US 2024 Presidential Election

[Bedinsis]

Jokes aside, what did team trump expect? That everyone would just roll over because USA! USA! USA! ? This whole thing is so trite.

He has experience with enacting tariffs. I'm trying to find a positive* in the article (whose neutrality is disputed) and the only one I can find is that he was able to renegotiate a deal with Mexico and Canada by June 7, 2019. Maybe he figured "this will hurt our partners more than it will hurt us, and thus they ought to be more eager to listen after some time under tariffs" and that actually happened?

*Of course I have my biases of what constitutes a positive.

 

[Agema]

snip

There's still nothing you've said that provides meaningful justification for Trump's tirade.

Ok, but what if the people you're attempting to sympathize with don't feel the way you expect them to?

Either you are not reading properly, or you are trying very hard to miss the point.

 

[Silvanus]

By "this particular criterion", do you mean DEI in general? If so, I agree that you could have a DEI hiring initiative that doesn't lead to understaffing, but I would certainly say they didn't do that.

Broadly that's the important point. But more specifically, there's also no good reason to point the finger at their own DEI initiative. There's no real causal link established there-- and fundamentally: a rating criterion doesn't determine an admission rate.

Air traffic control has a strict mandatory retirement age of 56. Those annual goals are determined well in advance (they have to be, it takes time to train people) based on predictable cycles of retirements based on the age of the controllers. If they're behind on a couple years, it's not as simple as just making it up on the third year, especially since they don't want a large generation to fall off all at once. They've started hitting the required thresholds to replace retirees, but they've still never made up the gap.

I hope you realise how incredibly tenuous this attempt to draw a causal link is getting now.

 

[tstorm823]

I hope you realise how incredibly tenuous this attempt to draw a causal link is getting now.

There's still nothing you've said that provides meaningful justification for Trump's tirade.

Either you are not reading properly, or you are trying very hard to miss the point.

If either of you think I've tried to say DEI caused the crash, you're wrong.

Please, one of you, look at that test, acknowledge that you've looked at it, and then come back here and say "yeah, ok, that deserves complaints." You're defending DEI in the abstract, look at in in reality. Stare it in the face. See why Republicans would be annoyed by it. Then maybe you can begin to understand that those opposed to things like that test aren't opposed because of malice or disdain for certain people, they're opposed because it's really, really stupid.

 

[Satinavian]

Jokes aside, what did team trump expect? That everyone would just roll over because USA! USA! USA! ? This whole thing is so trite.

He is fundamentally a bully.

Nearly all of his foreign policy has never been anything beyong throwing Americas economic and miltary weight around to force weaker countries into unfair contracts and concessions. That and befriending some strongmen he personally feels are like him.

That is all he knows and it is also how he ran his business. And it is why he hates multinational organisations like EU, UN and NATO : those make it difficult to bully weaker countries.

 

[Silvanus]

If either of you think I've tried to say DEI caused the crash, you're wrong.

I'm saying there's no causal link between the "persuance of diversity" as you described it and the understaffing issue. But it is relevant that you brought this up specifically in the context of the President seeking to blame the crash on these policies. You can't divorce this from that accusation; it's the reason we're talking about this.

Please, one of you, look at that test, acknowledge that you've looked at it, and then come back here and say "yeah, ok, that deserves complaints." You're defending DEI in the abstract, look at in in reality. Stare it in the face. See why Republicans would be annoyed by it. Then maybe you can begin to understand that those opposed to things like that test aren't opposed because of malice or disdain for certain people, they're opposed because it's really, really stupid.

I just now took the test on the Kai Soapbox blog (scoring 68 / 179, though I had to use approximations for some of the questions that referred to American grade points & school levels). There were several questions in there that seem highly questionable/odd/irrelevant or strangely weighted, though none of them have to do with DEI.

But I don't really trust the commentary and conclusions the blog offers on it either. For example, when a question is worth no points, the blog claims the question "didn't matter"-- how do we know that? Being worth no points in the numeric scale doesn't mean that; evaluaters may look at those and take them into account in some other subjective way (which is very normal in hiring processes).

 

[Agema]

You're defending DEI in the abstract, look at in in reality.

No, I'm explicitly not. I've even said so in in post #3937.

I'm objecting to the President of the USA using all the magnitude of his office to de facto blame employees on a personal level without proper justification. The unavoidable implication of his line of argument is the FAA have let incompetent people into jobs, and therefore he is alluding to the ATC being at fault and incompetent on a personal level, based on no direct evidence.

And that is cruel, thoughtless bullying.

 

[Asita]

The immediate passage of funding specifically to maintain staffing for air traffic controllers you'd think would mean something, but I'll accept 2013 as an asterisk akin to covid.

That offers no explanation for the enormous miss in 2015. Also, to you as well, if you haven't tried out that test, please do. It's not going to trick you into thinking DEI is killing flight safety, but it is certainly eye-openingly ridiculous.

I want you to take a minute and look at what you just did. You cited the drop in 2013 as a smoking gun implying that "the pursuance of diversity lead to, or at least meaningfully exacerbated under-hiring". When pointed out that rather than due to a change in policy, the actual explanation was a hiring freeze in response to budget cuts, and the attempt to instead associate it with a biographical assessment was hasty and poorly supported, you declared that it didn't explain a 2015 gap between their unusually high target and their otherwise high number of actual hires.

Heck, you aren't even pointing to a year where hiring was even depressed, despite your insinuation to the contrary. Of the five years you cited, the one you are now saying has had "no explanation" in fact had the second highest number of hires, following a steady increase for which only 2013 is a true outlier. 2015 had 120% of the hires seen in the previous year, 145% of what it was in 2012, and 163% of 2011. That does not align with your claims.

You've not made a case for a causative link two data points, you've just assumed they must be connected because of the timing, declaring that it was "not much of a stetch" to draw a connection between the two of them because of that. But then when pointed out that your initial focal point was well-understood to have an unrelated cause (therefore meaning the timing doesn't actually apply as you claim), you literally turn around and go "well you only talked about 2013 and 2014, not 2015" as if that was some counterpoint.

That's not looking at and trying to understand the data, that's turtling into an argument from ignorance to try and salvage an unsupported claim.

 

[tstorm823]

I just now took the test on the Kai Soapbox blog (scoring 68 / 179, though I had to use approximations for some of the questions that referred to American grade points & school levels). There were several questions in there that seem highly questionable/odd/irrelevant or strangely weighted, though none of them have to do with DEI.

But I don't really trust the commentary and conclusions the blog offers on it either. For example, when a question is worth no points, the blog claims the question "didn't matter"-- how do we know that? Being worth no points in the numeric scale doesn't mean that; evaluaters may look at those and take them into account in some other subjective way (which is very normal in hiring processes).

Here's the trick: they can't explicitly have to do with DEI, giving people points based on their identity would be highly illegal. It's the same strategy as imposing a literacy test on voters with the foreknowledge that black people would fail more often, even if they can't pick people explicitly on race or gender, they can use proxies for race or gender that reach their desired outcomes.

The questions worth no points may very well have mattered after you pass the assessment, they had no bearing on whether you passed. It was implemented with a hard and fast rule: if an applicant scores less than 114 on that test, they could not be hired, and they could not retake the test for at least 1 year, though even that allowance lacks internal logic, as very few of the questions have answers that change, allowing someone who missed by more than 20 points to retake is just suggesting they can lie. When someone says they want the best and brightest, they want competence alone to matter, the alternative is something like that test, where we're rejecting competent, qualified people based on them being too good at science in high school.

The unavoidable implication of his line of argument

It's quite avoidable. I'm not saying your take on his comments is unreasonable or uncommon, you're not wrong to draw that conclusion. You are wrong to think it's the only possible interpretation of his words. It's not an unavoidable implication.

That's not looking at and trying to understand the data, that's turtling into an argument from ignorance to try and salvage an unsupported claim.

You seem to be ignorant yourself of the hiring target numbers. Did you not question why those targets go up and down? It's because different numbers of people retire in different years. Hiring twice as many people year-over-year does not constitute a meaningful rise if the number of retirees is also double. 90% of the target is 90% of the target. No matter how high or low that number is, less than 100% is predicted to decrease staffing, more than 100% is expected to increase staffing. The year over year comparison of absolute number of hires is meaningless.

Both of us are looking at statistical arguments that do not necessarily tell a whole story, but you are trying to rationalize backwards from the numbers, where I'm looking at the timescale of an obviously stupid policy and trying to identify the effects. Go take the test.

 

[Silvanus]

K

Here's the trick: they can't explicitly have to do with DEI, giving people points based on their identity would be highly illegal. It's the same strategy as imposing a literacy test on voters with the foreknowledge that black people would fail more often, even if they can't pick people explicitly on race or gender, they can use proxies for race or gender that reach their desired outcomes.

My god. So this, too, is speculation-- the connection between the diversity push and the unfair exclusion of otherwise-qualified candidates. You speculate that it's the real ulterior motive beneath some illogical questions in a hiring questionnaire.

Can you really not see how many leaps you've made? How massive they are? First, that a hiring questionnaire is secretly discriminating against able-bodied white men; second, that this specific criterion is what depressed the admission rate, even though admission rate is independent of evaluation criteria; Third, that this briefly depressed admission rate is directly responsible for understaffing a decade later owing to variable retirement rates (!?)... it's assumption upon assumption upon assumption, endlessly speculative, all to cook up a reason to blame... diversity. It's mad.

The questions worth no points may very well have mattered after you pass the assessment, they had no bearing on whether you passed. It was implemented with a hard and fast rule: if an applicant scores less than 114 on that test, they could not be hired, and they could not retake the test for at least 1 year, though even that allowance lacks internal logic, as very few of the questions have answers that change, allowing someone who missed by more than 20 points to retake is just suggesting they can lie. When someone says they want the best and brightest, they want competence alone to matter, the alternative is something like that test, where we're rejecting competent, qualified people based on them being too good at science in high school.

OK, so they may well have mattered-- recruitment is multi-stage. And it's for this reason that I don't trust the rest of how that blog has presented the test either. It's not being honest from the go, and you're working backwards from a conclusion, fitting square pegs into circular holes.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Well, compare Brexit, massive problems for people in the UK were worth it if it inconvenienced the French somewhat, at least according to some. I could see people thinking that preserving their own economy is less important than harming that of their traditional enemies, the Canadians. Even if the Canadians have only been their traditional enemies for about a month.

we've always been at war with Canadia

 

[tstorm823]

My god. So this, too, is speculation-- the connection between the diversity push and the unfair exclusion of otherwise-qualified candidates. You speculate that it's the real ulterior motive beneath some illogical questions in a hiring questionnaire.

Not even remotely speculation. The document specifying how this assessment was implemented states explicitly that it is based on the barrier analysis report, which was done as part of "an historic commitment to transform the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) into a more diverse and inclusive workplace" in order to answer "questions that have been raised regarding the disproportionate underrepresentation of women and minorities among the air traffic control profession". It's not an ulterior motive, it's the stated motive.

You know the test is stupid. They explicitly state it was added in promotion of diversity. They did a stupid thing to promote diversity. There is no jump in logic. There would be a jump in logic to say the test was the sole cause of a shortage of controllers. I really should have said that in the first post I made about this...

I don't think there is sufficient justification to treat the assessment as a sole cause of the drop, but rejecting thousands of qualified applicants while being increasingly understaffed seems to be negligent at best.

Oh, right. I did.

 

[meiam]

Canada and Mexico hit back with tariffs as US trade war escalates

Canada and Mexico are retaliating with steep tariffs after President Trump imposed 25% levies on their exports. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and President Claudia Sheinbaum condemned the move, warning of economic fallout and a worsening rift with the US.

www.lemonde.fr

Jokes aside, what did team trump expect? That everyone would just roll over because USA! USA! USA! ? This whole thing is so trite.

I worked with a guy who supported Trump before the 2016 election. He once said that if he was ever a boss, on his first day he would just randomly fire an employee just to establish how tough of a boss he would be. I'm guessing thats their mentality, establish dominance by going after a weak target to show how serious they are and once one fall the other should "fall in line".

 

[Silvanus]

Not even remotely speculation. The document specifying how this assessment was implemented states explicitly that it is based on the barrier analysis report, which was done as part of "an historic commitment to transform the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) into a more diverse and inclusive workplace" in order to answer "questions that have been raised regarding the disproportionate underrepresentation of women and minorities among the air traffic control profession". It's not an ulterior motive, it's the stated motive.

No, nonono, you've leaped again. You don't know how that "historic commitment" translated into practice-- because certainly the analysis report itself doesn't suggest what you're saying happened. All you know is A) they wanted a diverse & inclusive workforce, and they say this played some part in their assessment; and B) There are some illogical or poor questions in the study, which is almost certainly one part of a multi-stage assessment. But those questions, on the face of it, have nothing to do with inclusivity or diversity... so you've assumed it's hidden there with unfair proxy characteristics. Rather than the much more sane assumption, which is that it played some other role during evaluation that we don't have all the info on.

You know the test is stupid. They explicitly state it was added in promotion of diversity. They did a stupid thing to promote diversity. There is no jump in logic.

Parts of the test do seem stupid, based on a (quite poor) presentation in a blog. Those parts appear to have nothing to do with diversity or its pursuit. There has been a leap to connect one to the other, seemingly because you wanted diversity to be to blame from the off.

There would be a jump in logic to say the test was the sole cause of a shortage of controllers. I really should have said that in the first post I made about this...
Oh, right. I did.

There's are several more jumps involved in concluding that it has anything to do with understaffing at all, particularly a decade later.

 

[Chimpzy]

President Trump threatens Canada over trade war - saying it should become 'cherished 51st state'

It comes after the US leader said he is imposing 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico - and the two countries retaliated with their own measures.

news.sky.com

 

[thebobmaster]

Come on, people. Just get in line with our glorious leader and accept his wisdom! After all, it's just common sense, which only he has.

 

[Asita]

You seem to be ignorant yourself of the hiring target numbers. Did you not question why those targets go up and down? It's because different numbers of people retire in different years. Hiring twice as many people year-over-year does not constitute a meaningful rise if the number of retirees is also double. 90% of the target is 90% of the target. No matter how high or low that number is, less than 100% is predicted to decrease staffing, more than 100% is expected to increase staffing. The year over year comparison of absolute number of hires is meaningless.

Both of us are looking at statistical arguments that do not necessarily tell a whole story, but you are trying to rationalize backwards from the numbers, where I'm looking at the timescale of an obviously stupid policy and trying to identify the effects. Go take the test.

And you clearly aren't looking for the "why". You're just assuming it outright. You know the actual reason for the gap? Largely applicant error. To quote (pg 8):

Many applicants did not promptly complete their medical or security screenings, delaying FAA’s ability to bring them onboard. As a result of the delay in processing candidates under the new hiring process, the Academy had to cancel 34 air traffic basic classes, and 614 seats were left unfilled in 2015. This caused a ripple effect because the air traffic basics class is a prerequisite for follow-on controller training courses as well. By October 2015, the situation improved, as 741, or roughly half, of the applicants progressed to the Academy or were placed at a facility

And that's a recognized issue with implementation. They did not have a good tracking system to monitor candidates, nor resolution system for that, and it cost them (so to speak).

So here again, not the smoking gun you were treating it as. Hell, the recommendations on how to fix the issue were technical and procedural, saying that the new system needed to Implement a single system that individually tracks applicants through the entire hiring process, and establish a process to address applicants who receive a tentative offer letter but fail to initiate the medical and/or security clearance processes.

Both of us are looking at statistical arguments that do not necessarily tell a whole story, but you are trying to rationalize backwards from the numbers, where I'm looking at the timescale of an obviously stupid policy and trying to identify the effects. Go take the test.

That is rich coming from you, as "rationalizing backwards" is literally the sum total of your own position, considering that you quite clearly made no real effort to actually look into the data and identify actual causative factors. You just took your desired conclusion that "the pursuance of diversity lead to, or at least meaningfully exacerbated under-hiring" and rationalized to yourself that the drop in numbers must validate that conclusion.

As an analogy, let's say that you just launched an online campaign at the start of the month, and at the end of the month, you see that traffic to your site increased by 40%. Those are very encouraging numbers, so you conclude there and then that the campaign must have been a great success. Only, when you actually look at the timeline, you see that there's a massive three day spike in the middle of the month, all attributable to an unfamiliar site, averaging about 1 second on the site, and accounts for 90% of the change in volume. Which is to say, the change in traffic is actually attributable to a spike in bot traffic. You're doing the functional equivalent of brushing off the explanation of the traffic spike, and saying that you're looking at the timescale of an "obviously successful" campaign and trying to identify the effects. That is brazenly working backwards from your conclusion ("the campaign was successful"), invoking the data under the presumption that it supported it ("the increase in traffic shows the impact of the campaign") and not really caring enough to check your presumption after it's explained to you that the data you highlighted is explained by other factors.

I don't expect a given person to have performed a full PEST analysis, but I do at least expect that - if someone is determined to make declarations about what data shows - they at least take a moment to actually take a hard look at the data and reports to make sure that their claims about them have a good foundation.

 

[tstorm823]

No, nonono, you've leaped again. You don't know how that "historic commitment" translated into practice. All you know is A) they wanted a diverse & inclusive workforce, and they say this played some part in their assessment; and B) There are some illogical or poor questions in the study, which is almost certainly one part of a multi-stage assessment. But those questions, on the face of it, have nothing to do with inclusivity or diversity... so you've assumed it's hidden there with unfair proxy characteristics. Rather than the much more sane assumption, which is that it played some other rule during evaluation that we don't have all the info on.

That assessment is the historic commitment translated into practice. "These changes are a result of the modifications to the hiring process for ATC developed by the Barrier Analysis Implementation team."

What were the recommendations in the Barrier Analysis Report?

- RNO [Race and National Origin] and gender diversity need to be considered a high priority
-We recommend using a version of the multiple hurdle approach in which the components with the least adverse impact are used first in the hiring process to identify applicants with maximum potential. We recommend that stringent but defensible pass scores be set for these front loaded components. Then the components that have the most adverse impact are used in the latter stages of the hiring process. Given that a large portion of the applicant pool will be eliminated by the first hurdle(s), the pass scores for subsequent components can be more lenient. Research has demonstrated that this approach maximizes diversity while minimizing reductions to criterion-related validity. "
- Revise the test so that it assesses cognitive ability in the context of how that ability is used on the job while considering RNO and gender diversity. Further, search for additional predictors to add to the selection protocol. Apply a multihurdle approach to reduce adverse impact. In this approach, the experience components of the AT-SAT would be used to first identify the applicants with the most promise. This is accomplished by setting a strict pass score for this component of the AT-SAT. The cognitive ATSAT components would then be used as the second hurdle to identify the applicants who will advance to the next step, the Centralized Selection Panel.

The only thing different between the report recommendations and the final implementation is that they made it a separate assessment rather than an addition to the ATSAT. They deliberately designed a test to cull the majority of applicants with priority for diversity. In 2014, they had about 30,000 applicants total, the majority of who were just off the street applicants. The pass rate for the assessment overall was 10%. The pass rate among those who went to school for the job was 13%. If you made it through that first step, it was close to a coin flip that you'd be hired. The biggest determinant in who got hired was a seemingly arbitrary questionnaire with the raison d'etre of rebalancing the racial and gender breakdown of applicants. Only after that assessment could they consider competency, and they could be "more lenient" with pass scores on the "cognitively loaded" test, should there not be enough passing ATSAT grades left in the culled applicant pool. I have no reason to believe that happened, I have no reason to believe any single unqualified individual was ever hired to be an air traffic controller, and I've learned this week that there is a multi-year training and onboarding process to assure competency, but this is their words, not mine. The report on diversity recommended more lenient pass scores on the cognitive test towards the priority of a more diverse pool of new hires.

I am not making leaps here, I am reading their words. It is not crazy to imagine that the test questions were based around predictors of racial and gender diversity when the test was designed based on the recommendation to search for additional predictors to add to the selection protocol while considering RNO and gender diversity. I won't say it's crazy to think they didn't follow that recommendation, but I will say it's crazy to think that it's crazy to think that they did.

They at least take a moment to actually take a hard look at the data and reports to make sure that their claims about them have a good foundation.

Have you looked at the test yet?

 

[Asita]

Have you looked at the test yet?

Oh will you stop with that horseshit. We're talking about what the data shows as observable impact. Whatever opinions you, I, or anyone else have on the test are utterly irrelevant. Your claim was that the numbers showed a causal link between the test and the number of hires. So naturally that means that what makes or breaks the case is entirely contained in those numbers and the factors that affected them.

 

[Agema]

It's quite avoidable. I'm not saying your take on his comments is unreasonable or uncommon, you're not wrong to draw that conclusion. You are wrong to think it's the only possible interpretation of his words. It's not an unavoidable implication.

I suppose you are right on a technicality that it is avoidable: someone interpreting his comments could be extraordinarily stupid or deliberately refuse to think them through. In which case, which one are you angling for?

I think what you might mean is that Trump didn't say that controller error was definitely the cause of the crash. He also offered up other possibilities (such as the inevitability that accidents happen, or pilot error). But, you know, needlessly slandering people is probably one of the reasons that leaders conventionally wait for investigation results.