Given the previous discussion on that very thread has 703 comments, your, "I don't think there's any debate that [...] and the FAA really did blow up its hiring pipeline to further DEI goals" is pretty provably false.
While there was over 10 times as many applicants as there were spots, there were people that went to college and studied ATC who weren't able to become Air Traffic Controllers because of the Biographical Questionnaire.
You can't say an opinion is false - it's an opinion.
The fact is though, that the Biographical Questionaire affected hiring. Did it make a noticeable difference though? Who knows. We just know for certain that people who studied for this job didn't get in.
> You can't say an opinion is false - it's an opinion.
I agree that op thought:
> [that] there's [no] debate that ATC staffing is a major issue right now, and the FAA really did blow up its hiring pipeline to further DEI goals
Grandparent only said that there is clearly debate over this.
To say that no-one can disagree with op, or point out an opposing point of view, because is their opinion, is not furthering discussion.
But, did the hire rate for those graduates change in a substantial way? Or were there always a % of ATC college programs who couldn't get the jobs (for one reason or another)? {I don't know the answer to this, but maybe it's been reported}
There was absolutely corruption in the application/hiring process. That corruption was built on top of a (flawed, but well intentioned?) DEI program. But, as you note, did it materially impact the overall quality of the hiring pipeline? Maybe, but I don't know that we know for sure.
> You can't say an opinion is false - it's an opinion.
Fascinating. It sounds like the miscommunication happens because there is two different ways "I don't think there's any debate that X" is used.
One is used to communicate a fact. The fact that X is so uncontroversial that nobody debates it.
The other one seems to be using "I don't think there's any debate" as a kind of emphasis. It's a bit like double underscoring X and writing three exclamation points around it. It doesn't change that you are still just saying X but with more élan.
And if different people use it differently then of course they won't understand each other. One would be confused that their strongly held opinion has been declared false without the conversation partner even addressing X. The other would be confused how something so easily disproven (by the presence of a debate) can be maintained.
Yeah you are papermanning the comment, and that aint cool.
Given the strength of the posted article (by Tracing Woodgrains) I cannot see the debate either. It is airtight. Non partisan. Nuanced. Stone uncovering. Dozens of references. Led to real world change (albeit unfortunately not in the best way due to politics). It's an A+++ article. I need heavy convincing that it is flawed.
Forget how many HN comments because who cared. Is there any debate that Steve Jobs died? No. That got 1000s of comments. Yes I papermanned your paperman there see!
Rather than point to an irrelevant factoid, what is the factual issue in that article, if any?
I think you're missing the context of the article the grandparent was quoting. The article begins:
> Air traffic control has been in the news lately, on account of my country's declining ability to do it. Well, that's a long-term trend, resulting from decades of under-investment, severe capture by our increasingly incompetent defense-industrial complex, no small degree of management incompetence in the FAA, and long-lasting effects of Reagan crushing the PATCO strike. But that's just my opinion, you know, maybe airplanes got too woke.
So when the grandparent quoted
> maybe airplanes got too woke
and THEN says "I don't think there's any debate that ATC staffing is a major issue right now, and the FAA really did blow up its hiring pipeline to further DEI goals", what does that quote add?
I read an implicit statement that the commenter is siding with this as the cause of the industry problems: "I don't think there's any debate that" [it is, in fact, wokeness that has caused the industry problems]. And I don't think their linked article does make an airtight argument for this.
Perhaps you think the steelman version of the comment simply treats the quoted fragment as an accident, or irrelevant to the rest of it, but I disagree.
I see what you are saying. There is so much of this type of rhetoric online I sort of get blind to it sometimes.
It's like pointing out a joke someone made, implying it wasn't a joke (you then have to imagine what airplane now means) and then switching to a sorta-sequitir.
Sorry, poorly phrased comment -- I was trying to say that that staffing issues are not debated. I agree whether or not it's the fault of recruitment changes is hotly debated.
That's true. But it's essentially impossible to have that many comments if "there is no debate". Comment threads where everyone just says "I agree with you!" over and over again just don't happen.
That’s some new term for an effort to create more inclusive institutions, nearly unavoidably at the expense of the traditionally privileged - inevitably it’s taken too far, it crosses a line, even if the cross and the line itself must be manufactured by the resident reactionaries - and it becomes yet another rallying, cry for conservatives, another neat little entry in the portfolio of pogroms against progress.
Given the fact that I went from +3 to -2, for a very factual statement (the standard deviation of comments on the front page at the time was 65.0) yeah.
