4 ms·

Something I have been mulling over lately is, how "progressiveness" encodes bias in and of itself. Let's reason out a (very naive and overly simplistic) though

by yomly 9y ago

Something I have been mulling over lately is, how "progressiveness" encodes bias in and of itself. Let's reason out a (very naive and overly simplistic) thought experiment: You are BigCo and want to promote diversity. Part of your cultural strategy is nurture a culture that is "progressive". Therefore you implement a litmus test behavioural question that implicitly tests the candidate's attitudes to sexism as part of your hiring procedure. Enter candidate A and candidate B, both are male. Candidate A went to IvySchool and studied CS, candidate B grew up in LEDCountry but was #1 national algorithms prize-winner. Suppose A and B were identical in performance in every part of the interview, save for the "progressive" litmus test. A gave a stellar answer, meanwhile B gave some answer which could be described as being a bit "traditional". Under these conditions, A would probably get the job for being a "culture-fit". What interests me though is that being able to speak the same "language" of progressives is correlates with access to education, and access to education is largely coupled to wealth. So here we have a system which is yet again entrenching a power group of sorts, and extrapolating, I see echoes of the institutions which churn out readymade bankers and lawyers. Now this is all grossly oversimple, and I don't really have any solutions I can propose, but I find the notion of bias in culture fit, even the paradoxically "I am pro diversity" culture to be a curious idea.

err4nt 9y ago
Any time a principle is applied to a culture at a specific point in time, when you look back from an even better place the original improvement can look barbaric. An example: killing animals to eat them. In the ancient world I heard that it was common to tie up an animal and cut off one limb at a time, keeping the animal alive as long as possible to keep the rest of the meat 'fresh'. When you got hungry, you would go hack off another limb, etc. This means that the kosher laws that involved swiftly killing an animal before eating any part of it actually reduced the animals suffering quite a bit. But from our modern perspective where we have access to even more efficient slaughterhouses, by our standards the kosher laws seem unnecessarily gory and greusome. In this case, the principle has remained the same over time: try to reduce the animal's suffering and bring it a swift death…but when you compare how that progressive principle gets applied into different cultures at different times, you can have wildly different perspectives on how ethical the different practices are.
- yomly 9y ago
  Your anecdote is both valid and interesting, I suppose (having had a bit of time to reflect on my post) what interests me is: some measures to improve diversity and counter privilege will ironically favour people who are privileged.

by yomly 9y ago

err4nt 9y ago

Any time a principle is applied to a culture at a specific point in time, when you look back from an even better place the original improvement can look barbaric. An example: killing animals to eat them. In the ancient world I heard that it was common to tie up an animal and cut off one limb at a time, keeping the animal alive as long as possible to keep the rest of the meat 'fresh'. When you got hungry, you would go hack off another limb, etc. This means that the kosher laws that involved swiftly killing an animal before eating any part of it actually reduced the animals suffering quite a bit. But from our modern perspective where we have access to even more efficient slaughterhouses, by our standards the kosher laws seem unnecessarily gory and greusome. In this case, the principle has remained the same over time: try to reduce the animal's suffering and bring it a swift death…but when you compare how that progressive principle gets applied into different cultures at different times, you can have wildly different perspectives on how ethical the different practices are.

yomly 9y ago
Your anecdote is both valid and interesting, I suppose (having had a bit of time to reflect on my post) what interests me is: some measures to improve diversity and counter privilege will ironically favour people who are privileged.