site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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.

33
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Say you get your way and the disparate impact hiring regime is dismantled. What do you do about the fact that your company now hires disproportionately large numbers of white and Asian people and almost no Black people, and the Black people who do get hired never get promoted?

Who cares? None of those things is bad in and of itself. It all comes down to motive. If you are hiring very few black people because you are discriminating against them, that's certainly bad. But if it's because the applicants really are less qualified, or because there are fewer applicants, that's perfectly fine.

Why is that a problem? What do differential outcomes have to do with the racism and collectivism your OP was concerned with?

It wasn't my op, but if racism isn't the cause of your company no longer hiring Black people, what is?

  • -13

if racism isn't the cause of your company no longer hiring Black people, what is?

The entire purpose of HBD is to provide an answer for this question. And I reject the premise that your company would no longer hire black people, perhaps at a lower rate than other races but companies hire individuals and not races.

Because the company wants to hire only the most qualified people and in technical fields those people are very rarely black. It's the same same reason NFL teams don't have many Asian players.

Every other KPI that results in a hire or promotion? You're the one creating the hypothetical situation that absent disparate impact "almost no Black people" will be hired and those that are will "never get promoted". In your hypothetical is the only reason such a thing would happen because of racism?

What does the NBA do about paucity of 5'5" tall basketball players?

How is promoting a Black man to a corporate position similar to a 5 foot tall man playing basketball?

  • -13

People assume that height is correlated with skill, but the best basketball players tend to not be the tallest, especially for free throws. Short basketball players can be quite good and have roles in which their shortness is not liability but actually a benefit. Basketball is dynamic enough to have uses for people of all sorts of body types...tall people for blocking, short people for speed , big people for centers, etc. Long-distance running however is much more dominated by one body type.. very skinny people between 5'6 to 5'11.

People assume that height is correlated with skill, but the best basketball players tend to not be the tallest

Those propositions do not contradict each other.

People assume that height is correlated with skill

Yeah, because it factually is. The average NBA player is 9 inches taller than the average American. The top 5 guys in the league by win shares last year are all 7 footers. If height weren't correlated with basketball skill, there's zero chance that would happen.

Short basketball players can be quite good and have roles in which their shortness is not liability but actually a benefit. Basketball is dynamic enough to have uses for people of all sorts of body types...tall people for blocking, short people for speed , big people for centers, etc.

Do you watch basketball? There are basically zero "short people" in the NBA. Steph Curry looks like a short guy because he's constantly surrounded by guys that are 6 inches taller, but he's actually 6'3". Including "tall people for blocking" and "big people for centers" is incredibly odd phrasing for someone that watches the game in question.

Long-distance running however is much more dominated by one body type.. very skinny people between 5'6 to 5'11.

The greatest distance runner ever is 5'5".

People assume that height is correlated with skill, but the best basketball players tend to not be the tallest, especially for free throws.

Derrick Rose and Steph Curry are the shortest players to win MVP in the past decade, at 6'2", or in the 96th percentile of American males.

So room for everybody, provided you're in the top 5%.

Do you actually not believe height is an advantage in basketball. That's ridiculous. As is using free throws as your measure of talent.

I dunno if height as as much of an advantage because the other players are tall , so it's like a Red Queen problem, or being taller makes for actually better players. I think the evidence is mixed in the latter. Smarter people obviously make for better engineers, but shorter basketball players may still be competent at basketball.

here we see plenty of examples of successful short basketball players

https://www.quora.com/Can-you-be-short-and-good-at-basketball

So even if the mean is 6'5 or so, being 5'7 is at least three standard deviations lower than the mean basketball player height, yet some short players are still very good, good enough to play at D1 college or NBA level. That would be in IQ terms like having an IQ of 85 and being a top mathematician, which you would never see. So I think basketball admits for more variance than maybe assumed by the mean height alone.

As is using free throws as your measure of talent.

I also doubt that heigh is much of a disadvantage to shooting free throws. Instead, I would guess that poor free throw shooting doesn't necessarily rule someone out if they're a 7-footer that can block shots, but if you're 6 foot flat, you'd damned well better be a marksman. There are too many examples of tall guys shooting free throws well, even really goony tall guys like Big Z, for me to think that it's a big effect. There might be something there, but I think it's mostly just selection bias.

Muggsy notwithstanding I recall there is something of a high pass filter effect when it comes to height and skill correlations in basketball. Once you've filtered out all the people below 5'6" then other factors dominate.

That's an effect you'll see with any correlation that has a strength below 1. Your distribution will look elliptical, and for any eccentricity below 1, the maximum x-coordinate and maximum y-coordinate will not be on the same point.

It's definitely more than filtering out people below 5'6". The NBA league average height is 6'6" that's 9" taller than the average American man. And only about 20% of men are below 5'6". Filtering them out is not raising the average by 9". Height is pretty much a pure advantage in basketball all other things being equal.

Literally nothing. If I think my business is optimizing for profits and efficiencies, I'm unconcerned with the ethnic distribution of my employees. If I owned the Buffalo Bills, I wouldn't insist that we get a white cornerback on the field to start correcting for the injustice of underrepresentation in the NFL either.

You still should be concerned about stopping your unscrupulous employees making hires and promotions based on race and not on competency

And you still should be concerned about not hiring talented people held back by racism in their previous history, someone might have worse GPA or worse employment history but actually be a better hire

How is not hiring Black people for corporate positions the same as not hiring White athletes for sports teams?

  • -15

I genuinely don't understand the question. They're both positions that people are desirous of that have racial demographics that differ from the general population. What would you say the materially relevant difference is?