Estimating a person’s capability to do X, Y, or Z (do a job effectively, be a law-abiding citizen, be a consistently productive citizen not dependent on welfare programs, etc.) based on skin color or geographical origin of their ancestry is a heuristic.
HBD argues that it is a relatively accurate heuristic. The anti-HBD crowd argues that it is an inaccurate heuristic.
OrphanWilde seems to be arguing that, even if HBD is correct that these heuristics are relatively accurate, we don’t need heuristics like this in the first place because there are even better heuristics or more direct measurements of a person’s individual capability to do X, Y, or Z already out there. (IQ, interviews, etc.)
The HBD advocates here seem to be arguing that we do, in fact, need group-based heuristics because individual heuristics: 1. Are more costly in terms of time, and are thus just not feasible for many applications.
2. Don’t really exist for certain measures, such as in estimating “probable future law-abidingness” or “probable future welfare dependency”. *3. Have political restrictions on being able to apply them. (For example, we COULD use formal IQ tests on job applicants, but such things have been made illegal precisely because they seem to paint a higher proportion of blacks in a bad light).
Perhaps OrphanWilde might like to respond to these objections. Here’s how I would respond: 1. The costliness of individual judgment is warranted because using group-based heuristics has politically-toxic spillovers, and might miss out on important outliers (by settling on local optima at the expense of global optima). We are not trying to screen out defective widgets from an assembly line (in which case a quick but “lossy” sorting heuristic might be justified). We are trying to sort people. The costliness of mis-sorting even a small percentage of individuals (for example, by heuristically rejecting a black man who happens (unbeknowst to us without doing the individual evaluation) to have an IQ of 150 from a certain job) outweighs the cost-saving of using quick group-based heuristics: both because it will inevitably politically anger the black community, with all sorts of politically toxic spillovers, and because we are missing out on a disproportionate goldmine of economic potential by missing these outliers.
2. If individual tests for probable law-abidingness or probable economic productivity don’t currently exist, then maybe we should try to develop them! Is that so impossible? Personally, I find it a bit unbelievable that the U.S. does not currently have tests for certain agreed-upon foundational cultural values as part of its immigration screening process. For example, if applicants had to respond to questions such as, “Explain why impartial fairness towards strangers rather than favoritism towards friends and relatives is an essential aspect of national citizenship and professional behavior” or “Explain the advantages of dis-establishment of religion from the political and legal affairs of the state” then I would sleep much more easily at night about our immigration policy. *3. Well, perhaps we should campaign to overturn the political restrictions on individual merit-based tests by pointing out that the only de-facto alternative that people will have is to use group-based tests of some sort or another (whether employers or other institutions openly admit to using such group-based heuristics or not, they will find a way to do so), and that group-based heuristics will actually hurt disadvantaged groups even more. In other words, unless you want all appointments in society to be decided by random casting of lots, people need some sort of criteria for judging others. Given this, it would be better to have individual-based tests rather than group-based tests. Even if the individual-based tests will end up showing “disparate impact” on certain groups, it will still be less than if we used group-based tests.
True in many cases, although for some jobs the task might not be well-specified in advance (such as in some cutting-edge tech jobs), and what you need are not necessarily people with any particular domain-specific skills, but rather just people who are good all-around adaptable thinkers and learners.
Estimating a person’s capability to do X, Y, or Z (do a job effectively, be a law-abiding citizen, be a consistently productive citizen not dependent on welfare programs, etc.) based on skin color or geographical origin of their ancestry is a heuristic.
HBD argues that it is a relatively accurate heuristic. The anti-HBD crowd argues that it is an inaccurate heuristic.
OrphanWilde seems to be arguing that, even if HBD is correct that these heuristics are relatively accurate, we don’t need heuristics like this in the first place because there are even better heuristics or more direct measurements of a person’s individual capability to do X, Y, or Z already out there. (IQ, interviews, etc.)
The HBD advocates here seem to be arguing that we do, in fact, need group-based heuristics because individual heuristics:
1. Are more costly in terms of time, and are thus just not feasible for many applications. 2. Don’t really exist for certain measures, such as in estimating “probable future law-abidingness” or “probable future welfare dependency”.
*3. Have political restrictions on being able to apply them. (For example, we COULD use formal IQ tests on job applicants, but such things have been made illegal precisely because they seem to paint a higher proportion of blacks in a bad light).
Perhaps OrphanWilde might like to respond to these objections. Here’s how I would respond:
1. The costliness of individual judgment is warranted because using group-based heuristics has politically-toxic spillovers, and might miss out on important outliers (by settling on local optima at the expense of global optima). We are not trying to screen out defective widgets from an assembly line (in which case a quick but “lossy” sorting heuristic might be justified). We are trying to sort people. The costliness of mis-sorting even a small percentage of individuals (for example, by heuristically rejecting a black man who happens (unbeknowst to us without doing the individual evaluation) to have an IQ of 150 from a certain job) outweighs the cost-saving of using quick group-based heuristics: both because it will inevitably politically anger the black community, with all sorts of politically toxic spillovers, and because we are missing out on a disproportionate goldmine of economic potential by missing these outliers. 2. If individual tests for probable law-abidingness or probable economic productivity don’t currently exist, then maybe we should try to develop them! Is that so impossible? Personally, I find it a bit unbelievable that the U.S. does not currently have tests for certain agreed-upon foundational cultural values as part of its immigration screening process. For example, if applicants had to respond to questions such as, “Explain why impartial fairness towards strangers rather than favoritism towards friends and relatives is an essential aspect of national citizenship and professional behavior” or “Explain the advantages of dis-establishment of religion from the political and legal affairs of the state” then I would sleep much more easily at night about our immigration policy.
*3. Well, perhaps we should campaign to overturn the political restrictions on individual merit-based tests by pointing out that the only de-facto alternative that people will have is to use group-based tests of some sort or another (whether employers or other institutions openly admit to using such group-based heuristics or not, they will find a way to do so), and that group-based heuristics will actually hurt disadvantaged groups even more. In other words, unless you want all appointments in society to be decided by random casting of lots, people need some sort of criteria for judging others. Given this, it would be better to have individual-based tests rather than group-based tests. Even if the individual-based tests will end up showing “disparate impact” on certain groups, it will still be less than if we used group-based tests.
(Edit: formatting improved upon request).
Are US employers forbidden from setting all meet based tests, or just IQ tests?
Because task-specific tests aren’t just an alternative to IQ tests, they’re a better alternative in almost every case.
True in many cases, although for some jobs the task might not be well-specified in advance (such as in some cutting-edge tech jobs), and what you need are not necessarily people with any particular domain-specific skills, but rather just people who are good all-around adaptable thinkers and learners.
can you put a newline before the 1. to improve the formatting. Thanks.