70 Years of Affirmative Action in India

by philg

From Incarnations: A History of India in Fifty Lives by Sunil Khilnani, a chapter on Bhimrao Ambedkar:

In his youth, Ambedkar had burned a copy of the Laws of Manu, a legal text by the legendary Brahminic lawgiver whose ancient decree was said to have created the caste order. Now he wasn’t about to waste the chance to subvert that order by pressing into the Constitution the most sweeping system of affirmative action anywhere in the world.

To Ambedkar, the caste system was generated by the exclusionary social and kinship rules of the Brahmins, and it spread because other groups, especially those lowest down the order, aped the Brahmins’ precepts. They did so believing that spiritual, social, or economic benefits might come to them, too. This analysis would lead to a crucial insight: that the caste hierarchy was able to enforce itself with minimal physical coercion. It operated largely by voluntary submission, based on what Ambedkar described brilliantly as “an ascending scale of reverence and a descending scale of contempt.”

A right to equality of opportunity in public employment has also been affirmed. Ambedkar did more than anyone to embed these principles in the Constitution. But out of them grew a politics of reservations, or affirmative action, that was paradoxical in its effects. Initially, the principles were supposed to sanction, for a finite period, the reservation of places (quotas), in government employment and educational institutions, for Dalits, tribal groups, and others defined as “economically backward.” (A ten-year jump start was the initial hope.) Yet the power to determine eligibility for reservations was given to India’s state legislatures, and a constitutional principle thereby became an electoral expedient. Politicians can promise, in the name of equality, to expand the number of reserved places, and to extend them to include newly defined “backward classes.” Caste groups, even successful ones, compete and sometimes campaign violently to be deemed backward in order to benefit from reservations, which today apply to just under half of all positions in India’s national government institutions. In one state, the figure approaches 70 percent. So, in terms of social mobility, down is the new up. It’s one of the profound ironies of India’s democracy: reservations, designed to erode caste identities and fortify individual citizens, have invigorated caste categories now defined by the state.

So everyone is equal in India under the Constitution, except that some people are entitled to jobs based on personal characteristics. And the sorting of job applications by personal characteristics was supposed to last from 1948 through 1958, but instead has endured through 2018 (more than 60 years past the expected expiration date).

Readers: Does this show that an affirmation action program inevitably ends up being permanent?

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Trump was “paranoid” about a deep-state conspiracy…

by philg

New York Times on Donald Trump’s mental health:

  • March 4, 2017: he is frustrated by his rocky debut and increasingly paranoid about what he sees as the Vast Deep-State Conspiracy.
  • March 18, 2017: Consumed by his paranoia about the deep state, Donald Trump has disappeared into the fog of his own conspiracy theories.
  • June 17, 2017: His paranoia about the Deep State…
  • August 20, 2018: (headline: “The G.O.P.’s Climate of Paranoia“) the assertion of Trump and company that all of the tweeter in chief’s woes are the product of a vast deep-state conspiracy

Definition of paranoia:

a mental condition characterized by delusions of persecution, unwarranted jealousy, or exaggerated self-importance, typically elaborated into an organized system. It may be an aspect of chronic personality disorder, of drug abuse, or of a serious condition such as schizophrenia in which the person loses touch with reality.

What is the reality? Today the same paper that called Donald Trump “paranoid” for thinking that some of the people ostensibly working for him were actually working against him published “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” subtitled “I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” The article is from “a[n anonymous] senior official in the Trump administration.”

Is it now fair to say that Donald Trump’s shortcomings do not meet the clinical definition of paranoia? Or is it instead an example of “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”? (Catch-22)

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Meet to learn physics in Manhattan on Thursday, September 13 at 6:15?

by philg

Folks: Weather permitting, I’m heading down to New York on Thursday, September 13 to hear Brian Keating present a lecture on cosmology and his interesting book for laypeople, Losing the Nobel Prize. The lecture is free and at the National Museum of Mathematics (5th Avenue and 26th; registration link). Refreshments (and conversation amongst ourselves) at 6:15 pm. Lecture at 7. I would love to get together with readers. If that doesn’t work, maybe coffee on Friday morning? Happy also to meet at Teterboro on Thursday morning or Friday around noon.

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Patent Office IPR proceeding is resolved

by philg

Back in 2017 I did some analysis for an inter-partes review ( IPR2017-00886) at the U.S. Patent Office. The patent in question, 7,480,694, covers a way to make a slide show of web pages. The decision was recently issued and I thought that readers might be interested to see it. (All of the documents in any IPR are public, incidentally, and available for free download via the Web.)

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Voters heed Democrat call to push an older white guy out of Washington…

by philg

… but it turns out that the first step to tearing down the white patriarchy is voting out a Massachusetts Democrat, perhaps not the intended result!

Michael Capuano spent 20 years in Congress, most recently comfortably and apparently securely ensconced in the bizarrely shaped Massachusetts 7th district. He virtuously denounced Donald Trump, including with threats of impeachment (“it’s more important to follow your heart than do the practical or political calculation”).

Capuano expressed outrage at the Trump Administration’s separation of people claiming to be under 18 from accused illegal border crossers claiming to be their parents. While focusing his attention on separated children 2,000 miles away, he was defeated by Ayanna S. Pressley, a woman roughly 5 miles away who had previously been separated from her father by a divorce lawsuit (boston.com). (also, Wikipedia says she lives with a stepdaughter, i.e., a child who is separated from at least one parent much of the time.  So Capuano overloooked two local children separated from parents!) Pressley’s Boston City Council web page:

career has been marked by history-making campaigns and a relentless determination to advance a political agenda focused on women and girls and breaking cycles of poverty and violence. … diversify economic and wealth building opportunities for women and people of color, and strengthen support services for families of homicide victims and sexual assault survivors. In 2013, she formed the Elevate Boston coalition to ensure issues uniquely impacting women and girls and the LGBTQ community were part of the 2013 Boston mayoral race debate.

I wrote “Should Republicans run only black women for Congress and Senate?” back in June, but now it seems that Democrats will beat the Republicans to this goal line.

[Capuano used to be Mayor of Somerville. The current mayor has been in the news lately for boycotting our local Sam Adams beer in favor of foreign-owned beer after the Sam Adams founder said some kind words about the Trump tax cuts, e.g., “I mean, Americans — I’m the largest American-owned brewery at 2 percent market share. We were paying 38-percent taxes. And competing against people [the 85 percent of the industry that is foreign-owned] who were paying 20. And now we have a level playing field, and we’re going to kick their ass,”]

In other Massachusetts primary news, the one state official who has gone on record as being in favor of 50/50 shared parenting (the default under the law in Alaska, Arizona, and Nevada; the default in practice or via guidelines in Delaware, Pennsylvania, etc.; see Real World Divorce for the details) was attacked for her Governor’s Council position. Marilyn Devaney, for example, opposed the nomination of a divorce litigator (Maureen Monks) to a family court judgeship after it emerged that she had represented only one male client in a courtroom during her multi-decade career (source). (There is no indication that Devaney is hostile to female judges; she was enthusiastic three years later about a female Supreme Judicial Court nominee: “Lenk to be first openly gay SJC justice”)  Some folks who had been successful plaintiffs in winner-take-all custody and child support lawsuits here in Massachusetts turned out with signs in at our local polling station to oppose Ms. Devaney. Their choice was Nick Carter, a white male whose web site indicated that he was primarily running against the hated occupant of the White House: “I want to ensure that whatever Donald Trump and his Department of Justice attempt to force on the states, the judiciary here in the Commonwealth is deeply committed to upholding the rights of all our citizens.” Mr. Carter won our suburb, but Ms. Devaney prevailed in the complete district 56/44.

Another candidate who ran against Donald Trump actually won. Jay Gonzalez will be the Democrat opposing the incumbent Republican(!) governor. The “On the Issues” section of his site:

AIMING HIGH ON THE OPIOID CRISIS [not Trump-related, but I love this turn of phrase]

President Trump has disparaged and discriminated against people of different ethnicities, backgrounds, religious beliefs and genders, and he has stoked fear in their communities. President Trump’s unconstitutional Muslim travel bans and increased raids to detain and deport immigrants have been particularly harsh, disruptive and fear-provoking for immigrant communities across the country and across Massachusetts.

Climate change is the biggest threat to our planet and to our future. President Trump is taking us in the wrong direction on climate change. As President Trump and the Republicans continue to take the country backward, it’s more important than ever that we have leadership here in Massachusetts that moves us forward. [Is it obvious that Massachusetts would be harmed by a warming climate? If someone decides to vacation here because Florida has been washed away or is too hot, that’s a positive for Massachusetts, right?]

The (popular) incumbent governor, Charlie Baker, is not mentioned. Perhaps this is due to our booming state economy (thank you, President Trump, for continuing to dump a river of tax dollars into the pharma and health care industries!). Mr. Gonzalez is passionate about women being leaders…

Women must be full and equal participants in our economy. For Massachusetts to reach its full potential, women must have equal career opportunities, equal pay, and workplaces free from discrimination and harassment. Women who work hard every day and contribute to our collective well-being should earn enough and have the additional support they need to provide for themselves and for their families. Women should be represented in leadership positions in business throughout our economy to ensure their full and fair participation at every level.

So he wants a quota system for women in business management, but is happy that two white guys will compete for the top state government management job (governor)?

He is opposed to the river of federal tax dollars that has made Massachusetts rich:

Today, our health care system is broken. It is too expensive, too complicated to navigate and inadequately addresses the health care needs of our residents.

Our local hospitals and pharma companies complained to him that our health care system is “too expensive” and they want to accept lower prices from the central planners in Washington, D.C.?

Large swaths of the ballot was reserved for sinecures such as Register of Deeds (example guy who was getting paid $110,000 per year back in 2015 and working four hours per day; I think the pay has now been bumped to $142,000/year). The general election ballot should be even tamer, with most victors of the Democrat primary running unopposed.

Readers: What’s going on in your states? Are the white male Democrats who’ve been decrying white patriarchy losing their jobs? Are local and state candidates whose jobs have nothing to do with the Federales campaigning against Donald Trump?

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People happier if pressured to marry at a young age?

by philg

I recently attended a wedding of two best friends from high school. They met on their first day of high school… in 1975. In a society with strong social pressure to marry it seems likely that they’d have gotten married shortly after completing high school or college, presumably to the most compatible person they’d identified at that time. As members of the Me Generation, however, they were entitled to pursue a search for self-actualization with no time limit, including a search for the ideal partner. As it happened in this case, the 40-year delay didn’t result in finding anyone more compatible than they’d already identified in high school.

Would they have been happier if they could have spent their core adult years together? Married at an age when it was still biologically possible to have children?

Musicologists say that Mozart did better work because he operated within constraints established by Haydn. Is it possible that Americans would do better with a few more constraints?

[Scorecard on the two most recent weddings that I’ve attended, both within the last couple of years… One wedding was in Paris. The couple remains together. One was in Massachusetts. The wife sued the husband a year later.]

Separately, this wedding was held at a Colorado ski resort, with events at 10,200′ and 9,400′ above sea level. At least one third of the guests who had flown in from sea level were suffering from altitude sickness (not me, though; I spent three nights in Denver before heading up to nosebleed territory).

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Stale, Pale, and Male

by philg

At Oshkosh (EAA AirVenture) we talked to a 55-year-old MIT graduate who’d been fired from his engineering job (he mentioned this in the context of a multi-week cross-country trip with kids in a light airplane; he said that he was glad that he didn’t cancel the trip after he’d been fired). His camp site was organized as well as a typical Hilton hotel.

Another member of our merry band works at one of the world’s largest HR consulting firms. Asked “How could someone so qualified and so obviously competent be fired?” the HR expert responded “stale, pale, and male.”

Happy Labor Day to all of the young replacements!

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New York Times gender warrior demands girls’ pants with reinforced knees

by philg

“The Gender Divide in Preschoolers’ Closets” (nytimes) has a subtitle explicitly referring to #MeToo:

I buy my daughter boys’ pants because even in an age of female fighter pilots and #MeToo, boys’ clothes are largely designed to be practical, while girls’ are designed to be pretty.

In a paragraph adjacent to “#MeToo” the following sentence:

I scoured the internet for girls’ pants with capacious pockets and reinforced knees, and found maddeningly few options.

A close reading of the article makes it clear that the author writes “girl” to mean “young children who happen to be female,” but the reader who skims and parses “girl” as “a young unmarried woman” (Merriam-Webster definition #3) may be a little shocked that “pants with reinforced knees for young unmarried women at work” is the latest demand from self-described gender equality advocates.

The editors are too busy reviewing each others’ old tweets to look for stuff like this?

Related:

  • “Pink Wasn’t Always Girly” (Atlantic): “In the 18th century, it was perfectly masculine for a man to wear a pink silk suit with floral embroidery,” says fashion scholar Valerie Steele, director of The Museum at the Fashion Institute Technology and author of several books on fashion. Steele says pink was initially “considered slightly masculine as a diminutive of red,” which was thought to be a “warlike” color.
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Robot assistant for online dating will be required?

by philg

From an Atlantic magazine article on an analysis of the database of an online dating site:

Bruch and her colleagues analyzed thousands of messages exchanged on a “popular, free online-dating service” between more than 186,000 straight men and women. They looked only at four metro areas—New York, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle—and only at messages from January 2014.

The key, Bruch said, is that “persistence pays off.”

In the study, men’s desirability peaks at age 50. But women’s desirability starts high at age 18 and falls throughout their lifespan.

Across all four cities, men tended to use less positive language when messaging more desirable women. They may have stumbled upon this strategy through trial and error because “in all four cities, men experience slightly lower reply rates when they write more positively worded messages.”

“The most popular individual in our four cities, a 30-year-old woman living in New York, received 1504 messages during the period of observation,” the study says. This is “equivalent to one message every 30 min, day and night, for the entire month.” Yikes.

The last part is what seems to suggest an opportunity for software. Wouldn’t that young lady be a lot better off if she had a robot to screen out and/or reply to these 1504 monthly messages? Or at least highlight the ones to which she should consider replying?

Related:

 

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If it is unconstitutional to discriminate against Asians, what should Harvard do?

by philg

“Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Affirmative Action Win Justice Dept. Support” (nytimes) is kind of interesting for the reader comments. Now that Trump is against Harvard, most readers are confident that Harvard is in the right (see Inside Higher Ed for some data on just how much higher Asians have to score in order to get into Harvard, roughly 400 points higher than the most desired racial group).

Some of the readers want the current system of race-based admissions torn down in favor of family income-based. They want Harvard to give preference to children of low-income families. But if you read

the take-away is that Harvard’s best statistical chance of turning out a group of highly successful graduates is to select from children of highly successful parents (where “highly successful” need not be “rich” but probably isn’t “low income”). In other words, to preserve its prestige Harvard should actually select preferentially from high-income families and/or families where parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents are highly accomplished.

How about a straight sort on standardized test results? Wouldn’t the class then be almost all folks from foreign countries? The U.S. does not have a monopoly on smart English speakers who are willing to study for a test. This would really get the NY Times readers upset. Quite a few of the comments are of the form “Asians are not creative or especially intelligent; they just cram for exams because their parents make them. Therefore a university with mostly Asian students would never be an interesting learning environment.” (I’ve noticed this attitude among elderly Hillary voters. One reason why they support an infinite expansion of U.S. government spending is that they think that the U.S. has a monopoly on creativity and therefore an entitlement to high economic growth rates. The Chinese can build stuff, but they can never invent stuff (your typical 80-year-old is apparently not aware of DJI!).)

One idea: Accept some age diversity (right now the passionate diversity advocates insist that everyone starting at Harvard be 18 or 19) and insist that anyone who wants to come to Harvard has to accomplish something in the real world. Harvard already has a lot of students coming after a gap year. So if someone is going to study English literature, that applicant needs to get some stuff published and positively reviewed. If someone is going to be a nerd, that applicant has to develop something that gets adopted and used. If someone is going to be a scientist, that applicant has to work in a lab and get the mature scientist to say “This person did useful work.” Mix that in with a minimum standardized test score and now there is a class full of people who can actually do stuff, albeit maybe the age shifts from 18-19 up to 19-21.

[Olin College of Engineering (higher median SAT score than MIT, last I checked) does something slightly related. Applicants come to the school for a weekend and work on projects so that faculty can get a sense for their real-world capability. Admission is partly based on performance during that weekend.]

Readers: What should Harvard do if the court system orders the school to tear down its race-based admissions process?

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