Ok: I think people who are genuinely working toward equity would advocate equity for all people. Those who only advocate for equity when it favors certain groups aren't really working toward equity at all.
What do you think? Shouldn't university DEI programs be trying to recruit more young men to reduce the gender gap in higher education?
IME, that particular assertion has been discussed at length for years. Is it intellectually curious or interesting to start over again? Why would you want to have the discussion again? But I asked for it, so I'll go along with it a little.
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Imagine a wealthy hedge fund manager's white male kid, a graduate of Exeter and a reasonably qualfied candidate, is denied admission to Harvard. How does and doesn't that implicate equity? Imagine a bicycle delivery person's Latina female kid, a graduate of an underfunded public school and similarly qualified to the other kid, is denied admission to Harvard, or is admitted but can't afford it. How do those situations differ?
White billionaires and Latinx poor - an extreme example used for simplicity (skipping the real-life complexity of, for example, Latinx billionaires) - are both 'groups', and each individual in both groups should have equal rights and something like equal opportunity. But to infer that the two situations are therefore the same with regard to equity is, IMHO, obviously false - to the point of being dishonest and just disruptive, demanding we spend our time explaining it. So I'm going to skip the explanation and assume we all understand those parts. ...
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A few thoughts on the issues:
Discrimination x Power = Harm
The harm caused by discrimination is some of the worst in human history. To cause harm, discrimination requires power. Imagine Native American businesses in Los Angeles refused to hire white people. It would be discriminatory but mostly harmless - the white person's job market is statistically unaffected because Native Americans as a group have little power. But if white people decided not to hire Native Americans, there would be lots of harm; it would effectively end careers and economic opportunity for many Native Americans because white people have enormous power (and such things have happened). Using a ten point scale,
(1) 10D x 0P = 0H
(2) 10D x 1P = 10H
(3) 1D x 10P = 10H
(1) The truly powerless can cause no harm, ipso facto - they are powerless. (2) Even with maximum discrimination, the weak are limited. (3) Even minimal discrimination by the powerful can cause significant harm.
Young male education: IMHO it is a real problem that isn't getting enough attention. I doubt it's tied to race (is there evidence that it varies by race?) and while I suspect it's tied to family wealth, I'm not sure - that is, I could imagine that wealthy males and low-wealth males both perform at 80% of female economic peers, but that still lands wealthy males in college because of economic inequity. Still, I don't know those gender differences are an issue of equity - not every problem is an issue of equity.
> I think people who are genuinely working toward equity would advocate it for all people. Groups who only advocate for equity when it favors certain groups aren't really working toward equity at all.
I agree to a point. First, people have limited resources; they can't solve every problem for everyone; you can't tell a brain surgeon that they are discriminating against cardiac patients. Second, sans harm (see above), there is no issue of equity; nobody needs to advocate for white billionaires (though it seems that more HN commenters advocate for Elon Musk than for poor people in disadvantaged groups).
Most importantly, IME people who raise the parent comment's well-worn question advocate against equity measures for black people, women, and other disadvantaged groups. I don't recall any of them (I don't know you) supporting equity measures for those groups and arguing to add, for example, measures for poor white males.
For the sake of argument, I'll grant that rather controversial view. We're talking about discrimination by university administrators and admissions. They hold immense power in world where the college you attend determines the opportunities available to you. They fall in category "(3) Even minimal discrimination by the powerful can cause significant harm".
The rest of your comment is irrelevant and only obscures the issue. The question about a rich white male graduate of Exeter vs a poor Latina graduate of public school, muddles sex, race, and class into one bad example.
When all else is equal, should universities admit a male student before a female student in order to reduce the gender gap?
Dismissing it all isn't an argument, it's the lack of one. Make some arguments instead. I'd be particularly interested in hearing how power isn't required for harm (note: for harm, not for discrimination)
Regarding your one actual point: Clearly, certain racial and gender groups have more power than others, and they use it to actively discriminate to some degree - some do it very openly these days.
You seem to realize yourself that categorizing people just on race/gender isn't compelling, which is why in your examples you also add the economic conditions to make your point sound correct.
The idea you espouse, in practice, justifies injustice. It's asking children to pay for the sins of their parents. And everyone (even the people who supposedly benefit from this idea) will suffer as a consequence in the long run. You unwittingly sow the seeds of _more_ racial/gender animus, not less.
The injustice is there: people discriminate against certain racial and gender (and other) groups which lack power. It's been going on for centuries, so it's not going away on its own.
What shall we do about it? Insisting it's not there doesn't solve the problem. If you have better idea of how to resolve that injustice, let's hear it.
It actually has been going away on it's own. There's no way anyone can deny America hasn't made enormous progress across gender/racial lines in the last 50 years. Moreover, there's no way anyone can deny the discrimination you're talking about is at a civilizational/historical all-time low. Compared to most of the world and history, America in 2024 is MUCH less racist and sexist, and yet people shriek about it now more than our ancestors did in the 60's and earlier.
Differences will always exist between groups and there are a plethora of economic reasons why beyond 'systemic racism/sexism'. Russian-American's aren't paid the same as French-Americans. Nigerian-Americans earn more than the average white American. Bostonians have a different average income than Texans.
30 year olds have a different income than 31 year olds. Blue eyed people earn differently than green eyed people. Taller, prettier people earn more than shorter, less pretty people. How do you propose we determine exactly how much of these differences are due to 'discrimination' vs. the hundreds of other reasons these differences might exist?
The world is unfair in a variety of ways. But one thing that's painfully obvious from a cursory investigation of public policy, is that way too often, well intentioned policy measures end up doing EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what they were intended to do.
For example affirmative action has been a demonstrable failure. If you're admitted to a school like Harvard with lower SAT scores simply because of the color of your skin, you do worse than going to a school where you would be in the top 10% of SAT scorers. On top of that, you give people a reason to believe you're less qualified knowing your race got preferential treatment. Congratulations, everyone is now worse off because superficially the policy sounded like a nice idea. Racism has gone up and you unwittingly f-ed over the person who you tried to help by putting them in a situation they couldn't compete in.
"If you have better idea of how to resolve that injustice, let's hear it."
Focus on restoring two-parent households cross-racially. The rise of single motherhood in America has a colossally negative impact on children, specifically for the lower-class. The effects permeate generationally. You could do this in a way that unites people instead of dividing it by race. Push for public policy that incentivizes two-parent households. Attacking race/gender-blind meritocracy is not the way.
I disagree, power isn't a requirement for discrimination, you have wrong priors.
In fact making that a premise leads to quite a few assumptions that are clearly wrong that falsification is trivial, even if you could nail any sensible quantification of power.
Technically he provided exactly the same amount of information that was available to indict tech with being anti-women or something. The exact same amount for that matter.
Most of the inroads are attributed to flexible schedules which reduces the attrition from women after the entry level
alongside the role not being ruled out entirely by the candidate
this is something I hear from other women for other career choices too, from nursing to dancing to undiagnosed mental disorders (BPD, autism), the flexible scheduling draws them over 9-5 in person office work
for tech there are more pipelines than university and an entire decade has been spent addressing that already
whats happening is likely not just what you’re sensitive to
Well then, some enterprising corporation can pick up those forgotten young men for a song, and have a huge competitive advantage if that is really the case
There's a business necessity defense, and in sure a case could be made that a below median salary is a business necessity, considering addressing those marginal costs is exactly the intent of the business.
I think in practice that would be a poor defense especially when the burden of proof is on the company to show that they don’t have a discriminatory hiring policy. “Your honor, we ended up hiring mostly men simply because they are more cost effective” sounds like a really quick way to lose a disparate impact lawsuit.
Why would race makeup be affected? We're talking about the gender gap not the race gap. Unless women in tech are more diverse race-wise than men in tech.
And, BFOQ isn't relevant here because there is qualification that is relevant - it's just that if men are getting under paid/left behind, then merely offering a low salary would be enough to attract them.
Any business that doesn't make an effort to hire more women than is strictly economically efficient is begging to get sued. "We have very few women because men are cheaper" won't get them out of trouble. The mere fact that women are underrepresented in that company will be taken as proof of illegal discrimination.
I didn’t say they’re not a hardware company, I said they don’t want to be one because it makes shareholders very uneasy about the stability of the company.
Patenting this for her portfolio maybe, I can design and print a folding plastic hanger in 1 piece in less than 24 hours. A mold not far behind if i reached out to a shop...
you raise an interesting point I think gets asked in nearly every YC interview. How do you build your moat or stop any big players from competing with a very similar product.
I think she actually misidentified the problem she was trying to solve.
In her case, imo, her "secret sauce" would be the space saving clothes rack/furniture AND matching hangers.
There is no solution with her hanger in normal clothes racks. so her hanger product actually serves no purpose.
Most of the options on Kickstarter include both the hangers and low profile rod/brackets (and a shelf on the fancy one). The tier without a rod included says:
> While using your own rod isn't recommended, we got a lot of requests for it so here you go! Please read our FAQ before buying so you're aware of the pros and cons. Some basic DIY knowhow required.
I think she knows the hanger is only useful as part of a system.
Shit. You do have a really good point. There's not many examples of hanger bars mounted so close to a wall or in a tiny closet already. Most people who might use this would have to be building or installing one for this custom purpose.
I also wondered if it wouldn't make your shirts more wrinkly or have the potential to leave creases. I don't think anyone cares to invest in a space-saving solution like this if it means all their shirts will be wrinkled or creased. Unless space is the primary constraint, like a tiny apartment, tiny house, or custom van build.
There are plenty of examples of shallow closets in older homes/apartments that were once workers' quarters. I lived in a triple-decker in Somerville, MA that had a bedroom closet that was only deep enough for hooks on the back wall to hold the limited clothing of the occupants. The only way I could use a rod for hangers was to remove the closet door.
Its actually easier than you would expect! you can use a process in image processing called "thresholding" where you basically filter the RGB or color values. Its very common and a little "hack" on compute. Computers "look" at images or video by converting the camera data into large matrices. Red would be 1 matrix, blue another, green another. Instead of this, you typically convert it to black and white but you can do any color you want, depending what youre looking for. This reduces your compute from 3 matrixes to 1 and makes your functions exponentially faster. Someone can help me on O(n) notation lol.
