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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   31393 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024

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I saw someone post this leadership page on the fema website. Do these people look like the best our country has to offer? Just looking at these people I wouldn’t put it past them to be dragging their feet. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they’re incompetent. Either way, I don’t know how anyone can look at this and think the USA is anything other than an embarrassment.

https://www.fema.gov/about/organization/offices-leadership

They look fine to me.

Can you show me a leadership page that you wouldn’t say is incompetent? I’m not sure I understand your criteria.

They all seem pretty qualified. Just looking at the first one;

Ms. Criswell began her career in emergency management in Aurora, Colorado, where she led strategic change in the city's emergency and disaster planning. During her tenure, Ms. Criswell coordinated transitional housing and family reunification efforts in response to receiving evacuees during the response to Hurricane Katrina. She previously served at FEMA as the leader of one of the Agency's National Incident Management Assistance Teams (IMAT) and as a Federal Coordinating Officer. In this role, Ms. Criswell was the primary Federal representative responsible for leading the agency's response to and recovery from emergencies and major disasters, from severe flooding in North Dakota to hurricanes in South Carolina to fires in Colorado. She also spent two years as an executive in the private sector, providing exceptional technical expertise and the experience necessary to help her clients achieve their critical missions.

Ms. Criswell also proudly served 21 years in the Colorado Air National Guard. She is a veteran of two overseas tours to include as a fire officer in Kuwait immediately following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and to Qatar in support of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2010 where she advised senior leadership on fire protection requirements for new and existing military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Ms. Criswell holds a Bachelor of Science from Colorado State University, a Master of Public Administration from the University of Colorado – Denver, and a Master of Arts in Security Studies from the Naval Postgraduate School, Center for Homeland Defense and Security.

Seems like the exact experience you would expect for someone in such a role? She was also Commissioner of the NY Emergency Management Dept.

Seems like the exact experience you would expect for someone in such a role?

'Strategic change' could be a code for shibboleths, but it is a good resume. The point about the fire officer in Kuwait might actually be relevant here- that's not 'fire' as in 'something is combusting,' but 'deconflicting airspace so shells and planes don't crash into eachother mid-air.'

That would be the precise sort of mentality to stress airspace deconfliction that's sparked some of the discussion here.

How exactly are you judging them as "an embarrassment"? Those look like ordinary professional photos and they look Iike normal people. Without knowing anything else about them, should I assume it's just the fact that many of them are black and/or women that's causing the curled upper lip?

They look like bureaucrats. They look like people that have spent their entire professional lives pushing paper around and playing office politics. I can only imagine what skillset it takes to advance to leadership in the federal government, but it seems unlikely that they’ve been selected for competence at responding to emergency situations.

I think it’s worthwhile for people to look at that page and assess for themselves what type of person is responsible for the hurricane response.

People should ask themselves, does this group look like the type of people that would prioritize Ukraine, “migrants”, or rural Americans. There is a well known trope that coastal elites seem to hold rural people in contempt. I’m willing to make the leap that the people on that leadership page are part of that group.

They look like bureaucrats. They look like people that have spent their entire professional lives pushing paper around and playing office politics.

They look like every person I see with a professional headshot on LinkedIn, from sales managers to software engineers.

I can only imagine what skillset it takes to advance to leadership in the federal government, but it seems unlikely that they’ve been selected for competence at responding to emergency situations.

Actually, being an adept bureaucrat is very important for people in charge of managing and funding a disaster response. These are not the people who will actually be wading through floodwaters to bring emergency supplies, which is of course an entirely different skillset.

People should ask themselves, does this group look like the type of people that would prioritize Ukraine, “migrants”, or rural Americans.

I would ask myself that about the politicians who determine policy, not try to divine someone's innermost loyalties based on a picture that reveals only sex and race.

There is a well known trope that coastal elites seem to hold rural people in contempt.

"Well known trope" = "Thing that lots of people are happy to believe because it fits their culture war priors." In fact most civil servants (and these people, while fairly high up in FEMA, are pretty low on the fed food chain) are no more or less diligent about their duties and responsibilities than the average corp wageslave, and I would argue generally moreso. You don't join FEMA because you have a seething hatred of "rural people" and think this is your best avenue to hurt them.

I’m willing to make the leap that the people on that leadership page are part of that group.

Again, I am asking why you think you can be so confident about this based solely on their photographs? If you just assume that anyone in a government agency leadership position is a "coastal elite" who holds rural people in contempt, then it wouldn't really matter what they look like. You could have just said "I'll bet FEMA hates rural people." I think you have a very unsophisticated inductive reasoning chain.

Given the antagonistic relationship between meritocracy and efforts to diversify institutions, a particularly "diverse" institution is in fact (weak) prima facie evidence of subpar competence among its members.

They look like every person I see with a professional headshot on LinkedIn, from sales managers to software engineers.

Tomayto, tomahto. It's not a pure demographics thing: https://www.stevesailer.net/p/prima-facie-leadership

I'm autistic enough to dislike this observation and to not be particularly acute at picking it up myself, but not autistic enough to pretend it isn't real.

I am very skeptical of this kind of phenotyping, which is often little better than phrenology. "You can just tell by looking at the strong-jawed white chad that he's a superior New Soviet Manalpha male." A lot of people claim they can detect "soy face" when it's just a guy making a goofy expression. Really, do you think you could pick Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower out of that West Point photo without being told who they are?

In this instance, it seems pretty clear to me that the judgment is purely based on the fact that the OP saw a lot of women and blacks.

Really, do you think you could pick Omar Bradley and Dwight Eisenhower out of that West Point photo without being told who they are?

No, but I'm probably <1st percentile at facial recognition in general, and I'm reasonably willing to believe that normies would do better than chance (and that the entire West Point football team was already pretty strongly selected for Chadly leadership ability.).

phrenology. "You can just tell by looking at the strong-jawed white chad that he's a superior New Soviet Manalpha male

I mean, yeah, pretty much. I'm seeing a lot of pointing and sputtering at the idea that facial features and appearance are correlated with personality and aptitudes in unsurprising ways, without much actual convincing evidence to the contrary.

Skepticism isn't the same as "pointing and sputtering." Of course I am speaking for myself; I don't know if you mean me or if you have seen other people "pointing and sputtering." (I haven't, at least not here.)

The thing is, you can make inferences about someone's health and genetic gifts based on their appearance, sure. A tall, well-proportioned man with a strong jaw probably is a more fit physical specimen. So I, at least, am not claiming that you can determine nothing from appearance.

My skepticism encompasses the following points:

  1. Being a handsome strong-jawed chad may have some statistical correlation to also being smart and possessing natural leadership qualities, but the two don't automatically go hand in hand, so picking a "leader" because someone looks like Captain America in a headshot is probably at best a flawed heuristic. Yeah, given no other info, I'd pick Captain America over soy-face too. I would not agree that you can, as a general rule, pick people for their leadership qualities and competence based on their photos.

  2. A lot of what you see in photographs is superficial presentation. Any stylist, photographer, or couturier can tell you that you can make a strong man look weak or a weak man look strong with the right outfit and angle and lighting. (Same with women; turning a 4 into a 8 or a 8 into a 4 is not hard.)

  3. Going back to the OP, there wasn't even any discussion of specific characteristics of the people in question, just vague hinting that they aren't white men and therefore are inferior.

Which is why I am pushing back, because I'm totally interested in well-presented arguments about how you can correlate specific physical characteristics to positive traits (and anyone who's been around for a while knows I am not afraid of HBD arguments), but the OP's post was lazy. If all you have to say is "Look at all those women and blacks, obviously incompetent garbage!" what are you expecting, sober head nods and clapping at your well-reasoned argument?

Yeah, this is all pretty fair. I might argue that in a modern educational and hiring environment most credentials and experience are pretty much as susceptible to manipulation as headshots, and not all that much more reliable. It's not something I believe with a great deal of confidence, and in this specific context I think it more or less assumes the consequent, but it's worth considering.

The steelman is that institutional DIE focus causes both uselessness and detectable changes in racial/sex ratios, which creates a correlation between those ratios and uselessness - valid Bayesian evidence - even in the absence of significant causation.

Except you can click on all these people and see that they are all amply qualified and experienced.

There are likely to be amply credentialed but that is different than qualified. This is a problem caused by the systemic discrimination that is now called DEI, but has existed since the 60s. I can be admitted to a very good school, say University of Michigan right next to a black woman, and there is a 90+% chance I was more qualified to get in. Then we can matriculate, and because no one fails anymore we will have similar GPAs. Then we will take the LSAT and again, this black women can get a mediocre score compare to me and we will both then be admitted to Michigan's law school. Again no one fails anymore, and now we graduate and my mildly better GPA (lets say 3.9 vs 3.8, that is generally the spread allowed at such schools now), means a law firm can justify hiring her over me. And they will.

She will wash out of biglaw, most people do, but the DEI hires do at extraordinary rates. But it will still say "Biglaw" on the resume forever, so now she can be picked for a make work government job paying 6 figures, and continue to do little to nothing for the rest of her "experience".

I am often reminded of Hillary Clinton when discussing this or similar topics. Recall how the media constantly called her the "most qualified" candidate ever? They love checking boxes. But checking boxes is not a qualification, its a credential, and they haven't been all that meaningfully linked for my entire lifetime.

People can be socially promoted through their entire education process and career now despite incompetency. Private companies are more likely to terminate these people. Therefore they are more likely to end up working for the government. Without a process to cull the useless, useless people will accumulate within an organization.

Recently, a woman sued Hartford Public Schools because she is unable to read or write. She was an honor roll student at the high school and currently is a part time student at University of Connecticut-Hartford.

https://readlion.com/a-connecticut-college-student-cant-read-or-write-she-blames-her-public-school/

Of course none of this is evidence that these FEMA people are necessarily incompetent. But believing that "qualifications = competency" is mere credentialism.

I think it's clear that this disaster has been mismanaged by FEMA. That, more than college degrees, is strong evidence of competency or lack thereof.

Is it representative of the population? Possibly. Is it representative of their workforce? Possibly. It's hard to tell

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