8 ms·
No. This is mathematical nonsense. Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool. If you filter candidates by any criteria, the
by m1el 8y ago
No. This is mathematical nonsense.
Let's say there's a fitness function for each candidate in a candidate pool.
If you filter candidates by any criteria, the expectation of fitness function will be less or equal to expectation before filtering.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago"This is mathematical nonsense." Board members might be the least likely of all people related to the company to have the right credentials. It's networks, power, relationships. Not usually talent. Though I'm totally against board quotas, it's very easy to see how women are locked out of this game. Far, far more so than for normal roles within an organization.
- dsajames 8y agoNot even close. Networks and relationships can be important. It's the friends of low level managers who get hired who sometimes have the least credentials.
- the_mitsuhiko 8y agoHumans are not numbers. If your workforce has a craptastic gender ratio you will hammer that in because potential new members of the minority will be less interested in joining the company.
- m1el 8y agoThere are plenty of numbers associated with humans in workforce. For example, their salary. > If your workforce has a craptastic gender ratio you will hammer that in because potential new members of the minority will be less interested in joining the company. I don't see any complaints about "diversity" in female-dominated or minority-dominated professions.
- icebraining 8y agoI don't see any complaints about "diversity" in female-dominated or minority-dominated professions. Then you haven't looked very hard. There are even programs with financial incentives, e.g. http://www.independentnurse.co.uk/news/new-bursary-introduced-by-coventry-university-to-increase-number-of-male-nurses/159398/ http://www.independentnurse.co.uk/news/new-bursary-introduce...
- repolfx 8y agoThat story seems to come up a lot in these discussions. IIRC it appeared in a prior HN discussion of the same thing. The bursary in question is only £3,000 which is nothing. And the total fund is only £30,000 - so enough for 10 nurses. This doesn't even begin to compare with organised political lobbying on a continental scale to force women into jobs where people earn £3,000 for simply sitting in a single board meeting.
- icebraining 8y agoThis doesn't even begin to compare with organised political lobbying on a continental scale to force women into jobs where people earn £3,000 for simply sitting in a single board meeting. Of course, because no such jobs exist from which men are mostly absent. You can't expect a response of the same size when the problem is nowhere near the same size.
- repolfx 8y agoYou're changing the subject. The original poster's point was that there isn't any real advocacy towards the benefit of men - in other words, that "diversity" doesn't mean diversity, it means benefits for women. You responded with an article about a sum of money so trivial it would cover 10 men for perhaps a couple of months depending on where they live. If that's the best you can find, this doesn't really disprove his point.
- icebraining 8y ago
- j16sdiz 8y agoBut it help reduce needless lawsuit, which cost lots of time money and mindpower
- pvg 8y agoWhat is the fitness function currently in use to select board members?
- ChrisSD 8y agoWith respect, I think what you just wrote is statistical nonsense. If your ultimate selection from a pool is heavily biased towards an irrelevant fact (gender) then countering that bias can lead to a better selection.
- m1el 8y agoA better solution would be to do gender-blind hiring, not gender quotas.
- ChrisSD 8y agoI was only responding to the suggestion that quotas are "mathematical nonsence". I don't know if they are the best solution or not.
- kraigie 8y agoThis would also account for transgender and intersex individuals too. Why shouldn't the right person be hired just because they have both sets of genitalia? How does that fit in to the quota system?
- AnIdiot 8y agoThat's true. But consider that in some majors such as software engineering there are 5 times as many men as women. If you try to hire women, your pool will be so much smaller you'll almost certainly choose worse candidates.
- CositaS 8y agoOne problem with this reasoning is that it assumes one can assign a fitness function to each single employee in isolation, independent of their different roles and how they relate to each other.
- icebraining 8y agoHow are you supposed to choose a candidate without filtering by any criteria?
- m1el 8y agoThe statement is true for all possible criteria.
- notahacker 8y agoThe counter argument is that in practice, the true fitness function is only very roughly approximated by the selection heuristics used. And if - consciously or otherwise - $ismale happens to be weighted positively in the selection heuristic (more so than any positive effect maleness might actually have on their performance in the job), a quota which artificially inflates the number of females might actually go some way towards redressing that mismatch. Obviously this is considerably more likely to actually be the case in some businesses and industries than others.
- sago 8y agoWhat very confident nonsense! Individual fitness is not independent, let alone group fitness. And without independence you are just plain wrong. Sociology dressed up as a priori mathematics is rarely credible. Even worse if the math simply isn't correct.
- m1el 8y ago> Individual fitness is not independent, let alone group fitness. And without independence you are just plain wrong. Who said that fitness in my description cannot include group fitness? The same argument goes for adding a worker to the workforce. Does the worker fit the existing workforce?
- sago 8y ago> Who said that fitness in my description cannot include group fitness? I did. Because doing so contradicts your conclusion. Though I also said it is not necessary. Lack of independence alone makes you wrong. > The same argument goes for adding a worker to the workforce. Does the worker fit the existing workforce? Which same argument? The argument you made was about filtering lowering fitness.
- m1el 8y ago> I did. Because doing so contradicts your conclusion. Going for the conclusion instead of the argument. You can't demonstrate where my reasoning is wrong, but saying that the conclusion is wrong. Congratulations, you're an ideologue.
- sago 8y ago> You can't demonstrate where my reasoning is wrong I specifically said why your argument was wrong. Without independence it is simply untrue. > Congratulations, you're an ideologue. I am. Mathematical flummery triggers me.
- lucozade 8y agoThat's meaningless. If it were true then it would apply to selection by any attribute e.g. experience or qualification. The only way you'd get around that would be to include the attribute in the fitness function. You're then back to deciding what effect gender has on the fitness function i.e is gender selection good for the business?
- AnIdiot 8y agoOf course that assumes you can select the best candidate from a pool. Feminists argue that there is bias that prevents this. However studies on the gender pay gap reveal that there's very little bias and most differences can be explained by education, experience, job choice, hours worked, etc. More recently psychological differences between men and women have been shown to contribute to the pay gap.[1] My opinion is that affirmative action is naive and that society is better off to strengthen meritocratic hiring. Removing names from CVs may help women slightly but there's no reason to believe that men and women would achieve the same outcomes given equal opportunity. [1] https://academic.oup.com/oep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/oep/gpy021/5046671 https://academic.oup.com/oep/advance-article/doi/10.1093/oep...
- ncphillips 8y agoWhy assume technical skill in one area is the only variable in determining merit?
- AnIdiot 8y agoI didn't do that. Merit is meant broadly to encompass many things.
- ncphillips 8y agoHumans aren’t cogs in a machine. Our value to an organization is not absolute and based solely on our technical proficiency in a single area. An individuals value is relative to the team. Adding another programmer to my company would be less valuable then adding a salesperson. Similarly, adding people with diverse perspectives is more valuable then hiring only people that grew up in the same city, at our income level, with same gender, ethnicity, age, etc. An assumption I suspect you’re making is that we already have THE correct fitness function. They aren’t just trying to filter the fitness function, they’re trying to improve it.
- m1el 8y ago> Humans aren’t cogs in a machine. Humans aren't gender either. Doing gender quotas reduces candidates to their gender. > An assumption I suspect you’re making is that we already have THE correct fitness function. > They aren’t just trying to filter the fitness function, they’re trying to improve it. Ohh, no. My assumption is that current hiring is not perfect, but gender quotas are waaay worse. Gender-blind hiring would be better than both.