Oh boy, time for another round of Economists Try To Do Math:
- A definitely real regression specification

- Error bars? We don't need to stinkin' error bars. We use the Excel bar chart defaults like God intended. And axis labels are for people who want to look like they understand what they're doing, which we certainly do not.

R Squared of <2 fucking percent. The whole model explains 2% of the variation in income. 2%; the traits alone account for only 0.3%. Literally only one of the "Big five" traits was even statistically significant! This is a nothingburger! I would tell an undergrad nice effort but maybe ask a less stupid question next time.

Who the fuck was dumb enough to publish this?

Guenzel, Marius and Kogan, Shimon and Niessner, Marina and Shue, Kelly, AI Personality Extraction from Faces: Labor Market Implications (January 09, 2025). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5089827 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.5089827

Oh, so no one? The academic equivalent of self-publishing? The economist sure is going for the hard-hitting research. Anyone who was stupid enough to put their name on this thing deserves to be tarred and feathered.

> new method to analyze personality traits

> look inside

> scientific racism

what if there was an app that determined someone's social value based on a highly complex model that only needed to look at their skin tone? would the periodical that repeatedly dismissed the movement to abolish slavery as too radical be....

• ☐ not interested
• ☐ somewhat interested
• ☑ very interested

So Mr Guenzel and his co-authors used an algorithm to analyse the pictures of 96,000 MBA graduates, and extract what they call the “Photo Big Five”—as they rename the Big Five personality traits of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness.

The researchers were like, “Hey you know that WEIRD bias problem in psychology and sociology research? What if, instead of trying to negate it, we maximized it?”

"Merit"
Werit
Wreit
Wɦiet
White

1950s people: "Damn people in 2025 are gonna have flying cars and laser guns and shit"

2025:

BEHOLD, THE AMAZING ROBOPHRENOLOGIST!

We so badly need another round of denazification. Maybe a couple dozen or so, while we're at it

I'm going to serious post this for a moment:

Pretty privilege is a thing. I think just as much as the racial (and other) biases this could complicate the pretty privilege problem. I'm a short, bald, older dude who is a 4 out of 10 physically on a good day. I know I've been turned down for promotions and shit simply because other people are way more attractive than me and frankly people just want to be around attractive people. I have always made less than my peers. It is what it is. My fear is that these stupid fucking metrics are going to go full fucking incel mode and start measuring negative canthal tilt and shit like that to really lock that in. This hearkens back to the argument on social media that there is a demand by wealthy couples for "ugly nannies" and my argument was for pretty people to sit the fuck out on this one. Let the ugly women have this one fucking thing. Anyways, that's my rant as an ugly dude I can literally only see this as another huge hit for my fellow uggos.

calipers, digital

You may allege bias, but what if the shape of your skull can actually predict your propensity towards savagery?

For fuck sakes. I assumed you had rediscovered something from a hundred years ago.

Being told I'm too ugly for a job, luv 2 live in Amerikkka

Once again, fuck the Economist.

Fuck all economists

Technically this is physiognomy

Maybe the algorithm has a sense of humor and will re-Habsburg the bourgeoisie in a few generations.

“We will finally have meritocracy if only we made the world even MORE luck-based! Come on bro, one more luck-based patch.”

We literally already hide most jobs behind ‘networking’ and you think MORE pedigree is the solution to the shit state of the world? Unironically fuck yourself.

It’s the joke of throwing out half the applicants because “I don’t want unlucky people working for me” but fully unironic.

Our future is Stupid Gattaca

Hey, this new system I'm introducing might actually BENEFIT you in particular!

How many times have they used this line?

Oh wait I forgot it's the entire ideology

This pseudo science needs to be stopped ASAP. You can't even test these things in controlled environments, not in any reasonable way. These people are just looking for arbitrary patterns in things and trying to make sense of them.

It's like if I wrote a bunch of random letters on a napkin and someone desperately tried to find a reason behind them when I didn't intend there to be any reason.

We trained our hiring AI to be racist and judge people by their looks. We care about merit very much

It's the time for AI/Woke