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Professional Actuarial Topics Actuarial Politics
87

yup

88

Paradoxically, actions like cancelling a meeting with an aggrieved party because they are off their rocker is how you end up with groups like Proud Boys. They feel unheard and unappreciated. Ignoring them and mocking them at the same time doesn’t induce any kind of shame or regret for their actions. It only reinforces their delusions. “See?!?! They can’t even have the discussion! Obviously we’re on the right track here. Keep it up!!!”

IMHO, the CAS Board should have taken the meeting, listened with a straight face, and invited one of those three to be part of a committee to discuss these issues more in-depth. When you drive discontent like this underground, it festers and spreads, rather than dying out. I predict this is a 5-year battle with ultimately negative PR outcome, which could have been taken care of in 3 months with a different approach and virtually no change to the CAS Board’s forward actions.

89

While I agree that it’s generally best to give the aggrieved party a hearing, I think it’s too early to judge the CAS in this. Assuming the meeting was scheduled and cancelled, we don’t even know why. Maybe a participant had a stomach bug and needed to take time off suddenly and unexpectedly, but they didn’t want to say that in an email.

Or maybe they read the PDF attached to the invitation and didn’t want to touch it.

Hard to say.

90

Stomach bugs are the worst.

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91

That’s every group who takes a stance, proclaims it’s right because [vaguely sensible reasons with bullshit thrown in] and then demands to be heard and taken seriously or else it’ll act like spoiled brats and start lobbing shit at everyone who won’t go along with them. There’s a way to make yourself heard and effect change, and what’s going on right now isn’t it absent a hostile takeover or breaking away into a splinter group - say, the Society of Casualty Actuaries.

Whether the Board should have taken the meeting is beyond my pay grade. [Presuming there was a meeting scheduled, which Whether there was in fact a meeting scheduled is another matter.] I would say they could have listened with a straight face and concluded “OK, we’ve heard your complaints, we’ll take it under consideration” and hung up the phone and said “fuck that, these people are loons.” I’d much rather the malcontents form coherent statements that don’t rely on inflammatory buzzwords that distract from the arguments being raised.

Either way, they’re not joining my renegade group of DAMNIT [Disassociated Actuaries Made Nothing by Ineffective Testing].

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92

And they come on suddenly enough that I’ve had someone literally walk out of a meeting she was central to because of one.

93

My stomach is pretty bad.

It’s been an issue for me in the past.

94

Yes, I took an exam course with Ira early in my career. It’s very likely he took an exam where one of his papers was on the syllabus. I’ve met him a couple times at actuarial conferences, and a former boss of mine worked with him at AIG.

95

That’s so weird.

It’s kinda funny too if he doesn’t get it right. This is not what I meant in my paper! This question doesn’t even make sense.

96

:iatp:

I think there’s a legitimate discussion to be had over the proposed bylaws/constitution changes. I’m still not sure I get what “problem” they’re meant to solve, but I’m not a priori opposed, either. It’s a massive overhaul, so consideration of intended & unintended consequences seems appropriate.

But I also trust our board enough to know it’s not part of some nefarious “woke agenda”, words I had to hold my nose just to type.

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97

That sort of happened to Glenn Meyers. He took an exam that included one of his papers, and it asked a question like “What did Meyers mean when he said XYZ?”

And Glenn told me he looked at the question, and wondered what they were trying to get at. And then he decided what they probably had in mind and gave that answer.

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98

I also sat for the pricing material which is now on exam 5 with a co-author of one of the papers then on the exam. He said that he didn’t have any issues with his materal. :wink:

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99

Perhaps there should be the creation of a CAS supreme court to determine the constitutionality of new bylaws.

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100

I think similar happened to Sholom Feldblum, but IIRC it was when he was going for his FSA post-FCAS (maybe I have that reversed?)

101

Wouldn’t happen these days, as the CAS moved away from quoting specific papers once they developed the Learning Objectives/Knowledge Statements system.

102

It could still happen. Robbin takes exam 9 again (assuming he never passed it). Gets a question that is clearly from his paper. It doesn’t need to specifically say what would Robbin do in the question. It could just be an application not intended by the writer of the paper.

103

I have one paper on an SOA exam… I’m glad I won’t have to face taking an exam on something I wrote.

Separately, I just did a search of the actuarial directory for credentials. I found this:

PhD, ACAS: 21 [Ira not in this list, btw]
PhD, ASA: 197

104

I knew even before I entered the profession that it was common for academics to stop at associateship.

105

I think there were some people in the committee when I wrote questions that weren’t actuaries at all, just PhDs.

106

Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, teach gym

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