’s diversity hat.
It assumes (among other things) that the differences in productivity between a workforce in perfect demographic alignment with the nation and one out of alignment with national demographics are demonstrable and predictable in all industries, and that the costs to the business of getting in alignment will be outweighed by the financial benefits.
I am all for efforts that shift the paradigms that exclude races and genders from different careers, but I don’t see how this model of productivity is a valid argument for that shift.
A couple points in response.
First, “inherent advantages” can mean a lot of things.
Suppose there are two brothers, of whom one is a renowned pianist (but not a great writer) and the other is a renowned essayist (but not a great musician). They’re equally intelligent, hard-working, etc., by any measure. But one of them enjoyed playing the piano from a young age, so he spent his time practicing, which made him more skilled, which led to more praise, which made him enjoy it more and practice more, and so on. The other had the same experience with his writing.
Either of them could, in theory, have become a great writer or a great pianist. But those are skills that have to be built through practice, and different people are motivated to practice different things. A lot of that motivation comes down to interest/enjoyment, which is influenced by culture, environment, and personality. So, does the brother who’s a pianist have an inherent advantage when it comes to playing piano? Or did he get that advantage because he chose to spend his time playing the piano instead of writing essays?
Now, suppose they also have a cousin who lives in Big Horn, Wyoming, where the townsfolk are in love with brass band music more than anything. This cousin also enjoys playing music, but since the closest piano store is hundreds of miles away, he grew up playing the trombone instead. Thousands of hours of practice later, he’s an internationally renowned trombonist, but a mediocre pianist. Does he have an inherent advantage in trombone playing over the brother who grew up playing the piano? Or do they have the same advantage and just channeled it into different things?
That’s what I was trying to get at with my charming “Rodio” puns. Different people often have different advantages simply because those advantages develop from their experience in life and which skills they choose to pursue, and different people have different experiences and preferences. To the extent that different populations have different distributions of experiences or preferences, they can also have different distributions of advantages.
Second, maybe I’m missing something, but I still don’t follow your argument that if every population had the same distribution of advantages, that would imply that any deviation from proportionality is a failure of potential.
Suppose there are three levels of widget polishing skill: expert, amateur, and novice. The population is as follows:
| Group | Expert (10%) | Amateur (30%) | Novice (60%) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wookiee | 750 | 2250 | 4500 | 7500 |
| Rodian | 250 | 750 | 1500 | 2500 |
| Total | 1000 | 3000 | 6000 | 10,000 |
Your business employs 100 widget polishers: 67 Wookiees and 33 Rodians. You assess every candidate’s skills when they interview, and you only hire experts.
Since Wookiees are underrepresented, you say this indicates a failure to utilize their potential. But your employees are already maximally skilled. What exactly would you hope to improve by hiring more Wookiees and fewer Rodians?
Some people don’t polish widgets because the smell of widget wax makes them gag. Some don’t polish widgets because they prefer work where they get to talk to people. Some don’t polish widgets because their parents sent them to space camp, and now they have cushy astronaut jobs where they get paid ten times what they’d make as widget polishers, dine on freeze-dried caviar and rehydrated champagne every night, and don’t even have to support their own weight.
But if you only hire expert widget polishers, then none of that matters, because you know none of those people you didn’t hire are more skilled than your current workers. Right?
You could have saved me the effort and looked at the online version of the test if you were just going to dismiss the scoring system. 
I’ve messaged the author to suggest he make this document more accessible, anyway.
This wasn’t a job interview and no one was looking at those answers, at least for the 85% of candidates who failed the test. Can you explain to us why having your worst high school grade in science and your worst college grade in history/political science should be worth 15 points each, with 0 for other options, while having a prior Air Traffic Control Specialist rating would be worth 0 points? Or why a candidate would get 10 points for saying they were unemployed for 1-2 months in the 3 years before applying for the job, 0 points if they said they were unemployed for 3-4 months, and 8 points if they were unemployed for 5-6 months? Or why for the question “My peers would probably say that having someone criticize my performance (i.e. point out a mistake) bothers me”, answering “Somewhat more than most” gets 0 points, while “Much more than most” gets 10 points?
If they had any justification or evidence for this facially nonsensical scoring system, they would certainly have provided it in the lawsuit documentation.
It’s about increasing underrepresented groups in certain professions, including by lowering standards for everyone and for those groups specifically. Another example going round on Twitter is fitness standards for secret service agents, where standards are lower for women in the final fitness assessment, and they have (or had) a target of hiring 30% women by 2030. How many women vs men even want to be secret service agents?
To some extent, sure. But all these things exist and there are reasonable objections to at least some of what the left has been doing in these areas.
Depends on the programs. I think contrary to @Pleonast’s argument, a lot of current programs are if anything lowering productivity (because they are implemented at the level of hiring/promotion, not considering root causes), while being unfair to individuals, and causing resentment. To some extent this is self-correcting, at least in the private sector where a drop in productivity is something management is forced to address, but it’s still a bad thing. I also object to the idea that every demographic group needs to enjoy the same things, have the same goals in life, and do the same jobs in proportion to their population. It makes sense as a society to address big disparities in wealth etc between groups, but why is it a problem if more men want to be RAF pilots and more women want to be veterinarians? Why can’t people just… choose the jobs they like, without the government trying to socially engineer us into all being the same?
If the choice is between current DEI and no DEI, I’d prefer to try the latter.
And we come back to the fallacy of incomplete evidence.
“fallacy of incomplete evidence” is also known as “cherry picking”; it refers to the logical fallacy where someone only presents evidence that supports their position while ignoring or suppressing significant counter-evidence, creating a biased picture by not presenting the full set of relevant information.
Of course, all the talk about trying to convince others about getting rid of DEI can’t deny that most of the efforts to get rid of it do come from groups that are doing their dam-nest to deny that it is bigotry what is guiding them. The issue of not having enough minorities or women in the FBI is a problem for reasons that the ones proposing getting rid of DEI do grossly and willfully omit.
In a 2016 diversity recruitment speech, former Director James B. Comey told the
audience that currently “eighty-three percent of the FBI’s special agents are white.” He
described this increasing homogeneity as a crisis and stated, “It’s a huge problem … because I worry about the effectiveness of the FBI.” He continued by stating, “We’re obviously less effective because we have to operate in communities that are increasingly diverse.” (Comey, 2016)