site banner
PaperclipPerfector  14d ago (text post)   35949 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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.

HR doesn't make hiring decisions, do they? At least at my (tech) company, they, at best, facilitate hiring. Hiring is determined by the engineers and managers.

They frequently pre-screen applicants before they ever go in front of an engineer or manager.

That's actually "recruiting", and they're usually either separate from HR (or outsourced entirely) or a separate thing within it. At least in tech recruiters are far more likely to be male than HR bureaucrats. And tempermentally they're not bureaucrats, they're salespeople.

Our recruiters (for an engineering focused org) are mostly women, and are incredibly bureaucratic about blocking resumes. Including in situations where managers have told someone "Hey, I think you'd be perfect, I'd like you to apply". Resume not only never makes it to the manager's desk (even if there are literally zero other candidates), but there is nothing the manager can do to lean on HR other than to re-post the position with changes.

I've seen it happen multiple times, including to people who should have set off all of HR's demographic desire bells. Our HR and their control is probably the biggest reason why I'm looking at other career prospects.

HR screens initial candidates who are then put in front of the relevant teams.

Even if HR does initial screens, they aren't throwing the resumes of qualified applicants in the circular file just because they're (probably) white. Most of it is throwing out the massive volume of garbage applications from people who have no hope of getting the job in any universe. Usually they don't even do a great job at this, especially if this work is outsourced to a recruiting company. My brother had a manager who was completely incompetent but only ended up getting fired after it was discovered that he was sharing personal information of female employees with people who didn't need to know about it. A friend of ours (who used to work with my brother) works for a company that was looking to hire a manager and the hiring team was complaining that all their staffing company was doing was sending them this loser's application over and over again.

Replying to @falling-star too

Well, I can say that's not the way it works in my company, which may not be quite the norm. In my company, individual teams drive the hiring process, including finding candidates. Recruitment does a call, but it's mostly to prep candidates in what comes next. If they narrowed out a candidate during an intense hiring period for reasons other then serious flags, there would be hell to pay. Managers have a difficult enough time getting candidates through the hiring pipeline as is.

If individual teams already have full discretion over hiring then presumably abolishing DEI will have minimal impact anyway (it will either continue to happen if individual managers put their fingers on the scale for ideological reasons, or it won’t if they don’t).

HR is involved and will push managers and hiring decisionmakers towards diversity candidates, but they're not, at least in tech, a literal screen. Orders like Trump's will remove some of HR's ability to push; they can no longer say DEI will be better for getting government contracts, for instance.

What I’ve seen is two-fold: (1) if we are hiring a larger class, then there are effectively AA slots and (2) people understand incentives and so if there is a URM they will push them through the interview process provided they are reasonably in the same church (if not pew) as the other candidate.

Clueless recruiters have often blocked people I've referred to my company so that they don't even get a phone screen. In most cases it's because the recruiters are incompetent and can't understand a resume, but there may be some DEI thumb on the scale here as well.

Yes, that's my assessment based on my company. It's a big company, but I know that at least one other big company totally differs from mine in how hiring is done (it's more central, less team-owned). I don't know which is closer to the norm for others companies.

Despite all of my company's flaws, I've always been proud of the fact that I really don't know any diversity hires. The team owned and data driven process to assess candidate skills have been very effective at keeping DEI's influence on hiring almost non-existent.

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