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Oh come on. Anyone seriously espousing the idealism of pure "meritocracy" needs to put aside their gradeschool naivete. Next you'll start quoting Anne Rand ba

Oh come on. Anyone seriously espousing the idealism of pure "meritocracy" needs to put aside their gradeschool naivete. Next you'll start quoting Anne Rand back to us. It's one of those ideas that sure sounds good... I mean, who can possibly argue with the idea that they should pick the best speakers with the best content? Until you actually think about it. What you fail to recognize is that, unless you can find me quantitative measures that can be used to determine a person's skill, meritocracy isn't about merit. It's about convincing fallible human beings of the level of merit. And that means running up against both conscious and unconscious cognitive bias. So the reality is, like it or not, if you want a fair shot in the professional world, you damn well do need the help of people fighting the good fight against personal and institutional bias. Hell, 20 or 30 years ago it's entirely possible you wouldn't have had a job at all if it weren't for the actions of people who came before you who understood this and fought for a more inclusive society and workplace. But it's rather easy to rail against policies like affirmative action when you've already benefited from them. It reminds me of anti-vaxxers who argue about the rarity of diseases to justify not getting inoculated, not realizing that that situation exists because people got vaccinated.

cc81 9y ago
In life in general sure but in cases like these a blind review process (that I think they used) should be good enough. I mean it is pretty odd that you would do a call for papers and pick out those you liked the most without knowing race or gender but then replace some just because it turns out they had the wrong gender/skin color/whatever.
- deleted 9y ago
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- zzalpha 9y ago
  I mean it is pretty odd that you would do a call for papers and pick out those you liked the most without knowing race or gender but then replace some just because it turns out they had the wrong gender/skin color/whatever. It's actually totally understandable. Let me explain. The conference organizers clearly have diversity as a goal. In their naivete, they thought to themselves "we want equality for everyone! I know... let's just make this a pure meritocracy! Then there won't be bias and everyone will be happy!", and so they used a blind review process. Of course, it didn't dawn on them at the time that if you took a blind random sampling of programmers, had them write presentations, and then approved them, you'd end up with a lack of diversity because the industry itself has an almost comically absurd lack of diversity. So unless the average skill level of individuals in minority groups is extemely disproportionately higher than the average population (which rather contradicts the idea that race or gender don't impact skill), they would be poorly represented because they're poorly represented in our community in general. So after approving their blindly reviewed set of presentations, they realized, shoot, they have an alarming lack of diversity in their presentations (read the above two paragraphs again if you don't understand why). And so now they have to go back to the drawing board. All because they didn't understand population statistics.
  - PrimHelios 9y ago
    The issue is that diversity shouldn't be a goal. If you want more diverse speakers, then the only proper thing to do is let the conf continue, and then you'll start creating more people who have the knowledge to give talks, and you'll build a better divers background that way. There's no reason to require diversity for a conference talk.
    - zzalpha 9y ago
      The issue is that diversity shouldn't be a goal. In your opinion. Feel free to run your own conference adhering to your own values, and feel free to skip this one. But the breathless, hysterical overreaction to this by some in the tech community is simply juvenile and absurd.
concede_pluto 9y ago
Nobody cares about diversity in accounting. There are no role models. It's just a bunch of nerds trying to score 100% on the big test because nobody else is obsessed enough to be any good at it. That's what programming was like before these people chasing big paychecks invaded.

cc81 9y ago

In life in general sure but in cases like these a blind review process (that I think they used) should be good enough. I mean it is pretty odd that you would do a call for papers and pick out those you liked the most without knowing race or gender but then replace some just because it turns out they had the wrong gender/skin color/whatever.

deleted 9y ago
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zzalpha 9y ago
I mean it is pretty odd that you would do a call for papers and pick out those you liked the most without knowing race or gender but then replace some just because it turns out they had the wrong gender/skin color/whatever. It's actually totally understandable. Let me explain. The conference organizers clearly have diversity as a goal. In their naivete, they thought to themselves "we want equality for everyone! I know... let's just make this a pure meritocracy! Then there won't be bias and everyone will be happy!", and so they used a blind review process. Of course, it didn't dawn on them at the time that if you took a blind random sampling of programmers, had them write presentations, and then approved them, you'd end up with a lack of diversity because the industry itself has an almost comically absurd lack of diversity. So unless the average skill level of individuals in minority groups is extemely disproportionately higher than the average population (which rather contradicts the idea that race or gender don't impact skill), they would be poorly represented because they're poorly represented in our community in general. So after approving their blindly reviewed set of presentations, they realized, shoot, they have an alarming lack of diversity in their presentations (read the above two paragraphs again if you don't understand why). And so now they have to go back to the drawing board. All because they didn't understand population statistics.
- PrimHelios 9y ago
  The issue is that diversity shouldn't be a goal. If you want more diverse speakers, then the only proper thing to do is let the conf continue, and then you'll start creating more people who have the knowledge to give talks, and you'll build a better divers background that way. There's no reason to require diversity for a conference talk.
  - zzalpha 9y ago
    The issue is that diversity shouldn't be a goal. In your opinion. Feel free to run your own conference adhering to your own values, and feel free to skip this one. But the breathless, hysterical overreaction to this by some in the tech community is simply juvenile and absurd.

concede_pluto 9y ago

Nobody cares about diversity in accounting. There are no role models. It's just a bunch of nerds trying to score 100% on the big test because nobody else is obsessed enough to be any good at it. That's what programming was like before these people chasing big paychecks invaded.