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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   29240 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 19, 2024

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Second, many better tools already exist (standardized tests, colorblind policy, merit based immigration vetting).

Sure, and then when you use those tools and a disparate racial impact is found the courts find you've run afoul of the Civil Rights Act.

It is a defense to disparate impact along protected class lines if it can be shown that the discriminatory factor is a business necessity. I'm less confident in how this plays out in practiced, how many bullshit claims of prevailed since the CRA, and how much bullshit claims have trailed off since.

Tons of US companies including elite hedge funds and so on, not to mention the US military itself, use extremely g-loaded standardized testing in recruitment. All your lawyers have to be able to prove is that people who score better on the test do better at their jobs, which should be trivial. Cases where organizations have lost (there was a fire department one semi-recently iirc) usually happen because they’re so incompetent they forgot to collect the data in advance of getting sued.

All your lawyers have to be able to prove is that people who score better on the test do better at their jobs, which should be trivial.

Even if that’s “all” your lawyers have to do (just draw the rest of the owl), that certainly may not be trivial due to range restriction, Berkson’s paradox, and normal distribution tail effects (e.g., Gladwell’s Fallacy).

IQ and (hypothetical) job performance could be strongly correlated in the applicant pool, but weak or even inverted among the employed.

It’s not trivial demonstrating that height is predictive of tennis and basketball performance using data on ATP and NBA players, respectively. Some fans, including hardcore fans, are even under the impression that it can be negatively correlated in some ranges. “Federer, Nadal, and Djokovic show that the optimal height for tennis is around 6’1”-6’2”, and players like Del Potro or taller are just too tall” is a common sentiment.

This is the whole SAT aren’t predictive of college performance. It’s not predictive once you have already filtered for SAT skills plus other categories.

Yes, the disparate impact standard needs to go, and should be a top priority.

How do you expect to convince the legislature or courts to reject the disparate impact standard except through convincing them HBD is true? If it isn't true disparate impact makes perfect sense. If I believed in my heart that every group really was fundamentally equal, I would love the disparate impact standard. Nothing else would make sense!

Yeah, it definitely helps.

Differences in everything else would also matter. Cultures differ, life opportunities, etc. also matter and anything that's influenced by these could have disparate impact in some direction or another.

Pre-existing widespread disparities can cause disparities in otherwise fair measures, and are not indicative of discriminatory intent, the latter of which was what the civil rights act was supposed to address.

Pre-existing widespread disparities can cause disparities in otherwise fair measures, and are not indicative of discriminatory intent

There are a pair of long effort-post replies I made to a mutual on Tumblr (who also posts here rarely) that I should probably slightly edit into an effort-post here, on the legal-academic understanding of "racism" and civil rights law, starting with an argument I encountered pushing back on the usual criticism of Griggs, and extending through a sort of steelman of "Kendiism" (including references to Kendi's works and definitions).

To try to tl;dr summarize, "discriminatory intent" is irrelevant. The EEOC stands for "Equal Employment Opportunity Commission," and they define "equal opportunity" as the absence of "disparate impact." It doesn't matter if there's no discriminatory intent by any party, the mere fact that something (such as IQ tests) causes an ethnic minority to have a lower likelihood of being hired makes it presumptively forbidden. This may not have been the intent behind the civil rights act, on the part of many of its supporters (though I've seen people argue that for many of the more academic sorts, addressing "disparate impact" was always the goal, and "discriminatory intent" mattered only in that it was theorized as the primary cause), but it's how the enforcement bodies, and the academic consensus, very quickly came to interpret it. And, as they say, personnel is policy, therefore, so long as those same people are in charge of enforcement, no amount of "no really, this is about discrimination, we really mean it this time" from legislators is going to stop them from targeting "disparate impact."

That's probably fair. That said, a favorable supreme court ruling might be able to make a little of a difference. The law as it exists is clear enough, just badly misinterpreted. I'd be interested in seeing the effort posts. Could they mandate some standard of evidence, with it specified what sorts of things could count? (explicit evidence of intent counts, ratios that are off does not)

If legislators really wanted to rein in rogue agencies, I bet being able to sue individual employees for agency misbehavior that they participated in would do the trick, though that could be kind of extreme and lead to further breakdown of the government.

Could they mandate some standard of evidence… explicit evidence of intent counts, ratios that are off does not

They could try, perhaps, but if the EEOC decides to ignore that and stick to the current (academic) consensus — "ratios that are off" matter, "evidence of intent" unnecessary — what is the recourse, then

I bet being able to sue individual employees for agency misbehavior that they participated in would do the trick

Requires a number of factors that I find unlikely, most notably cooperative courts. AIUI, there are many precedents holding a broad immunity to this sort of thing, and I doubt they'd like to weaken those. And, of course, even if Congress grants you the ability to sue, they can't grant you the ability to win. If the courts find against the plaintiff and rule that there was no "agency misbehavior" in 100% of the cases brought before them, then does it really matter?

and lead to further breakdown of the government.

What breakdown?

Sure, you'd have to win, but it being in external courts would help.

What breakdown?

I suppose I meant that it could lead to more government inaction and less trust in the governement, both of which we have plenty of.

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