[taco_emoji]

> The converse of this is that 23% of non-Asian minorities are only there due to affirmative action, and would not be there under a meritocratic system.

Your curiously unstated but obviously logically necessary premise that non-AA systems are already magically meritocratic is what's racist.

Hope that clears it up for you.

[tomp]

I think the two of you are using slightly different definitions of "meritocratic". Yummifajitas means "who's better", whereas you mean "who's potentially better".

Obviously, in average whites are better than blacks (and Asians are better than whites). All test scores prove that. That's what yummifajitas is referring to when he says "meritocracy".

Obviously blacks have been severely disadvantages throughout their lives (before college), so they aren't as good as they could be (again in average). Therefore, you're saying that we should accept more blacks, who could be just as good as whites are.

Personally, I agree with yummifajitas' definition of the word "meritocratic", but I think that favoring the disadvantaged is a better outcome for the society than a purely meritocratic system. However, I also think that favoring (affirmative action) should be non-racist, but instead targeting the disadvantaged people/families (regardless of their race); furthermore, I believe that the effect of such policies would be orders of magnitude greater if they were favoring people waaaay before university.

[dragonwriter]

> I think the two of you are using slightly different definitions of "meritocratic". Yummifajitas means "who's better", whereas you mean "who's potentially better".

I think both are using "who is better", the problem is that there "who is better" is very vague: better in what way?

Claims to "meritocracy" only have substantial meaning with a concrete definition of "merit", and while yummyfajitas is happy to assert that but for AA college admissions process are certainly meritocratic, there is no identification of the merit that the combination of measures used is supposedly assessing, against which one could evaluate the claim that using those measures without considering race is, in fact, meritocratic.

[tomp]

Hm... Aren't SATs widely used for college admissions (not exclusively, of course, but if they were, I'd say the system is totally meritocratic)? I'm not saying it's the best indication of the kind of merit required to excel at the university, but it's probably one of the best we have (and definitely a better one than race or disadvantage - remember, we're favoring the disadvantaged so that they can improve despite them being worse, not because we believe SATs wrongly assess them as being worse (although there is some research that claims SATs systematically underscore women)). Also, in which way (relevant to university admissions or completion) are blacks better than whites/Asians?

[dragonwriter]

> Hm... Aren't SATs widely used for college admissions

Yes.

> (not exclusively, of course, but if they were, I'd say the system is totally meritocratic)?

Wait, what? Unless you make that tautologically true by defining the merit you are trying to assess in admission as "SAT scores", I don't see why you would.

> I'm not saying it's the best indication of the kind of merit required to excel at the university, but it's probably one of the best we have

Its not. For predicting college performance, its a very weak predictor of college grades, or even first-year grades (weaker than high school grades, class rank, or even just the high school you attended), and, to the extent its useful, at least one study has indicated that its predictive power is almost entirely explained by the degree to which it serves as a proxy measure for the high school that the student attended, and that within-school variation in SAT scores lacks predictive power.

Also, there is evidence that the relationship between SAT scores (and the same is true of other measures, like GPA) and college performance is not consistent across various axes of demographic variation (race, income, etc.) -- I've cited one analysis on this elsewhere in the thread.

> remember, we're favoring the disadvantaged so that they can improve despite them being worse, not because we believe SATs wrongly assess them as being worse

One of the many reasons for admissions preference for traditionally disadvantage groups is advocated is that many of the measures used as signals to admission disadvantage those from traditionally disadvantaged groups, where the measure reflects disadvantage of circumstance rather than lack of merit.

> Also, in which way (relevant to university admissions or completion) are blacks better than whites/Asians?

I never said they were.

[yummyfajitas]

It's true - black people tend to underperform relative to their SAT.

http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/09/the_underperformance...

Your source agrees with this if you scroll down to the data tables. Note the sign on the black and hispanic coefficients.

So your real critique seems to be that SAT is unfair because it gives a non-predictive boost to blacks and hispanics. Consequently, if we wanted to have the most accurate predictor possible, we'd include negative weights for black people. Is this really the critique you are making of using SAT and GPA?

One of the many reasons for admissions preference for traditionally disadvantage groups is advocated is that many of the measures used as signals to admission disadvantage those from traditionally disadvantaged groups...

That's simply incorrect. If it were true, then blacks would overperform relative to SAT rather than underperform.

[dragonwriter]

> It's true - black people tend to underperform relative to their SAT.

Its actually a lot more complicated than that; the degree to which each objective factor predicts grades (and the degree of difference in expected college grades each unit change in the factor represents) differs by race, income, and other factors. (In the case of SAT scores, higher SAT scores mean more in terms of better college grades than they do for whites.)

So the average black student underperforms based on their SAT scores -- but that is less true (and eventually the opposite of the case) for blacks with higher SAT scores.

> So your real critique seems to be that SAT is unfair because it gives a non-predictive boost to blacks and hispanics.

No, my real critique is that the assertion that without AA, existing admissions would be meritocratic is unsubstantiated, and that there is plenty of reason to be skeptical of it.

And I will maintain it until someone presents a coherent definition of the merit sought and evidence that supports the claim based on that definition.

[tomp]

> For predicting college performance, its a very weak predictor of college grades

That's interesting. Naively, I would expect SAT correlated with IQ, and that correlated with success in university. Are there better predictors of college grades?

> where the measure reflects disadvantage of circumstance rather than lack of merit

Hm... I can hardly imagine how a bad score on the math SAT would not indicate that you lack merit in math.

> I never said they were.

Well, then it doesn't much matter which definition of merit (who is better) you take (as you claim in your original response to me)...

[dragonwriter]

> Well, then it doesn't much matter which definition of merit (who is better) you take

Yes, it does.

The definition of merit is necessary to assess whether the current system is, excluding AA, actually meritocratic, as claimed. While it would also be necessary in order to assess whether one race or another was better than another, if that were an interesting question to answer -- the fact that I'm not asserting that one race is better doesn't alter the fact that an actual definition of merit is necessary for the claim that the existing system (but for AA) is meritocratic to even have meaning.

[yummyfajitas]

Non-AA systems primarily look at grades, SAT, extracurriculars and the like. They tend to also include small alumni preferences and the occasional "this guy's dad donated $20M" preferences. Why do you believe they are not predominantly meritocratic?

[anigbrowl]

As if everything you mention were equally distributed (quality of academic instruction, affordability of extracurricular activity or exam coaching services etc.), such that everyone had access to more or less the same quality of basic education.

You're an intelligent guy and have taken part in discussions on this sort of topic many times before here on HN, so why do you persist in advancing simplistic arguments whose specious nature has been pointed out many times before?

[dragonwriter]

> Why do you believe they are not predominantly meritocratic?

What is the concrete merit being assessed, and where is the evidence that the measures used provide a race, ethnicity, and gender-blind predictor or measure of the that concrete merit?

[yummyfajitas]

To check that such measures are race, ethnicity and gender blind, just run the following unit test on your admission procedure:

    allow_admission( x.copy(race=a) ) == allow_admission(x.copy(race=b))

[dragonwriter]

That proves that your admission procedure does not consider race separately from the measures (and could be extended to do the same for gender and ethnicity, mutatis mutandis), it does not prove that the measures themselves are race, ethnicity, and gender-blind measures of the concrete merit which they are designed to assess.

If you want to make the case that they are meritocratic, it would be more convincing with a concrete definition of the merit they are intended to measure, evidence that they do measure that merit, and evidence that the manner in which they do is not sensitive to race, ethnicity, and gender.

Assuming that there is an objective, measurable merit being addressed, these are all empirically testable, and the claim can be assessed based on the evidence for it; if there is no such merit being addressed, the claim that they are meritocratic is empty.