by ryanobjc | 2025-04-18 23:07:34+00:00
"If a school enroll someone with a 400 point lower sat over the higher person on the sole basis of their race, that is a major Injustice on the scale of individual humans, even if it moves some group statistic closer to equal."

So this is a hypothetical that is not worth discussing. Until specific cases can be brought to bear, why are you inventing situations that may never have existed?

I'd also like to opine on SAT scores for a second. First off, it's well known that SAT scores are not directly correlative in post-secondary educational success, nor work-success. Second they are not highly accurate measurements - there's an inherent fuzziness to them. So even if 2 students had a SAT within some Epsilon, the SAT scores might not really provide much differentiation there. Ergo, basing all of our policies on SAT scores - which are well known to be easily gamed, and also a product of a private institution - seems not a good idea.

Moving on, the problem with being against "myopic obsession with the group statistics" is you are ignoring some important evidence. What do you think of the "group statistics" that say that black people start less businesses, have less family wealth? Or black women have higher maternal mortality? These are pointing to important individual outcomes that are, to say the least, wrong.

So I don't think that paying attention to group statistics, like black maternal mortality (aka how many black moms die in child birth or due to child birth) is "myopic" and "to the detriment of individual equality." It's a very very real problem we, if we intend to call ourselves a moral society, need to solve. So having specific programs to help solve black maternal mortality in a hospital is not "countering racism with racism" imo. It's a focused program on solving a focused problem.

This logic extends out to most "DEI" things. For example is it good if the students at universities drift from representing America on average? I'd say it is not good. What about the ivy league pledges to make school free for anyone who's family income was under $X a year? Is that a myopic obsession with group statistics, namely poor people who can't afford elite colleges even if they were admitted? Seems like yes that could fit into your definition of why you oppose DEI. And IT IS a DEI program - it's increasing diversity (income/class diversity) and equality/equity (improving outcomes for individuals) and inclusions (including those who cannot afford elite colleges).

So when DEI programs that are focused on race, because much of our racial divide was artificially constructed by racist laws and policies of the past, it is suddenly bad, even though I rarely hear anti-DEI people go on about the low income scholarships for ivy leagues. Honestly it starts to sound that in fact many people may in fact have a problem not with the overall concept, but the beneficiaries of the programs.

So back to your comment, let's pick some specific circumstances that we know about and may you can propose how you'd meaningfully fix it, policy wise, within 5 years: - Black maternal mortality us 3x higher than white maternal mortality - Black people are ~ 14.4% of USA, but 12.5% in colleges. Is this a problem? - If we think talent is spread equally, then we should expect to see more % of black founders in YCombinator than the 2-4% there is. Maybe not exactly 14.4% but surely closer to 10% than 0%? Is this worthwhile of being solved? - While we are at it, only 11% of YCombinator founders are women. Is this a problem?

So what can be done about these noticeable gaps? What kinds of suboptimal outcomes are being picked when, for example, few YCombinator founders even know about the challenges and struggles of the average American? (who's a woman btw, women are 50.49% of the population, a majority) What kinds of products, opportunities, etc are being missed here? Maybe none?

What are your "race blind improvements" to economic mobility here? You have a 5 year timeline to make statistically meaningful changes to these metrics.