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> “I don’t see where innovation necessarily comes from diversity,” [the executive director at Progressives for Immigration Reform, the group that paid for the a

> “I don’t see where innovation necessarily comes from diversity,” [the executive director at Progressives for Immigration Reform, the group that paid for the ads,] said. I can't claim to know Lynn's exact thoughts (Lynn being the person quoted here), but this kind of rhetoric is common among racists/xenophobes. Diversity (in some respect) is inherently good for innovation. You could have a room full of CS PhDs, and if they all come from similar enough backgrounds then they may all come up with the same solutions to certain problems. "Merit" on its own isn't always enough. Simply having a different background could give someone an edge in such a group when it comes to innovation. I think skill-based immigration is important and useful, though I do think that there should be some sort of regulation to ensure that (1) immigrants are not exploited (they are paid fair wages equal to what a non-immigrant would be paid for the same job) and (2) some effort was put into recruiting from the US first (because I think US-based companies have a duty to the United States and its citizens, at least to some extent).

manigandham 9y ago
Why did you assume that all those PHDs have the same background? What is the objective measure of how interesting your life is compared to someone else? And how do you score how different two lives are? What does it mean that it "could" give an edge? Sure, something in your past might help you solve a problem in the future, whether that is your entire career experience or a single phrase you remember from childhood. However that's just fact and so generic that it applies to every human being on the planet, which is why these vague claims of "diverse" backgrounds being helpful are dubious at best, and that's before getting into the much worse "diverse-based-on-appearance" nonsense.
- BuckRogers 9y ago
  The only real diversity they're looking for is diversity of wages (trending down). If they wanted thought diversity, this is already a very diverse nation in every sense and a foreign passport is not a requirement. These exploitative capitalists are destroying the country. There are young black children born here that need a good paying job too. Taxes need to go up on the same employers so their schools are good enough to get all the kids there. We should reserve the benefits of having a company in the USA for those that want to invest and benefit from our labor. Those companies who only exist to take the good and not pay in should be forced to move their operation to Vietnam or wherever they feel is what they're looking for. I'm not going to be held hostage by them and want them and their downward, corrosive effect out of my country. 'Free traitors' beware, people are waking up from all political backgrounds.
xerxe-sans-s 9y ago
I'm a little uncomfortable with how quickly you decided to label these thoughts racist/xenophobic; but I'd like to better understand where that comes from. Lynn's stating that he hasn't seen any clear examples of where diversity led to innovation; and while your scenario makes sense, you're not providing 1) an actual example that demonstrates why he's incorrect, 2) any observation that a diverse group will generally produce that innovation.
- DonaldPShimoda 9y ago
  > I'm a little uncomfortable with how quickly you decided to label these thoughts racist/xenophobic; but I'd like to better understand where that comes from. Right, and that's totally fair! I don't know that Lynn is racist or xenophobic, and I'm unsure whether I believe that he is for sure. But I find his statement to be... curious, to say the least. My point was that this kind of rhetoric — "Diversity isn't that important"; "Diversity doesn't lead to anything particularly good"; "Diversity doesn't do XYZ thing that people says it does" — is often common amongst racists/xenophobes who are attempting to hide their true opinion (that non-white people are inherently lesser or worse than white people). It's a way of phrasing their thoughts in a way that's not obviously offensive. People think "Yeah, I guess that makes sense!" and suddenly diversity is valued less than it ought to be. You said that "Lynn's stating that he hasn't seen any clear examples of where diversity led to innovation", and this is definitely true on a factual level — Lynn is merely stating that he hasn't seen such evidence. But I would argue that he may not have been looking for such evidence. Here's a hypothetical scenario: perhaps Lynn was a developer who worked in a company where the vast majority of developers and employees in general were straight white males. The products they produce are good stuff, and seem innovative enough. Therefore, Lynn concludes that "innovation [doesn't necessarily] come from diversity." Lynn could very well just be another guy blinded by what is now commonly described as "white privilege" — essentially he is unable to see the positive effects that his being white has granted him compared to non-white people because the situations he exposes himself to do not exemplify anything else. Or he could be a racist/xenophobe who is relying on people like you to say "Well he probably didn't mean it that way" and give him a free pass. The reason I lean towards the latter is because of his choice to utilize this opinion to then build a political platform. It seems unlikely that someone would both (a) feel that diversity is not really that important because of their background but also (b) choose to use that opinion to build a political platform. The people who build political platforms have strong convictions, more often than not. And what kind of person has strong convictions about diversity not being important? --- Here's something else to think about. A common opinion of people like Lynn (based on what little I know from the article) is that all hiring decisions should be 100% merit-based. At first glance, this seems totally reasonable, right? Why would we not want a meritocracy? Consider the IQ test as a counter-example. The stated purpose of an IQ test is to measure a person's intellectual capabilities relative to an average baseline. The stated purpose has nothing to do with race or culture or anything like that. And yet... IQ tests are almost all inherently prejudiced against large groups of people. If we go back to some of the earlier tests, they're really essentially racist. That's because the tests were written by smart white males to measure the capabilities of other people relative to those same smart white males. They gave English grammar tests to non-native English speakers. They gave math tests to people who had never been taught math. And then they passed off the results in a way that indicated that other people were less than they were. I readily admit that in a field like computer science, it's a little easier to come up with more fair measures of ability. But I think that the current mentality is very similar to that of the "scientists" who gave IQ tests back in the day, and that concerns me greatly. I think we should focus more on inclusivity and diversity in the short-term and restore meritocracy in the future when there are fewer historical prejudices at play. --- Sorry I wrote so much, and sorry it took me so long to respond! I always forget to check my comments on HN. Is there no way to get notifications for responses like I get on Reddit? Kind of a pain haha.
yazan94 9y ago
> I can't claim to know Lynn's exact thoughts (Lynn being the person quoted here), but this kind of rhetoric is common among racists/xenophobes. It is also common with people who are more focused about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct or fulfilling quotas. > You could have a room full of CS PhDs, and if they all come from similar enough backgrounds then they may all come up with the same solutions to certain problems. "Merit" on its own isn't always enough. Simply having a different background could give someone an edge in such a group when it comes to innovation. I get what you are trying to say, though I do disagree. If you define diversity as different ethnic, cultural, etc. backgrounds, I think having a group of all-<insert group here> with different educational backgrounds (PhDs in CS, Engineering, Math, Physics, etc) would be more beneficial for innovation than having all CS PhDs but from different cultural backgrounds. I do not have any evidence to back up my claim, but I also haven't seen much evidence to prove that cultural diversity is more important than educational diversity. I would love to read more if you have any articles/studies
- s2g 9y ago
  If a that person is concerned with is hiring skill then they wouldnt be putting up these ads.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  The best we have are case studies of non-diverse teams reliably making products that aren't very good for people who look different, despite being highly educated and crossfunctional. The very common example is the Google Photos image search labelling dark-skinned people as gorillas (and more broadly facial recognition and machine learning biases towards light skinned people in a variety of ways). But there are others I've seen. It comes down to needing an advocate. Unless you have someone who advocates for making your products inclusive, you won't end up with inclusive products, and the best advocate is almost always an engineer who says "hey team this product doesn't work for me". (Edit: I should add, this is true for pretty much any feature, not just inclusive ones, but its also true for them) There's no reason a machine learning team needs physics PhDs. There is a reason that same machine learning team needs dark skinned machine learning PhDs. >It is also common with people who are more focused about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct or fulfilling quotas. Right, and given that most people don't want to explicitly state that they're bigoted, often people who are racist and xenophobic claim to hold their views because they care about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct. Perhaps you aren't, but its a worryingly common tactic.

manigandham 9y ago

Why did you assume that all those PHDs have the same background? What is the objective measure of how interesting your life is compared to someone else? And how do you score how different two lives are? What does it mean that it "could" give an edge? Sure, something in your past might help you solve a problem in the future, whether that is your entire career experience or a single phrase you remember from childhood. However that's just fact and so generic that it applies to every human being on the planet, which is why these vague claims of "diverse" backgrounds being helpful are dubious at best, and that's before getting into the much worse "diverse-based-on-appearance" nonsense.

BuckRogers 9y ago
The only real diversity they're looking for is diversity of wages (trending down). If they wanted thought diversity, this is already a very diverse nation in every sense and a foreign passport is not a requirement. These exploitative capitalists are destroying the country. There are young black children born here that need a good paying job too. Taxes need to go up on the same employers so their schools are good enough to get all the kids there. We should reserve the benefits of having a company in the USA for those that want to invest and benefit from our labor. Those companies who only exist to take the good and not pay in should be forced to move their operation to Vietnam or wherever they feel is what they're looking for. I'm not going to be held hostage by them and want them and their downward, corrosive effect out of my country. 'Free traitors' beware, people are waking up from all political backgrounds.

xerxe-sans-s 9y ago

I'm a little uncomfortable with how quickly you decided to label these thoughts racist/xenophobic; but I'd like to better understand where that comes from. Lynn's stating that he hasn't seen any clear examples of where diversity led to innovation; and while your scenario makes sense, you're not providing 1) an actual example that demonstrates why he's incorrect, 2) any observation that a diverse group will generally produce that innovation.

DonaldPShimoda 9y ago
> I'm a little uncomfortable with how quickly you decided to label these thoughts racist/xenophobic; but I'd like to better understand where that comes from. Right, and that's totally fair! I don't know that Lynn is racist or xenophobic, and I'm unsure whether I believe that he is for sure. But I find his statement to be... curious, to say the least. My point was that this kind of rhetoric — "Diversity isn't that important"; "Diversity doesn't lead to anything particularly good"; "Diversity doesn't do XYZ thing that people says it does" — is often common amongst racists/xenophobes who are attempting to hide their true opinion (that non-white people are inherently lesser or worse than white people). It's a way of phrasing their thoughts in a way that's not obviously offensive. People think "Yeah, I guess that makes sense!" and suddenly diversity is valued less than it ought to be. You said that "Lynn's stating that he hasn't seen any clear examples of where diversity led to innovation", and this is definitely true on a factual level — Lynn is merely stating that he hasn't seen such evidence. But I would argue that he may not have been looking for such evidence. Here's a hypothetical scenario: perhaps Lynn was a developer who worked in a company where the vast majority of developers and employees in general were straight white males. The products they produce are good stuff, and seem innovative enough. Therefore, Lynn concludes that "innovation [doesn't necessarily] come from diversity." Lynn could very well just be another guy blinded by what is now commonly described as "white privilege" — essentially he is unable to see the positive effects that his being white has granted him compared to non-white people because the situations he exposes himself to do not exemplify anything else. Or he could be a racist/xenophobe who is relying on people like you to say "Well he probably didn't mean it that way" and give him a free pass. The reason I lean towards the latter is because of his choice to utilize this opinion to then build a political platform. It seems unlikely that someone would both (a) feel that diversity is not really that important because of their background but also (b) choose to use that opinion to build a political platform. The people who build political platforms have strong convictions, more often than not. And what kind of person has strong convictions about diversity not being important? --- Here's something else to think about. A common opinion of people like Lynn (based on what little I know from the article) is that all hiring decisions should be 100% merit-based. At first glance, this seems totally reasonable, right? Why would we not want a meritocracy? Consider the IQ test as a counter-example. The stated purpose of an IQ test is to measure a person's intellectual capabilities relative to an average baseline. The stated purpose has nothing to do with race or culture or anything like that. And yet... IQ tests are almost all inherently prejudiced against large groups of people. If we go back to some of the earlier tests, they're really essentially racist. That's because the tests were written by smart white males to measure the capabilities of other people relative to those same smart white males. They gave English grammar tests to non-native English speakers. They gave math tests to people who had never been taught math. And then they passed off the results in a way that indicated that other people were less than they were. I readily admit that in a field like computer science, it's a little easier to come up with more fair measures of ability. But I think that the current mentality is very similar to that of the "scientists" who gave IQ tests back in the day, and that concerns me greatly. I think we should focus more on inclusivity and diversity in the short-term and restore meritocracy in the future when there are fewer historical prejudices at play. --- Sorry I wrote so much, and sorry it took me so long to respond! I always forget to check my comments on HN. Is there no way to get notifications for responses like I get on Reddit? Kind of a pain haha.

yazan94 9y ago

> I can't claim to know Lynn's exact thoughts (Lynn being the person quoted here), but this kind of rhetoric is common among racists/xenophobes. It is also common with people who are more focused about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct or fulfilling quotas. > You could have a room full of CS PhDs, and if they all come from similar enough backgrounds then they may all come up with the same solutions to certain problems. "Merit" on its own isn't always enough. Simply having a different background could give someone an edge in such a group when it comes to innovation. I get what you are trying to say, though I do disagree. If you define diversity as different ethnic, cultural, etc. backgrounds, I think having a group of all-<insert group here> with different educational backgrounds (PhDs in CS, Engineering, Math, Physics, etc) would be more beneficial for innovation than having all CS PhDs but from different cultural backgrounds. I do not have any evidence to back up my claim, but I also haven't seen much evidence to prove that cultural diversity is more important than educational diversity. I would love to read more if you have any articles/studies

s2g 9y ago
If a that person is concerned with is hiring skill then they wouldnt be putting up these ads.
joshuamorton 9y ago
The best we have are case studies of non-diverse teams reliably making products that aren't very good for people who look different, despite being highly educated and crossfunctional. The very common example is the Google Photos image search labelling dark-skinned people as gorillas (and more broadly facial recognition and machine learning biases towards light skinned people in a variety of ways). But there are others I've seen. It comes down to needing an advocate. Unless you have someone who advocates for making your products inclusive, you won't end up with inclusive products, and the best advocate is almost always an engineer who says "hey team this product doesn't work for me". (Edit: I should add, this is true for pretty much any feature, not just inclusive ones, but its also true for them) There's no reason a machine learning team needs physics PhDs. There is a reason that same machine learning team needs dark skinned machine learning PhDs. >It is also common with people who are more focused about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct or fulfilling quotas. Right, and given that most people don't want to explicitly state that they're bigoted, often people who are racist and xenophobic claim to hold their views because they care about hiring the most qualified people rather than being politically correct. Perhaps you aren't, but its a worryingly common tactic.