4 ms·

This whole topic is very bothersome, as many of the comments in the thread so far have pointed out. For anyone who is generally for these kinds of policies (eq

by asher_ 10y ago

This whole topic is very bothersome, as many of the comments in the thread so far have pointed out. For anyone who is generally for these kinds of policies (equality, diversity, whatever), can you please explain your position from the ground up? I am genuinely asking, because from my point of view there are huge assumptions made that seem to me, on the surface, to be unjustified.

ubernostrum 10y ago
One version is: we're still crawling out from under the very long shadow of centuries (in the US, arguably millennia in many other places) of codified society-wide discrimination, enforced by law and by custom, to ensure that people of a certain gender or a certain race aren't allowed to pursue particular career paths or do particular things with their lives. It is ludicrous to think that this has been completely toppled and undone with no lingering sequelae whatsoever, entirely within living memory (large, organized nationwide movements in the US for sexual and racial equality have only reached the point of realistically being able to even start fighting for equal access to industries and jobs in the last 50-60 years or so), and that now we just somehow know that the distributions of people in industries we happen to see right now are the "natural" distributions, produced free of bias, prejudice or discrimination. Especially when high-paying/high-prestige industries still disproportionately are made up of (relative to the general population) the gender and race which historically rigged things to their benefit. Any claim that bias has been removed and we still got this result is incredibly suspicious in the face of historical evidence. Thus, explicit, active measures should be employed to watch for and counteract the bias which is highly likely to still exist and be in operation. Another version is: because every time an industry has claimed to be meritocratic in its hiring process, that low diversity is because "that group just isn't interested in our field", etc., it's turned out -- on actual inspection -- to be false. The classic example is orchestra blind auditions: once reviewers were unable to know the gender of a candidate, suddenly a lot more women were discovered to be qualified to play in orchestras! Given how often this type of thing has happened in other fields, there is no reason to presume that tech is some sort of special exception. Think of it like the principle of mediocrity in cosmology, where constantly-recentered claims of "well, where we are is special and unique" continually got blown out of the water until people learned to assume that where we are is average. Attempts to label tech as the one industry that really is somehow a unique outlier in being free of bias and that a majority of the human race just "naturally isn't interested in" or "naturally aren't as good at" are overwhelmingly likely to be blown out of the water sooner or later. Where we are now is not some special ordained natural law engraved into our DNA. And yet people consistently argue that tech is that one unique special outlier where it really is the case that women/black people/etc. "just aren't interested" or "naturally aren't as good". Thus, explicit, active measures should be employed to watch for and counteract the bias which is highly likely to still exist and be in operation.

by asher_ 10y ago

ubernostrum 10y ago

One version is: we're still crawling out from under the very long shadow of centuries (in the US, arguably millennia in many other places) of codified society-wide discrimination, enforced by law and by custom, to ensure that people of a certain gender or a certain race aren't allowed to pursue particular career paths or do particular things with their lives. It is ludicrous to think that this has been completely toppled and undone with no lingering sequelae whatsoever, entirely within living memory (large, organized nationwide movements in the US for sexual and racial equality have only reached the point of realistically being able to even start fighting for equal access to industries and jobs in the last 50-60 years or so), and that now we just somehow know that the distributions of people in industries we happen to see right now are the "natural" distributions, produced free of bias, prejudice or discrimination. Especially when high-paying/high-prestige industries still disproportionately are made up of (relative to the general population) the gender and race which historically rigged things to their benefit. Any claim that bias has been removed and we still got this result is incredibly suspicious in the face of historical evidence. Thus, explicit, active measures should be employed to watch for and counteract the bias which is highly likely to still exist and be in operation. Another version is: because every time an industry has claimed to be meritocratic in its hiring process, that low diversity is because "that group just isn't interested in our field", etc., it's turned out -- on actual inspection -- to be false. The classic example is orchestra blind auditions: once reviewers were unable to know the gender of a candidate, suddenly a lot more women were discovered to be qualified to play in orchestras! Given how often this type of thing has happened in other fields, there is no reason to presume that tech is some sort of special exception. Think of it like the principle of mediocrity in cosmology, where constantly-recentered claims of "well, where we are is special and unique" continually got blown out of the water until people learned to assume that where we are is average. Attempts to label tech as the one industry that really is somehow a unique outlier in being free of bias and that a majority of the human race just "naturally isn't interested in" or "naturally aren't as good at" are overwhelmingly likely to be blown out of the water sooner or later. Where we are now is not some special ordained natural law engraved into our DNA. And yet people consistently argue that tech is that one unique special outlier where it really is the case that women/black people/etc. "just aren't interested" or "naturally aren't as good". Thus, explicit, active measures should be employed to watch for and counteract the bias which is highly likely to still exist and be in operation.