ViperMan

Completely agree that they're complex issues that require study, and I know everyone here is actually concerned about solving these problems, it's more just a disagreement about what the core problem is, and what the solution should be. I think that when there is such vehement disagreement on what the problem is and what the solutions are, doing something contentious is very risky. Any solution we implement will absolutely require broad (bipartisan) buy in. And actual, no shit, buy in. Not "pretty darn good," high-level hand-waiving buy in.

I didn't say I think blacks are more likely to commit crime than whites - I said the data says they do. Blacks DO commit more crime than whites. My thoughts have NOTHING to do with that, and shouldn't have anything to do with it. It's not about your or my thoughts. The "why" of all this is not up to the Air Force, which is my more pertinent point. We're an organization of about 300,000 people, which is about 1/1000th of the American populace, we're not going to solve the social ills that are part of the larger context we find ourselves in.

My sentiments exactly.

Anthropological standards appears to be fair game, and would be if there was a 50/50 split in who serves in the military, but there isn't. Once we have 50 women fighter pilots for 50 male fighter pilots, then we can talk. That said, I've been in about 5 fighter squadrons over my career and there have been 3 women in them and about 200 men. It ain't some intentional conspiracy as to why ejection seats, etc, were developed for men. All through history, men have been the ones to go to war. Men have been the ones flying fighter aircraft. It was male test subjects volunteering to strap themselves to rocket sleds and test those first ejection seats. Women fulfilling combat roles is brand new. Hence, standards that were implemented reflected the underlying reality that it was men who were going to be the ones flying these airplanes - not that women were being systematically excluded from this opportunity. That said, I agree with you in principle that this is an area that can be adjusted, at present, to make things more "fair" but it doesn't meet the definition of systemic discrimination against a group (women). Discrimination is a conscious determination by an individual that they are going to produce favor for one person to the detriment of another based on the characteristic(s) at hand. On the topic of photos, I agree with you 100%. There is no reason why a photo (or any racial/sex data) should be included as part of a promotion package. In fact, names should probably also be masked so that there is nothing that can be read into when decisions are being made as to who should be promoted. As far as promotion boards are concerned, it is only performance data that is relevant. And more importantly when we implement this little "social" betterment, there is no cost imposed on anyone else - which is not the case with many other social justice initiatives, but should be a necessary condition for any of them to be implemented. As far as mentorship goes, I'm not sure how identifying a generic problem that affects all people somehow disproportionately affects a minority. It's a general problem and sure, one we should be aware of, but it's also taken for granted that it is having a measurable effect on the development and selection of "under" represented people, else, it'd be easy to provide actual examples. But such is the problem with "unconscious" biases; we have to rely on professionals who have received knowledge, and they're the perfect scapegoat for those who want to implement social programs, provide no hard evidence, and then implement whatever program they want. It's an example of the false premise fallacy - you have a valid argument, but one that is demonstrably false. It's precisely why arguments like this are so hard for people to see through. And the danger is that once you give people who have special received wisdom power, you now have a religion. On to military justice, there is one major problem with those articles - they are missing the broader, underlying context. From the stripes article: The unstated assumption in this article is that there should be no inequalities between blacks and whites. That's great, and is an ideal that reflects the desired society which we all hope is someday realized, but it is just not the present reality we live in. I'm sorry. No, the proper framing of the disparity needs to be couched in terms of the broader societal context that we find ourselves a smaller part of. In that reality, blacks commit a grossly disproportionate share of crime (https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2 and https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21 and https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime). The reasons for this we can get to in another thread, but within the context of the articles you provided, the proper question to ask is this: is it surprising that given blacks commit a higher proportion of crime in the broader society, that they also commit a higher proportion of crime within the Air Force? I don't think it is. So good job stars and stripes, you figured out something we already knew. It would be strange had they not found blacks are investigated 71% more than whites. I agree that it's hard to see many of these issues as individuals, but it is also very easy to take an interested party's shallow analysis and take their conclusions as gospel without asking harder questions, or doing your own homework. Let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Dude, instead of using master's degrees as a proxy for some standard that was fair or unfair and how changing it either led to the betterment or detriment of the said groups, why don't we just get specific on the topic at hand? What, exactly, are the systemic barriers that are in place that prevent X-type of person from joining the AF and achieving a successful career? Personally, I don't think there are any. I think arguing by analogy in cases like these leads us literally nowhere. Get specific. On the topic of master's degrees, however, using them in order to determine whether or not someone should be chosen for advancement really only came to pass because it was a way for the promotion board to hit the easy button when they're examining a stack of (basically) equivalent OPRs. Let's be completely honest: we have developed and placed a lot of faith in metrics that we convince ourselves (i.e. promotion boards convince themselves) accurately measure whether or not someone should be promoted. In actuality, however, these ridiculous processes exist merely as ritual to legitimize a purely subjective process. This bullet means X, this bullet means Y. It would be better (more objective) - it really would be - if your OPR was merely a rank ordered 1, 2, 3, ..., n, out of N, and what got sent up to the promotion board was a list of the rankings you achieved over your career along with a recommendation of whether or not you should promote. The promotion board would literally be purely objective, and we'd be able to side-step the little temporary, subjective universe that gets created during the promotion board card game. And finally, I will proceed to flog myself for the overuse of the word 'master' in this post - it has recently been decreed that this word is decidedly 'unwoke' and its use is somehow discriminatory, triggering, inflammatory, and/or otherwise offensive to certain groups of people. My bad, tonight I'll go to sleep in my primary bedroom.

Is it just me, or does choosing people based on race, sex, national origin, or any other immutable characteristic quite literally tokenize them?

I also agree. And would like to pile on with we need more women in prison. Men are systematically discriminated against by the justice system, and the prison population doesn't represent the broader society. Therefore, we need more women in prison.

I saw something similar today and it rang true with me, as well (https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-biden-democrats-reckoning-generation-matt-gorman). Edit (another good one): https://theweek.com/articles/947824/left-just-got-crushed From the article: And I tend to agree. Having Trump in office for another four years would be delicious if only for the unending YouTube stream of leftist children reeeeeeeeeing, but honestly, Trump may have served his purpose, which was killing the Clinton machine, upending the Obama years, and shining a black light on what is our politics. The next four years spent with a fully ineffectual democratic president who can't mumble his way through a teleprompter and a vice president who is in way over her head will serve the conservative cause much more in the long run.

I hope all you guys saying Trump has got it locked up are right - for two reasons. I can't imagine what handing the country over to people who don't know the difference between a boy and a girl will be like, and secondly, the YouTube videos of the liberal tears are going to be even sweeter this time around...that said, I have my doubts. We'll have to wait and see.

Absolutely agree. Watched it a while ago and two things that stuck out to me were the fact that so many (almost all) of the homeless have either some sort of "debilitating" mental condition or are hopelessly addicted. One officer's quote stood out to me in particular: "Drug dealers selling crack, meth and heroin are evil people preying on the weakest part of society and belong in prison. We arrest them and nothing happens to them. They are back out on the street immediately. We need to acknowledge the disregard for human life inherent in selling life ending drugs and lock the dealers up for serious time." There are elements in society that literally profit from people's death. I'm open (but skeptical) to the "legalization" argument. Weed has been legal in a lot of states now, and there is still a very strong illicit market for it, so I don't buy the argument that we can just tax it and it'll just all be ok.

Gotta disagree with you completely on that one. Just because we have formalized/outsourced violence to an entity called the police does not make it their job (in any part) to get hurt while "serving and protecting" the rest of us. This is a "job" that has to be done by someone and is ultimately an extension of all of our most basic rights to not be harmed by other individuals - if we didn't have police is it my job to get a "little bit harmed" while defending my home because the robber has "rights" too? I don't think so. So the police who fulfill this role in society have zero duty to take even the smallest harm from those who are breaking laws - especially doing so violently. The people who break the law and willfully conduct violence against others (including police officers) are 100% responsible because it is 100% their choice to take the actions that led to those outcomes.

To be clear, I support the rights of any individual to marry, using whatever definition they want, whoever they want. I quite literally could not care. My problem with it (at core) is the same I have with many other laws which cause unintended "side effects" in our society. This happens when we have laws codified for one purpose but which are then expanded or applied to a group they were never intended or foreseen to cover at a future date. In the case of marriage, it was notionally brought into legal formality (rather continued) in order to provide protections to the spouse who gave up their productive years to raise children. And there are plenty of tax breaks associated with this institution whose purpose was making raising kids easier. So it's an imperfect legal construct because it presupposes certain things (i.e. kids). We're now at the point where these suppositions no longer make sense and have real fiscal impact. It would make more sense to associate marriage tax breaks with the number of kids you have which would open them up (fairly) for gay couples. To be clearer, childless straight couples shouldn't receive tax breaks either. I'll try and give a couple of examples. California (and other high-tax states) is currently in arms about their full (state) taxes no longer being federally deductible. Using very simplified math, a Californian making $100K paying 13.3% income tax ($13,300) would be taxed 20% (federal) on $86,700 (about $17,340) under the "old" system. Under the new system, they effectively pay the federal government first meaning they would pay $20,000 to the federal government and $10,640 to California. So the federal government gets a much larger piece of the pie and CA is left with lower tax revenue (no effect on the taxpayer here). But that's not really even the problem. The problem (philosophically) is that different states have different state income tax rates so they (those with lower state income taxes) wind up federally subsidizing the "rich" ones under the old system. Take Alabama's top tax rate (for easy math) of 5%. Under the old system, a $100K earner would pay Alabama $5,000 and then pay the feds $19,000 (20% of 95K). So equal earners in CA and AL wind up paying the federal government $17,340 and $19,000, respectively? That's the problem that Trump's tax cut fixed: it eliminates the differential federal tax rate that income tax payers fork over to the federal government. It's no wonder high-tax blue states are all about federal programs - they (used to) cost less for them! One last example (also CA). Proposition 13 makes is such that your neighbors might be paying a wildly different property tax rate than you. While well-intended, it creates is another instance of law that creates major differentials between neighbors. California's budget is California's budget. If they can't get the taxes from your neighbor, they're gonna get them from you. Wrapping this all together, because I don't want to lose the thread. I view it as a problem not because of a moral reason, but because it was a set of laws enacted with a different set of assumptions and is one instance of the larger problem of applying laws to groups or circumstances the were not written for. Hence when circumstances change, we need to re-write and re-think them so they are applied fairly and don't result in unintended consequences - not just blanket approve parking in handicapped spaces.

Yeah I know, I can buy like 3-4 chicken breasts for less than $5. If I make rice with it, that's full sustenance for a few days. It's not "great" eating, but that's not what we're talking about. People just like to dress up excuses nowadays.

Well you did reference "pure unbridled economic libertarianism" and the failings of the "free market system in America" so label me confused then.

Maybe it is more difficult to get healthy food. But there are a lot of things that are more difficult when you don't have money. One solution I advocate for is that EBT cards should not work in convenience stores or should be able to purchase "processed" items. They should be allowed to purchase raw produce only. Buying a chicken and some salad and rice is not more expensive than eating out for a whole family. It just isn't. On the other note, I don't mind the sarcasm and I appreciate how direct we can be in this forum. I appreciate the fray. It's hard to have these conversations in person with large parts of the populace at this point. That is true, but it's also a "right" you are given in response to the government attempting to take something from you - so in the case of the court/justice system, they are going to deprive you of one of your rights, it's only reasonable that they provide you with a "defense." So in that light, it is categorically different and the original point is still that the government doesn't subsidize your other rights, so why is healthcare elevated to a privileged status? Maybe I could see it if the government was causing your ill health, but in the majority of cases it is due to lifestyle choices. I think one of the most persistent tropes that operates in our discourse is that we actually have a truly "free" market. Nothing could be further from the truth. So when I hear about all the failings of capitalism I just laugh. We have a very mixed economy. We have actual monopolies. Regulatory capture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture) is rampant. And there are all sorts of other factors in our economic system that work against free market principles. All that is to say that I dismiss arguments that point at what we currently have to say "look, capitalism doesn't work."

Put simply, because of the cost. Healthcare is inordinately expensive. The majority doesn't determine what is and is not a "right." Rights pre-exist government - they're not things that we all agree we should collectively pay for. Not necessarily, but I am ok with it when people don't take care of themselves and become a burden on society. What is the balance? Take a look at many other modern cultures in the world - or non-modern for that matter. They do not look like us. From google (1st hit via the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm#:~:text=Among men%2C the prevalence of,those aged 60 and over.😞 "Among men, the prevalence of obesity was 40.3% among those aged 20–39, 46.4% among those aged 40–59, and 42.2% among those aged 60 and over. Among women, the prevalence of obesity was 39.7% among those aged 20–39, 43.3% among those aged 40–59, and 43.3% among those aged 60 and over. None of the differences by age were significant." Well over 1/3 (approaching 1/2) of Americans are medically obese. Let that sink in. Walk around Japan or Poland and you'll notice we do not look like them. They are thin. They are healthy. There is no way in hell I'm interested in paying for end of life care for approximately 1/2 of America, when it's visibly provable that they do not care about themselves. I'm not even interested in hearing arguments about it. I'm a hard "no." Now, we un-screw our food system and the way we eat and feed ourselves in this country and shape up our act, cool, let's start the conversation again. Shack. You're 100% correct. Should the government pay for me to open a newspaper or buy me a bull horn? Freedom of speech is a right!! What about a gun. Right to bear arms! "Should" they is a fine question - they don't have to. The argument is that they do because it makes a career in the service of your country more attractive. Take away that "right" (benefit) and you'll likely see recruiting and retention decline. Military healthcare is not a right - it's part of the compensation you're being given as part of the contract of your service. Same goes for your family. Half of America is OBESE!!! This kid is 10!!!! (Edit - he's 4). Let's fix this first. No it's not all the problem of obesity, but this is only one (1) problem that contributes to the health crisis in our country - there are many others. It is no until we fix some other underlying issues first. I'm not interested in forsaking people who truly lose the health lottery in life. But we MUST differentiate between those, and just blanket providing hundreds of thousands of dollars of care at the end of life for every American.

I won't nitpick, but I will disagree with you on something substantive - "alleviating" student debt is absolutely, and wildly radical.

Only partly tongue-in-cheek - yes in the sense that the lack of a HUD didn't actually cause the accident. Not in the sense that design decisions and other factors substantially contribute to accidents like this. The comment was originally made in the vein of a bit of mud-slinging against an airplane that has had multiple design decisions that cause operators to go "huh???" Lacking a HUD, a gun that breaks the air frame, having a canopy bow, all the design trade-offs required to allow certain models to take-off/land vertically, and so on. "Hundreds of design flaws the pentagon has no intent of ever fixing." Wow. It's part and parcel of a program that if we're being totally honest, should have been scrapped and started anew. We built an airplane to please everyone, so it's no wonder that no one is happy with it. Obviously, considerations like this are well beyond the scope of the AIB/SIB process, though I would love for an O-6 to go there. Back to the accident, the cause was determined to be the fact that the MP landed at 202 KCAS. Duh. Fly the airplane past it's design limit or do something with it that is going to break it and all bets are off. The secondary cause (re: flight control logic/PIO) I can't really comment on because I'm completely out of my element, but it certainly seems reasonable that had it been landed at a normal speed and the control inputs had been made appropriately the "weirdness" would have been avoided. So on that note, I (personally) can chalk that up to a "substantially contributing factor" which resulted from trying to land it too fast - at least that's what I would call it in the debrief. I say this with no intent to Fox 3 the AIB, because I think it's basically spot on. That said, I can't take much from "don't land at 200 knots" as an aviator because if I said it during a brief, my 4-ship would look at me sideways, as they should if I was going to say something so obvious (standard motherhood briefs notwithstanding). What I can take from this, and what I think others can take from this, is that our bro got distracted by something during a critical phase of flight. The AIB says this exactly, and it's what I take away from it as one more example of how much the basic shit matters. So in summary, I agree with your assessment that it was basically over-reliance on automation resulting from task saturation. But, I will add that I think it could have been more easily avoided had he not had conflicting information being presented to him during a critical phase of flight - which IMO is caused by over-design. Simple works very well. The T-38, F-15, F-16, F-22, C-17 (even), etc, etc, all have HUDs. We are used to flying on HUDs. The F-35 should have a HUD.

"The pilot noticed something was wrong with his helmet-mounted display, suggesting it was misaligned in relation to the horizon. The pilot cross-checked his virtual heads-up display and instrument landing system data, and visually adjusted his aim point and glide slope toward the runway’s threshold." Root cause: F-35 doesn't have a HUD. "

Or, you could be right-leaning like me and think that we are changing the climate, but still disavow the leftist attempts to over-regulate everything. 1. We are changing the climate. 2. We don't have to find or buy into the "political" solutions; we can (and probably will) find technical/engineering ones. In 90 minutes, more energy arrives on the planet than humans use in an entire year, from all sources. The form this debate takes is a complete side-show to me. There is this trope on the right where any admission that humans are affecting the planet means we have to go along with the green new deal, or whatever - we don't. There's also this group on the left that is blind to the source of most of human progress - technology, not politics. I scoff both frames.

You have some major projection going on. You need to look hard at your party and those associated with it. Pile on: Biden doesn't know Biden's policies. One of the biggest issues I have with "his" campaign is that it is being used to install a "vice" president who was so wholly rejected during her own primary that she was among the first to drop out. That worries me. It should worry all Americans.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. Uh, no, that's not racism, that's data. There is data that says if you grow up black in the US you are more likely to have a relative in prison. (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/share-of-black-white-hispanic-americans-in-prison-2018-vs-2006/) There is data that says if you grow up white in the US you are more likely to live in a suburb. (https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/06/share-of-black-white-hispanic-americans-in-prison-2018-vs-2006/) It might be uncomfortable data, but its out there. Honestly, I don't follow you. I understand there are differences among races as far as the data goes. That is well documented, and I agree. My point to you was to say that your view which ascribed a characteristic to an individual based on membership in a group (or to the group as a whole) is the fundamental, operational characteristic of racism - not that there aren't observable differences between the races. Differences between the races will likely always exist - it doesn't mean there are actual biological reasons for those differences. Coming at this problem from the standpoint of biology is awful, and it will never result in lasting solutions for our society. While we're talking about data, there is also data that says police officers are much more likely to be involved in a violent encounter with blacks than they are whites. From the Wapo (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/01/09/are-black-or-white-offenders-more-likely-to-kill-police/). Why are offices far more likely to be killed by a minority than they are a white person? "There were 511 officers killed in felonious incidents and 540 offenders from 2004 to 2013, according to FBI reports. Among the total offenders, 52 percent were white, and 43 percent were black." "From 1980 to 2013, there were 2,269 officers killed in felonious incidents, and 2,896 offenders. The racial breakdown of offenders over the 33-year period was on par with the 10-year period: 52 percent were white, and 41 percent were black." In my worldview, this boils down to a cultural issues. There are legitimate historical reasons for it (racism), but that is from historical social forces, not actual racial disparities between different ethnic groups. That is my point. The differences that we observe which we are happy to pin on race are really due to deeper, underlying factors such as culture, etc. That, however, is a much more difficult conversation to have, and our society isn't exactly behaving in a mature, adult manner of late. Looking to those facts above, officers are vastly more likely to be involved in a deadly encounter with blacks than they are with whites - does that mean black people are inherently more violent? No - that is racist. What it indicates is that there are systemic issues within the black community that result in a grossly disproportionate number of violent encounters with police. It is convenient to pin it on race, but that's not going to solve any problem, because the problem isn't because they are black. What has changed since the enlightenment is we know for a fact now that humans are incapable of reason because of cognitive bias. In fact, the very term cognitive bias is defined as humans making irrational actions because of unconscious perceptions. Realize, there are over 100 forms of cognitive bias, and they are well documented. You probably talk about a dozen of them every time you do a CRM class. Recency bias? You're more likely to treat the most recent SIF you read as more important than one from the 90s. Authority Bias - You are more likely to trust someone if they are credentialed in the field they are speaking, even if their data seems illogical. Halo Effect - You are more likely to assume a "good ing dude" is immune to mistakes in the cockpit. Status quo bias: assuming the enlightenment is the epitome of philosophical thought because that's the way it has been for the last 300 years etc... This is also the major flaw with game theory as well, which presumes a game player always makes rational decisions to effect winning outcomes. People aren't rational, even when they think they are. I am always perplexed by arguments that proceed like this. We are "incapable of reason" except for the reason that lets me to conclude that humans are incapable of reason. Whaaa? Any argument that starts off with "we're incapable of reason, so therefore X, Y, and Z" has some inherent problems. I don't want to hammer this too hard, because there are different ways you could have phrased it, but to me, it does highlight one of the major themes that is going on in our culture - which is to say "there is no objective truth," which has one purpose: to empower certain groups or individuals over others. I'm aware of and know there is such a thing as bias. It's the new hotness. And this thing called unconscious bias, I'm aware of that too. I actually took an "inherent" bias test related to fat/thin (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html). Of course it indicated that I'm biased towards thin. The problem is that I am completely aware of my "inherent" bias towards thin people and against fat people. Fat people take up way to much of my airline seat, too much of my air, and too much of my pricey healthcare. Americans are too fat, and I am biased against fat Americans, but I already knew this. This is more appropriately called preference. Humans have preferences. In fact, I think a strong anthropological argument could be made that says these "biases" are the only reason there are still races. I feel like we have had enough generations all living together at this point that if there weren't preferences, we would all be the same shade at this point. I say all this, but I also don't want to disavow the importance of understanding one's own biases, because it is valuable. Humans are capable of reason, and knowing what your biases are, allows you to modify your behavior appropriately in order to counter those biases. In fact, if people weren't capable of reason, what use would it be to understand one's biases? I can't think of a reason (since I'm not capable of it). The bottom line is that I am deeply suspicious of any post-modern logic that discounts the very notion of "Truth", all the while purporting to have some sort of received wisdom/knowledge which is basically unsubstantiated. 99% of people on this forum give plenty of Eucks? about this. There are whole threads dedicated to leadership not taking care of people. How do you think people are taken care of if not through empathy/sympathy. You want to lambast the AF for poor leadership, but literally every book on leadership out there says you need empathy/sympathy for your charges. Are you really telling me, as a commander, you wouldn't have sympathy/empathy for any of your people if they lost a spouse/child/loved one? I don't think you mean that but how else do you describe that if not sympathy/empathy? I put "Eucks" to avoid the post being blocked (I think they used to be, maybe not anymore). In any case, empathy and sympathy are important for leaders. My point, which I did a poor job of making, is that we now live in a culture that seeks to put empathy and sympathy in front of fact, reason, and logic. Empathy and sympathy are all good, I got no issue. My issue is when we just go soft on people and issues because we don't want to address actual problems cranium-on.

The above, x1000... The below, not so much. To be clear, the bold part of your argument there is actual racism (not the fake news racism ala current political and social discourse, but actual, genuine racism). You are ascribing differences to people based on their external, immutable characteristics - whether positive or negative, that is racism. Your bit about the enlightenment is also off target. It's more important now than at any time in the past 70-80 years probably. The idea that individuals had worth and rights was transformative for humanity as a whole, not just the (Western) culture that enacted it. Since large parts of the world are yet to be "enlightened," it is ever relevant. And if you are suggesting there are enlightenment ideas that are "wrong" which ones? The supremacy of fact, reason, and logic? What don't we know yet, IYO? Finally, thanks for the pedantic lesson on the differences between empathy and sympathy, though I'm sure most of the fighter pilots on this board still give precisely 0 Eucks about either. This discussion has brought forth the central conflict occurring in our culture right now: facts vs feelings. I think you're on the side of feelings.

I think your frame is backwards. This isn't an election for things. It's an election against things.

You mean the movie Pearl Harbor, right? I agree, I'm still traumatized.