Why the University of California System Stopped Using the SAT

Why did the UC system stop using the SAT? This article by Andrew Conway offers some insight "The University of California and The SAT: Speaking the Truth?." Here is an excerpt:

Here are two main conclusions from the report:

“Overall, both grades and admissions test scores are moderate predictors of college GPA at UC. The predictive power of test scores has gone up, and the predictive power of high school grades has gone down, since the 2010… study of this issue. At present, test scores are a slightly better predictor of freshman grades than high school grades are. Both grades and scores are stronger predictors of early outcomes (freshman retention and GPA) than of longer-term outcomes (eventual graduation and graduation GPA).”

“Test scores contribute significant predictive power across all income levels, ethnic groups, across both first-generation and non-first-generation students, and across all campuses and majors.” Based on these results (and more), the special task force recommended that the UC continue to use the SAT in the admissions process.

But then, on May 21, 2020, the University of California Regents released a statement. They announced their decision to drop the SAT requirement for all applicants to all UC schools. I was shocked. Drop the SAT? Why?

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Life in a Woke Upscale Progressive Private School

How are things going in one upscale private progressive school in NY for the children of a Jewish woman and her Black husband?  This is an excerpt from "My Kids and Their Elite Education in Racism: How Rye Country Day School reflects the madness of our times," by Naomi Schaefer Riley:

I fear that the message currently emanating from teachers and administrators and politicians and pundits will harm [ ] relationships. The new anti-racism, with its endless cycles of victimization and demands for reparations—as opposed to the model of teaching people to aspire to colorblindness and providing everyone with equal opportunity—requires all of us (and children in particular) to see race all the time. This new model will turn what would otherwise be ordinary, healthy relationships—friendships, even—into dramas with racially defined roles for all the characters.

The good people of my community and others around the country are told that no matter how welcoming they are, how well they treat others, there is nothing they can do to make up for systemic racism. Will they begin to fret over every interaction, fearing that they could say or do the wrong thing? . . .

I worry that the message is already trickling down. Advice columns in recent years have featured parents asking whether it’s okay for them to adopt children of another race, or whether people can ever truly understand someone of another race enough to marry that person, or whether it wouldn’t be easier for same-sex couples to use the white partner’s egg so as not to have the insurmountable task of handling a black child. Could white supremacists of 50 years ago have dared to dream of such attitudes among people who call themselves liberals?

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About Kayfabe

Eric Weinstein on "Kayfabe":

If we are to take selection more seriously within humans, we may fairly ask what rigorous system would be capable of tying together an altered reality of layered falsehoods in which absolutely nothing can be assumed to be as it appears. Such a system, in continuous development for more than a century, is known to exist and now supports an intricate multi-billion dollar business empire of pure hokum. It is known to wrestling's insiders as "Kayfabe".

Because professional wrestling is a simulated sport, all competitors who face each other in the ring are actually close collaborators who must form a closed system (called "a promotion") sealed against outsiders. With external competitors generally excluded, antagonists are chosen from within the promotion and their ritualized battles are largely negotiated, choreographed, and rehearsed at a significantly decreased risk of injury or death. With outcomes predetermined under Kayfabe, betrayal in wrestling comes not from engaging in unsportsmanlike conduct, but by the surprise appearance of actual sporting behavior.

What makes Kayfabe remarkable is that it gives us potentially the most complete example of the general process by which a wide class of important endeavors transition from failed reality to successful fakery.

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Divided We Are Falling

Eric Weinstein's Tweet isn't really about the "race" of this perpetrator and the "race" of this victim. Tomorrow there will be another incident in which the "races" will be reversed and then that news coverage (and lack thereof) will also be reversed. THAT is what is tragic. We are now divided so sharply that we refuse to see the humanity in members of outgroups.

To satisfy our selectively-blinded morality and to sell commercials, our respective teams of "news" media now look only for facts that fit predetermined narratives, ignoring everything that doesn't fit. In other words, our "news" stories are pre-written nuance free, with a few blanks left open for tonight's names and tonight's minor details. And since there is so much going on, they will easily find the stories they seek, the kinds of stories that are guaranteed to make us nod, then clench our fists, then vomit our anger at the opposing team on social media.

We and our teams of "news" media have trained each other so very well that these insane battle lines now seem inevitable. So much so that if Jesus, The Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King all suddenly appeared and earnestly reminded us to love both our neighbors and our enemies, it would would unite us, if only for a moment. We would tell them all to go fuck off.

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Government-Enforced Racial Pseudo-Education and Compelled Speech at Sandia National Laboratories

Compelled speech is increasingly being portrayed as "education." A recent illustration has come to light. Last year, Sandia National Laboratories sent its executives to reeducation camp: The training materials and the context for the training were reported by Christopher Rufo, a filmmaker, writer, and policy researcher. On his website, Rufo states (and I agree):

It’s time to expose this taxpayer-funded pseudoscience and rally the White House and legislators to stop these deeply divisive training sessions. My goal is simple: we must pass legislation to “abolish critical race theory” in the federal government. Let’s push as far as we can.
Under economic threat (the potential threat to employment that would be felt by any employee asked to attend), this camp required the employees to listen to, and in many cases publicly acknowledge, racist and sexist absurdities, including the following:

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