Re: Leaving rasfc

In article <slrnh0dib0.975.usenet2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Ilmari Karonen <usenet2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2009-05-10, James A Donald <jamesd@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

If people discriminated irrationally, we would observe
that among the those selected from the allegedly
discriminated against group, those selected would be
*better* than those of the allegedly oppressing group.

Not necessarily, since it would be quite possible for a group to be
_both_ worse at a given job _and_ also irrationally discriminated
against. What you'd really need to do is compare the ability
distributions between the hired employees and the candidate pool (or
the general population), and test whether they're compatible with the
assumption that hiring is only done on the basis of ability.

I'm not sure I understand the test you are proposing. It isn't enough to
observe that a candidate who is a member of the group is less likely to
be hired than an equally able candidate who isn't. That could reflect
rational discrimination, given imperfect information about ability.

For the simplest case, suppose you have no information at all other than
group membership, that one group is on average better at the job, and
lots of members of both groups are available at the same salary. The
rational thing to do is to hire only members of the group that's better.

....

--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of
_Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World_,
Cambridge University Press.
.

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