site banner
PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   27800 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/15/congress-is-preparing-to-restore-quotas-in-college-admissions/

Apparently, there's a new privacy bill in congress, with a maximally bad attachment to it, and quite likely to pass. (what kind of monster would be against privacy? )

Almost all kinds of decision making (anything that involves computers seems like) are classed as an algorithm.

If your 'algorithm' causes disparate impact, it's bad and you must change it or you're open to lawsuits. Yearly review of the 'algorithm' is mandatory, first review in 2 years after bill is passed..

Covers: every bigger business (iirc 750 employees+), all social networks and...??all nonprofits using computers to process 'personal data' to submit yearly evaluations if they're not causing 'disparate impact'. Excepted: the entire finance industry, government contractors.

It also explicitly allows discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristics (race, sex etc) for the purpose of

27 (ii) diversifying an applicant, participant, or customer pool;

Here's a bigger excerpt:

Here's how it works. APRA's quota provision, section 13 of APRA, says that any entity that "knowingly develops" an algorithm for its business must evaluate that algorithm "to reduce the risk of" harm. And it defines algorithmic "harm" to include causing a "disparate impact" on the basis of "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability" (plus, weirdly, "political party registration status"). APRA Sec. 13(c)(1)(B)(vi)(IV)&(V).

At bottom, it's as simple as that. If you use an algorithm for any important decision about people—to hire, promote, advertise, or otherwise allocate goods and services—you must ensure that you've reduced the risk of disparate impact.

The closer one looks, however, the worse it gets. At every turn, APRA expands the sweep of quotas. For example, APRA does not confine itself to hiring and promotion. It provides that, within two years of the bill's enactment, institutions must reduce any disparate impact the algorithm causes in access to housing, education, employment, healthcare, insurance, or credit.

No one escapes. The quota mandate covers practically every business and nonprofit in the country, other than financial institutions. APRA sec. 2(10). And its regulatory sweep is not limited, as you might think, to sophisticated and mysterious artificial intelligence algorithms. A "covered algorithm" is broadly defined as any computational process that helps humans make a decision about providing goods or services or information. APRA, Section 2 (8). It covers everything from a ground-breaking AI model to an aging Chromebook running a spreadsheet. In order to call this a privacy provision, APRA says that a covered algorithm must process personal data, but that means pretty much every form of personal data that isn't deidentified, with the exception of employee data. APRA, Section 2 (9).

Always amused and astonished how determined most western governments are to make any economic activity apart from finance and working for the government totally impossible.

Disparate impact is only an Anglo thing. It's almost completely ignored in Europe, where we only have to contend with environmental laws and bureaucratic bullshit.

Also you made my heart rate spike to cca 150 for a sec. In other thread I posted a photo of a girl calling herself 'Pasha'. I log back in, what do I see. Uff.

lol. I still can’t believe I got stuck with such a retarded stereotypical username

I believe it's a diminutive of Paul and Paula in Russian. Not that stereotypical esp not on English language internet. It's just rare.

Yes, it's diminutive of Pavel (Paul) in Russian. Paula is extremely rare in Russian

You can change it anytime you want btw, unless you're worried about people not recognizing you.

Spend a few weeks as "The X formerly known as Pasha"

It's less surprising when you look at the professions in Congress. The majority of these people have done their level best to never spend a single day of their lives producing any good or service that anyone would willingly purchase.

Wouldn't this apply to almost all universities that require faculty applicants to submit DEI statements?

I'm quite that practice has a disparate impact.

There are exceptions for:

  • self-testing to mitigate unlawful discrimination
  • diversifying
  • advertising things to underrepresented groups

But I think you're right that what you said isn't any of those?

Since diversifying in one direction (racially, LGBTQ) will almost certainly run contrary to diversifying in another (political party registration) the law would appear likely to be inherently contradictory. All smart whites/asians/indians will quickly register as Republicans (whether they vote as such or at all is of course irrelevant).

What does a college do when faced with the direct trade off between hiring Democrat (overrepresented) black (underrepresented) faculty and hiring Republican (underrepresented) white male (overrepresented) faculty, if both types of rejected applicant threaten to sue?

This bill should pass because it will lead to SCOTUS having to bring down disparate impact or literally paralyze the entire American civil legal system.

All smart whites/asians/indians will quickly register as Republicans (whether they vote as such or at all is of course irrelevant).

Hmm, this could theoretically apply to everyone: a queer black woman Republican would check a lot of boxes. It would be ironic if this backfires and moves the Republican party leftward. ("Polls show that over 60% of Republicans believe...")

These would just be legal. They'd be allowed to do it because they're diversifying. They don't have to worry about it because their action fell into one of the exceptions.

At least, that's how I read it.

Then everything counts as diversifying. You get sued for hiring too many white males? You’re diversifying politically. You get sued for hiring too many liberals? You’re diversifying racially. It effectively abolishes disparate impact anyway. Even progressive corporations will just use whatever excuse their lawyers tell them to.

The circle will be squared the same way it usually is. Disparate impact against unfavored groups will be ignored by setting up extremely high standards for it to be proved and carving out easy exceptions. Disparate impact against favored groups will have little burden of proof and few if any exceptions will be tolerated. Want to discriminate against Republicans? "Oh, republicans just are too stupid to be in academia, see we have a study here showing that". Don't want to discriminate in favor of black people? Too bad.

As for SCOTUS, you can barely get John Roberts to make a decision; he certainly won't enforce it.

You and I are usually on the same page with regards to this particular black pill, but this legislation seems so obviously stupid (because the mitigating algorithms will have to be stated clearly) that it transcends my usual pessimism in its idiocy.

Yes, it’s a contradictory law because being ‘equal’ in terms of political party registration is going to unequally favor, say, white men for many jobs that are mostly done by liberals, since for example almost all potential Republican college professors (if political party is part of disparate impact) will be white males, and so correcting that would have a disparate impact on women/poc.

Yeah, I just don’t see it happening.

GOP leadership seems to be completely capable of messing things up so maybe this bill does reach a point where it might pass. Then it won’t and we will see headlines about how Trump killed a bill to protect your privacy online. I think a lot of us on the right are becoming quite happy to have Trump as the sin eater. Granted it should not get to this point where the GOP is considering passing it. It should just be a bill that never gets to a vote in Congress

COVERED ALGORITHM.—The term “covered algorithm” means a computational process, including one derived from machine learning, statistics, or other data processing or artificial intelligence techniques, that makes a decision or facilitates human decision- making by using covered data, which includes determining the provision of products or services or ranking, ordering, promoting, recommending, amplifying, or similarly determining the delivery or display of information to an individual.

I wonder how that would apply to dating apps; would they now be required to design algorithms such that an Asian man, black woman, or trans woman all get equivalent number of matches to their privileged counterparts? Or is that not discrimination?

This could be really interesting.

  1. Adding political party registration as a protected class could end up changing the character of many institutions and organizations. For example, forcing universities to hire Republicans would have major long-term effects on the values of future college graduates.
  2. This law conflicts with the principles of freedom of association and equal protection. It'll force the issue up through the courts (no way it doesn't get an instant challenge up to the Supreme Court) and with this Court the result could be something wild like reversing Griggs v Duke entirely.
  3. Even if it stands, it will bring quotas to the fore as a political issue and make the public conversations more clearly about group spoils vs. overall efficiency. It adds such onerous requirements for businesses to make any useful predictions about people that there will be tons of examples of waste and inefficiency due to the law. In an accelerationist way this could be good for getting back to a more reasonable set of laws.

Adding political party registration as a protected class

I'm unclear on how "political party registration status" will be interpreted. Does it mean that they "can't create" "have to pay attention to" a disparate impact on Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Greens, etc.? Or does it merely mean that they "can't create" "have to pay attention to" a disparate impact on people who are registered and people who aren't registered?

"Original public meaning" is failing my poor spectrum-y brain.

Currently disparate impact has a carve-out for business critical reasons (which is why Google can’t be successfully sued for the fact that fewer than 15% of software engineers are black, for example). If that is maintained, then a college could argue that, say, only 5% of qualified candidates for an English literature professor job are Republicans and so they don’t actually do anything wrong if 95% of the English faculty are Democrats.

Reversing or at least heavily limiting disparate impact seems inevitable with this court. Roberts and ACB will be unhappy with it but if something as ridiculous as this happens they won’t really have a choice because of the sheer volume of litigation it would unleash.

If college admissions were determined by “algorithm” (paper or digital) then that algorithm would be obtainable in lawsuit discovery. If that algorithm involved rectifying disparate impact (to apply this law) by bolstering eg. black and Hispanic scores, it would directly contravene not only last year’s SCOTUS judgment but also the previous judgment that ruled direct quotas explicitly unconstitutional. It would appear, therefore, that using this new law to reimplement affirmative action would not be legal.

Yes, but the lower courts could just ignore that. Maybe in another 10 years the Supreme Court will finally take a case and issue a wishy-washy decision that the lower courts could then ignore again.

It would appear, therefore, that using this new law to reimplement affirmative action would not be legal.

Is there no way for Democrats to make the court more favorable ? E.g. by say, packing it with wise latinas?

The Democrats could technically pack the Supreme Court by abolishing the senate filibuster and using a 51 seat majority + the presidency to do so, sure. I suspect that at least several senators would balk at it, though, such that their current majority is insufficient. If they got back to 56/57 seats it would be viable, although of course as soon as the GOP had a President and senate majority it would be immediately neutered by them doing the same.

I believe the scotus size was set by statute, meaning that the house is required to consent to an expansion of the court size. If only the senate and president had to conspire to add additional justices, I figure it would have happened already.

Yes. There's some !!fun!! questions about what happens if the Senate and the President does it anyway, but (probably?) not a target.

Nah, Manchin and Sinema both objected even when the Dems had the House.

I’m unsure the scotus would seat the new justices under a separation powers approach.

plus, weirdly, "political party registration status"

There seems to be an interest, possibly growing, on the center-right in these strictly-neutral laws like the Civil Rights Act and Title IX. They're not without success: a number of male students successfully challenged universities for anti-male bias in applying Obama-era sexual assault investigation policies, there's an ongoing likely-to-succeed suit (props to Trace) involving FAA ATC hiring, and those are just the first examples that come to mind. I've seen at least a few universities explicitly table student motions regarding BDS because the adults in the room are concerned of potential legal trouble (presumably under the Civil Rights Act). It'd be unsurprising to me if a bunch of pro-Israel Jewish academics sue, for example, Columbia over alleged institutional bias in hiring or hostile workplace environments.

Sneaking in political registration presumably enables new fronts in culture lawfare: suddenly a left-leaning institution that uses "algorithms" to sort resumes, college applications, and the like can be taken to task for why their system spits out disparately low numbers of registered Republicans. Is the bias of The Algorithm on social media deprioritizing certain political views? Was this bias intentional? It doesn't matter under a disparate impact standard!

I don't know that I like the law as you've presented it, but I can see where the legislatures are coming from. And in today's political climate, it sadly feels like state-enforced colorblindness is, if anything, a win for my preferred liberal pluralist society, even if my libertarian sympathies disagree.

Although this seems the first example of a truly opt-in class being adopted in this fashion, which might lead to some interesting results if people start registering novel political parties specifically to form a protected class.

That's interesting. At first glance, I thought "why would Republicans support this law".

It seems like it would be better to get rid of group preferences. The problem is that, even when group preferences are banned, corporations, governments, and universities just go ahead and do them anyway.

Perhaps it's better to simply enshrine Republicans, conservatives, and Christians as new protected classes allowing the possibility of torts (or the threat of torts) to keep people from discriminating against them.

Since we can't stop disparate impact from being used as a cudgel, it's time to arm both sides of the culture war. Universities need to be sued for the fact that less than 5% of professors are Republican.

I mean, technically ‘white people’ are already a ‘protected class’ under the law as a racial group, and states like California make political ideology a protected status too (which is seemingly why Damore was able to negotiate a nice settlement with Google). What is more relevant is practice; since almost all major white collar economic activity occurs in deep blue states and cities, activist progressive judges and district attorneys can always selectively apply these laws to favored groups. It’s very rare for criminals who attack whites to be charged with racially aggravated offenses.

The funniest thing would be, if they truly wanted to address 'disparate impact' meaning proportional representation in everything desirable, that'd de facto be a return of the Jewish quota too. Despite falling off a bit due to intermarriage Jews are still over-achieving quite a bit over basic whites, so any legislation that'd truly remove disparate impact would be in essence also a quote on Jews, if they chose to identify as such, no ?

Progressives have proven to be adept hypocrites, rules-lawyering their way into opportunities unavailable to them by their own 'principles'.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/07/living/feat-mindy-kaling-brother-affirmative-action/index.html

Other examples like Dolezal and the Canadian professor who pretended to be native are also extant, and this is before the narrative-flipping progressives engage in whenever they are called out: decry any attempt at scrutiny as sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic/islamophobic.

Conservatives have been racking up brute force victories in courts via judge packing, but the progressives will remain adept at gaming the system to their benefit. The most ironic part is that I think the progressives aren't aware that they're hollowing out their words with their actions, they seem to really believe carveouts for themselves are just part of playing the game.

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