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Sure, but being effective in calls, emails, and chat requires fewer advantages from factors that aren't under your control. Consider that on an audio-only call,

Sure, but being effective in calls, emails, and chat requires fewer advantages from factors that aren't under your control. Consider that on an audio-only call, a blind person can be just as effective as a sighted person, if not more so (edit: until sighted people learn to go without visual cues as if they were blind). And in email or text chat, a person with a thick accent, a person with a speech impediment, or a deaf person can be as effective as someone who speaks well in the team's common language.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago
I can't quite pinpoint it, but something feels off about this reasoning. No matter what, some group of people is going to be at a disadvantage. It doesn't really make sense to me that you want everyone to specifically cater for the minority, as opposed to the majority. Trying to somewhat accommodate everyone? Great. Forcing changes to accommodate minorities? Doesn't really make sense to me.
- raziel2p 6y ago
  "Everyone" kind of includes minorities. And how do you define "trying"? Is making social media posts on diversity enough to qualify as trying, even if your hiring process only hires white dudes?
- mwcampbell 6y ago
  Here are the best responses I can give to that: 1. Fully abled people are already, as John Scalzi put it (with regard to another category), playing on the lowest difficulty setting, across all of their lives. SO I think it's not so bad to take away some advantages, to level the playing field. 2. There are different kinds of disadvantages. There are disadvantages from skills you haven't yet learned, and there are disadvantages from abilities you can never have. What I propose is to replace the latter category for some people with the former category for others. Of course, if biotech someday allows us to give physical abilities to people who don't have them, that changes the equation. And perhaps my thick accent example was weak; my understanding is that it's possible, with great difficulty, to change one's accent.
api 6y ago
I definitely agree with this general thought. I can't say this with any certainty, but I have developed the impression that a large part of charisma is either genetic or early-developmental and is very hard to learn. People just either have the "reality distortion field" or they don't. I have seen people suddenly develop this trait on amphetamines, but ruining your health by abusing amphetamine to have charisma isn't a great trade. This observation does make me wonder if it doesn't have something to do with dopamine levels/sensitivity and whatever other systems amphetamine acts upon. People with bipolar disorder can be superhumanly charismatic when they are in a manic phase, and moderate to heavy amphetamine doses more or less approximate mania (in people without ADD/ADHD). Like height and facial symmetry it's a trait that is unrelated to the content of one's mind but heavily biases people toward you in one on one interactions... regardless of the merit of what you're actually saying or doing.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

I can't quite pinpoint it, but something feels off about this reasoning. No matter what, some group of people is going to be at a disadvantage. It doesn't really make sense to me that you want everyone to specifically cater for the minority, as opposed to the majority. Trying to somewhat accommodate everyone? Great. Forcing changes to accommodate minorities? Doesn't really make sense to me.

raziel2p 6y ago
"Everyone" kind of includes minorities. And how do you define "trying"? Is making social media posts on diversity enough to qualify as trying, even if your hiring process only hires white dudes?
mwcampbell 6y ago
Here are the best responses I can give to that: 1. Fully abled people are already, as John Scalzi put it (with regard to another category), playing on the lowest difficulty setting, across all of their lives. SO I think it's not so bad to take away some advantages, to level the playing field. 2. There are different kinds of disadvantages. There are disadvantages from skills you haven't yet learned, and there are disadvantages from abilities you can never have. What I propose is to replace the latter category for some people with the former category for others. Of course, if biotech someday allows us to give physical abilities to people who don't have them, that changes the equation. And perhaps my thick accent example was weak; my understanding is that it's possible, with great difficulty, to change one's accent.

api 6y ago

I definitely agree with this general thought. I can't say this with any certainty, but I have developed the impression that a large part of charisma is either genetic or early-developmental and is very hard to learn. People just either have the "reality distortion field" or they don't. I have seen people suddenly develop this trait on amphetamines, but ruining your health by abusing amphetamine to have charisma isn't a great trade. This observation does make me wonder if it doesn't have something to do with dopamine levels/sensitivity and whatever other systems amphetamine acts upon. People with bipolar disorder can be superhumanly charismatic when they are in a manic phase, and moderate to heavy amphetamine doses more or less approximate mania (in people without ADD/ADHD). Like height and facial symmetry it's a trait that is unrelated to the content of one's mind but heavily biases people toward you in one on one interactions... regardless of the merit of what you're actually saying or doing.