Not quite - if it's not a random person standing next to me, but someone also working in the area, I'd assume that the filtering has eliminated people less comp

Not quite - if it's not a random person standing next to me, but someone also working in the area, I'd assume that the filtering has eliminated people less competent (if not, then we'd already be at 50/50 equality). To be concrete, I'd assume that any engineer at Google to be about the same competence as their peers. Though it sounds like if you're "diverse" you might have an easier time of getting in, similar to medical school? (Honest question.) At any rate, how do we get to the facts? Saying it must be 50% by fiat doesn't seem like a way to truth. So far I see one side proposing there might be biological reasons and the other side being offended anyone could even suggest the possibility.