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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35215 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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Reading Sotomayors and Jackson’s dissents all I can think is: “this is an excellent example of why affirmative action needs to be banned”

An opinion piece in the WSJ calls out poor numeracy. It appears the false claim was copied from an amicus brief, still it appears sloppy. I'd have thought statistical claims especially would receive specific attention / validation.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson enumerated purported benefits of “diversity” in education. “It saves lives,” she asserts. “For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live.”A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%.How could Justice Jackson make such an innumerate mistake? A footnote cites a friend-of-the-court brief by the Association of American Medical Colleges, which makes the same claim in almost identical language. It, in turn, refers to a 2020 study whose lead author is Brad Greenwood, a professor at the George Mason University School of Business.The study makes no such claims. It examines mortality rates in Florida newborns between 1992 and 2015 and shows a 0.13% to 0.2% improvement in survival rates for black newborns with black pediatricians (though no statistically significant improvement for black obstetricians).The AAMC brief either misunderstood the paper or invented the statistic. (It isn’t saved by the adjective “high-risk,” which doesn’t appear and isn’t measured in Greenwood’s paper.)Even the much more modest Greenwood result—which amounts to a difference of fewer than 10 Florida newborns a year—is flawed. It uses linear regression, appropriate for modeling continuous normally distributed variables like height or LSAT scores but not for categorical low-probability events like “newborn death.” The proper methodology would be a logistic model. The authors did one, hidden deep in an appendix rather than the body of the paper.There, the most highly specified model still shows an improvement in black newborn survival. But if you know how to read the numbers—the authors don’t say it—it also shows black doctors with a statistically significant higher mortality rate for white newborns, and a higher mortality rate overall, all else being equal.

You've been warned repeatedly for low-effort booing. This post is nothing but culture war and sneering.

Banned for three days.

In today's dissent, Sotomayor observed that "the Constitution places no value on discrimination". Maybe she just really believes in stare decisis? "Whelp, as of yesterday, I had thought that discrimination was a compelling interest, but the Court ruled otherwise, so now I guess that discrimination has no value whatsoever."

If she'd been cheeky enough to cite SFFA when she wrote that, I'd give her some credit.

Thomas is an affirmative action appointee too; no way was a non-black person getting Thurgood Marshall's seat.

One well known reason to oppose affirmative action even for minorities is that just the possibility of it taints the achievements of any minority who is capable enough to have succeeded on his own. Of course, the left doesn't pay attention to this and it's inherently hard for white people to point it out, but it seems as though you have just given an example of it.

Such an argument is a losing one automatically, as it implicitly agrees with the pro-affirmative action premise that something is only good(bad) if it’s good(bad) for non-Asian minorities.

Affirmative action privileges non-Asian minorities over Whites and Asians; non-Asian minorities hardest hit.

The left's answer to that problem, at least as materialized at a certain large Internet search firm, was to demand that you do not notice it and you're subject to adverse employment action if you do. "How dare you assume your co-workers aren't competent?". It's amazing how many otherwise-intractable problems are amenable to the use of force if you just have enough force available.

Of course, it doesn't work on Internet forums like this... but nobody cares what I think.

Of course, it doesn't work on Internet forums like this...

I feel kind of dirty saying that you of all people are too optimistic, but... have you forgotten about the doxxing mobs that go around phoning HR departments?

He at least had the good sense to feel ashamed of it

i remember reading a report or a narrative about yale law school affirmative action and them mentioning Thomas (or named him in it, before he was famous). It basically implied he wasn't that great of a student compared to his white peers. I might be remembering incorrectly though - if anyone knows what im referring to, please drop a link

I sorely hope I am never judged on my classroom participation at college.

edit: ignore me, I'm confused

Bork was nominated to replace Justice Powell, not Justice Marshall. That seat ultimately went to Kennedy.

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