The number of Asians (both East and South) among American readers is pretty surprisingly low − 43⁄855 ~= 5%. This despite Asians being, e.g., ~15% of the Ivy League student body (it’d be much higher without affirmative action), and close to 50% of Silicon Valley workers.
Being south asian myself—I suspect that the high achieving immigrant-and-immigrant-descended populations gravitate towards technical fields and Ivy leagues for different reasons than American whites do. Coming from hardship and generally being less WEIRD, they psychologically share more in common with the middle class and even blue collar workers than the Ivy League upper class—they see it as a path to success rather than some sort of grand purposeful undertaking. (One of the Asian Professional community I participated in articulated this and other differences in attitude as a reason that Asians often find themselves getting passed over for higher level management positions, as something to be overcome).
Lesswrong tends to appeal to abstract, starry-eyed types. I hate to use the word “privilege”, but there is some hard to quantify things, like degree of time talking about lesswrong-y key words like “free will” or “utilitarianism”, which are going to influence the numbers here. (Not that asians don’t like chatting about philosophy, but they certainly have less time for it and also they tend to focus on somewhat different topics during philosophical discussions and use different words. They’ve got a somewhat separate religious-philosophical tradition)
Another possibility that might make an even bigger difference is that, lacking an organized religion to revolt against, Asians may less often be militant atheists and skeptics. Lesswrong and Overcoming Bias owe part of their heritage to the skeptic blogosphere.
East Asian—mostly agreed. I think WEIRDness is the biggest factor. WEIRD thought emphasizes precision and context-independent formalization. I am pretty deracinated myself, but my thinking style is low-precision, tolerant of apparent paradoxes and context-sensitive. The difference is much like the analytic-continental divide in Western philosophy. I recommend Richard Nisbett’s book The Geography of Thought, which contrasts WEIRD thought with East Asian thought.
37 Ways Words Can Be Wrong (and LW as a whole) is important because of how brittle WEIRD concepts can be. (I have some crackpot ideas about maps and territories inspired by Jean Baudrillard. He’s French, of course...)
“Used against”, to me, implies active planning that may or may not exist here; but the pragmatic effects of the policy as implemented in American universities do seem to negatively affect Asians.
There’s pretty unambiguous statistical evidence that it happens. The Asian Ivy League percentage has remained basically fixed for 20 years despite the college-age Asian population doubling (and Asian SAT scores increasing slightly).
It’s not unambiguous because it doesn’t take into consideration other factors. SAT scores are the only variable mentioned in your article, but they’re not the only variable in whether a college accepts a student. They’ve become a less and less important factor over time.
At some colleges, a low SAT score would prevent you from being admitted by a high SAT score wouldn’t increase your chance of getting in. Colleges value GPA, class ranking, letters of recommendation, sports participation, extra-curricular activities, personal essay etc etc. It is possible that Asians have done worse on those other areas and aren’t getting screwed by quotas or affirmative action.
The number of Asians (both East and South) among American readers is pretty surprisingly low − 43⁄855 ~= 5%. This despite Asians being, e.g., ~15% of the Ivy League student body (it’d be much higher without affirmative action), and close to 50% of Silicon Valley workers.
Being south asian myself—I suspect that the high achieving immigrant-and-immigrant-descended populations gravitate towards technical fields and Ivy leagues for different reasons than American whites do. Coming from hardship and generally being less WEIRD, they psychologically share more in common with the middle class and even blue collar workers than the Ivy League upper class—they see it as a path to success rather than some sort of grand purposeful undertaking. (One of the Asian Professional community I participated in articulated this and other differences in attitude as a reason that Asians often find themselves getting passed over for higher level management positions, as something to be overcome).
Lesswrong tends to appeal to abstract, starry-eyed types. I hate to use the word “privilege”, but there is some hard to quantify things, like degree of time talking about lesswrong-y key words like “free will” or “utilitarianism”, which are going to influence the numbers here. (Not that asians don’t like chatting about philosophy, but they certainly have less time for it and also they tend to focus on somewhat different topics during philosophical discussions and use different words. They’ve got a somewhat separate religious-philosophical tradition)
Another possibility that might make an even bigger difference is that, lacking an organized religion to revolt against, Asians may less often be militant atheists and skeptics. Lesswrong and Overcoming Bias owe part of their heritage to the skeptic blogosphere.
/speculation
East Asian—mostly agreed. I think WEIRDness is the biggest factor. WEIRD thought emphasizes precision and context-independent formalization. I am pretty deracinated myself, but my thinking style is low-precision, tolerant of apparent paradoxes and context-sensitive. The difference is much like the analytic-continental divide in Western philosophy. I recommend Richard Nisbett’s book The Geography of Thought, which contrasts WEIRD thought with East Asian thought.
37 Ways Words Can Be Wrong (and LW as a whole) is important because of how brittle WEIRD concepts can be. (I have some crackpot ideas about maps and territories inspired by Jean Baudrillard. He’s French, of course...)
Is affirmative action being used against Asian even though they are a minority?
“Used against”, to me, implies active planning that may or may not exist here; but the pragmatic effects of the policy as implemented in American universities do seem to negatively affect Asians.
Ahh, the old ‘malicious or incompetent’ dichotomy.
I’m a big believer in Hanlon’s razor, especially as it applies to policy.
There’s pretty unambiguous statistical evidence that it happens. The Asian Ivy League percentage has remained basically fixed for 20 years despite the college-age Asian population doubling (and Asian SAT scores increasing slightly).
It’s not unambiguous because it doesn’t take into consideration other factors. SAT scores are the only variable mentioned in your article, but they’re not the only variable in whether a college accepts a student. They’ve become a less and less important factor over time.
At some colleges, a low SAT score would prevent you from being admitted by a high SAT score wouldn’t increase your chance of getting in. Colleges value GPA, class ranking, letters of recommendation, sports participation, extra-curricular activities, personal essay etc etc. It is possible that Asians have done worse on those other areas and aren’t getting screwed by quotas or affirmative action.
I’ve noticed this for a while. Might be interesting to look at this by referral source?