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I don't know why you're being down-voted, you're right. I haven't met anyone, even in the insanely left and progressive university circles that I run in, who ad

I don't know why you're being down-voted, you're right. I haven't met anyone, even in the insanely left and progressive university circles that I run in, who advocate for equality in outcome. It's equality in opportunity that's important. It's about letting 'your freedom as an individual to choose your own destiny' actually be 'free' from the start and not constrained by social mores, ingrained biases or discrimination, and/or other external factors. The freedom in outcomes argument is 100% a strawman used by far right pop culture icons to drum up views and clicks.

textgel 6y ago
It's a core belief of progressivism; those who claim it isn't know it is but are interested in protecting a movement that gives them a means of attacking those they dislike.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  It absolutely isn't. Progressives, when they see inequality of outcomes at the group level, correctly identify an inequality of opportunity. There's no progressive in the world that thinks that everyone should have the same outcomes. That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity. I don't know of any left tendency that believes in equality of outcomes. Even communists don't believe in equality of outcome.
  - textgel 6y ago
    You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of outcome. In fact I could be inclined to agree with you in some ways; its more accurate to state that progressives don't believe in equality of outcome in much the same way as they don't really hold any disdain for racism/sexism or any of the other causes that claim to champion but they like the power that comes from doing so. For example no progressive has any issues with an imbalance in genders in nursing; this of course contrasts brilliantly against theirs views on it in the tech industry.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      I don't believe in quotas. I don't think people from every different group should do the exact same in every job. I don't think that quotas are an effective way of dealing with inequalities either. I do believe that roughly speaking, for an equal amount of work, black and white people should have similar salaries, for example. Something that is not the case today. This is a disparity that can't be explained away by choice, or innate supremacy, but is instead à result of inequality of opportunity. So you have to fix the opportunity gap. I do have an issue with the imbalance in nursing. That's because there is a strong stigma against men in nursing and men in nursing often suffer strong discrimination. In a society where these stigmas don't exist but men in general decide not to become nurses, that's fine. Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination against women in tech at every level. For example, different countries have massively different amounts of women in engineering. Women in countries where this amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in opportunities led by sexism. It would be nice if you wouldn't assume the absolute worst possible interpretation of the argument of your interlocutor. This is against HN's guideline and generally increases the amount of noise. It's also quite rude.
      - textgel 6y ago
        Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly embarrassing to have supported. And the same goes for your opposition to the gender gap in nursing; as demonstrated by the mysteriously absent global-push to rectify the issue. Funnily enough I seem to recall it being the countries with far poorer track records on "equality" that tended to produce the higher number of female engineers; and that (for example) scandinavian efforts towards "equality" seemed to have quite the opposite result.
        sudosysgen 6y ago
        There absolutely are programs for men into nursing. Using Scandinavia as a barometer for equity in engineering for men and women is cherry-picking. Where I live, these measures were very successful and in the leading engineering-only university the rate of women graduating is now 30%. Seems successful to me. As for this: >Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly embarrassing to have supported. The only way to get out of this conundrum is for you to find evidence that at the ideological level progressivism is based on equality of outcome. I can't prove the negative. I can give examples however of specific far-left ideologies from anarchism to communism to mutualism to intersectional liberalism do not, at the ideological level, aim for equality of outcome.
  - jimbokun 6y ago
    > That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity. Can you cite any evidence that this is the case? It seems you are simply defining inequality of outcome to mean the same thing as inequality of opportunity at the group level.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      Unless you believe there are innate differences between the ability of these groups, then yes the two are logically equivalent. If you don't believe so, I'm not going to get in this debate today.
      - Manuel_D 6y ago
        Or there could be equal ability, but population-wide differences in preferences, demographics, or other factors. Is it your position that men are underrepresented in teaching and nursing because these fields are highly biased against men? Likewise, there's a significant overrepresentation of Asian in tech. Does the fact that tech hotspots like the Bay Area and Seattle metro have higher than average Asian populations have no role in this disparity? Claiming to support equal opportunity while simultaneously asserting that inequity necessarily indicates unequal opportunity amounts to a long-winded way of saying that the goal is equal outcomes. And saying that unless someone believes in equivalency between equity and equality, then they believe in innate differences between groups is very reductive. There are plenty of factors here: culture, preferences, geography, and more.
      - betwixthewires 6y ago
        That's not true. It is a false dichotomy. There are a myriad of reasons you'd find different behaviors or results in different groups of people besides either ingrained innate unchangeable differences and lack of opportunity for that group. Even if you sampled two equally sized samples of equal distribution of the same kind of people (whatever that means to you) you'd find aggregate disparity to some degree. No innate differences at all, and no difference in opportunity based on group membership, you'd still find disparity. Your dichotomy is false. Additionally, I find this whole assertion I see often nowadays that there's some invisible force creating opportunity disparities between different arbitrary groups of people to be a bit hand-wavy and suspiciously convenient. To me it is comparable to asserting that the disparities are because it was the will of God. Finally, your statement is a roundabout way of saying "if you don't agree with me you're a racist and I don't talk to racists" and that is extremely dishonest. Frankly, if you don't want to talk to people you don't agree with, why are you on a discussion website at all?
sudosysgen 6y ago
Hell, if you want to take it to the limit, even Karl Marx didn't believe in equality of outcomes.
cabraca 6y ago
Isn't the idea of underrepresentation of certain minority groups or genders basically that? we hear that there are only xy % of women in tech or PoC in tech and that the goal is to get for example 50/50% women/men. Isn't this basically a discussion about equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. 50%/50% is basically equality of outcome. We can see for example in scandinavia that you get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of opportunities.
- Loughla 6y ago
  I mean, if you just take it at face value, then it could be interpreted that way. I think the problem is that there isn't an easy soundbite that companies can put out to identify how they will impact equality of opportunity, so they take the easy way to seem 'woke' or whatever other adjective you want to put on it, and attack with equality of outcome. I'm not trying to have a 'no true scotsman' sort of thing, but profit-driven companies are not a great measuring tool for most social issues. I guess, what I'm saying is, that the outcome being 'only xy% women in tech with a goal of 50/50' is an easily digestible way of saying, women do not have the same opportunity as men to get into tech. But it's harder for companies to outline the steps to ensure those opportunities than it is for them to proclaim that goal. >We can see for example in scandinavia that you get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of opportunities. Absolutely. (I actually had to look through my post history because I wondered if you were another person who brought up that statement!) What I said to them was, "And that's fair. My argument isn't that it needs to be split and completely equal. It's that the freedom to choose needs to be equal, and the playing field needs to be level, so that who is and who isn't in 'field a' is, in fact based on merit and not arbitrary classification at birth such as gender and ethnicity."
  - giantg2 6y ago
    I agree. How do you propose measuring it if not using the 50/50 metric? Are we already at the point of equal opportunity? If not, why?
    - Loughla 6y ago
toomuchredbull 6y ago
You don't know any communists in your insanely left and progressive university? I find that hard to believe. I went to a fairly right wing university and the place with lousy with communists. They mostly got better, but still.
Ajedi32 6y ago
My impression is that progressives and conservatives seem to disagree about what constitutes "outcome" vs "opportunity". For example, imagine a tech company found that 20% of it's employees were female and 80% were male, and decided to try to change this by instituting a new program exclusively focused on recruiting women. A progressive might argue that this program gives women a better "opportunity" to succeed, whereas a conservative would say that the program was created for the purpose of influencing "outcomes", and that by focusing exclusively on women the program is intentionally creating unequal "opportunities".
- Loughla 6y ago
  That seems like a very fair observation. I think I am inclined to agree with that assessment.
LanceH 6y ago
The left regularly trots out statistics as "proof" of racism. That something isn't equal directly indicates racism (or some other -ism). So inequality of outcome implies inequality of opportunity. It leaves no room for the possibility of equal opportunity and different outcome. Probably the biggest of these going on right now is the inequality in pay. Women are paid less (they are). This immediately implies sexism because no other explanation is even possible.
1_person 6y ago
I have met many people in left and progressive circles who literally advocate for equality in outcomes and dismiss meritocracy as various internalized not-giving-them-what-they-wantisms.
DangitBobby 6y ago
Isn't equality of outcome used to measure equality of opportunity?

textgel 6y ago

It's a core belief of progressivism; those who claim it isn't know it is but are interested in protecting a movement that gives them a means of attacking those they dislike.

sudosysgen 6y ago
It absolutely isn't. Progressives, when they see inequality of outcomes at the group level, correctly identify an inequality of opportunity. There's no progressive in the world that thinks that everyone should have the same outcomes. That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity. I don't know of any left tendency that believes in equality of outcomes. Even communists don't believe in equality of outcome.
- textgel 6y ago
  You believe in quotas, you believe in equality of outcome. In fact I could be inclined to agree with you in some ways; its more accurate to state that progressives don't believe in equality of outcome in much the same way as they don't really hold any disdain for racism/sexism or any of the other causes that claim to champion but they like the power that comes from doing so. For example no progressive has any issues with an imbalance in genders in nursing; this of course contrasts brilliantly against theirs views on it in the tech industry.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I don't believe in quotas. I don't think people from every different group should do the exact same in every job. I don't think that quotas are an effective way of dealing with inequalities either. I do believe that roughly speaking, for an equal amount of work, black and white people should have similar salaries, for example. Something that is not the case today. This is a disparity that can't be explained away by choice, or innate supremacy, but is instead à result of inequality of opportunity. So you have to fix the opportunity gap. I do have an issue with the imbalance in nursing. That's because there is a strong stigma against men in nursing and men in nursing often suffer strong discrimination. In a society where these stigmas don't exist but men in general decide not to become nurses, that's fine. Same in tech. There are stigmas and discrimination against women in tech at every level. For example, different countries have massively different amounts of women in engineering. Women in countries where this amount is lower often report discrimination. So this is clearly not a question of choice, and is thus a gap in opportunities led by sexism. It would be nice if you wouldn't assume the absolute worst possible interpretation of the argument of your interlocutor. This is against HN's guideline and generally increases the amount of noise. It's also quite rude.
    - textgel 6y ago
      Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly embarrassing to have supported. And the same goes for your opposition to the gender gap in nursing; as demonstrated by the mysteriously absent global-push to rectify the issue. Funnily enough I seem to recall it being the countries with far poorer track records on "equality" that tended to produce the higher number of female engineers; and that (for example) scandinavian efforts towards "equality" seemed to have quite the opposite result.
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        There absolutely are programs for men into nursing. Using Scandinavia as a barometer for equity in engineering for men and women is cherry-picking. Where I live, these measures were very successful and in the leading engineering-only university the rate of women graduating is now 30%. Seems successful to me. As for this: >Perhaps you don't, but for progressives it remains a core part of their ideology and one that can't be no-true-scotsman-ed away, now that the belief has become publicly embarrassing to have supported. The only way to get out of this conundrum is for you to find evidence that at the ideological level progressivism is based on equality of outcome. I can't prove the negative. I can give examples however of specific far-left ideologies from anarchism to communism to mutualism to intersectional liberalism do not, at the ideological level, aim for equality of outcome.
- jimbokun 6y ago
  > That's different from wanting similar outcomes between groups of millions of people, because those almost invariably come from inequality of opportunity. Can you cite any evidence that this is the case? It seems you are simply defining inequality of outcome to mean the same thing as inequality of opportunity at the group level.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Unless you believe there are innate differences between the ability of these groups, then yes the two are logically equivalent. If you don't believe so, I'm not going to get in this debate today.
    - Manuel_D 6y ago
      Or there could be equal ability, but population-wide differences in preferences, demographics, or other factors. Is it your position that men are underrepresented in teaching and nursing because these fields are highly biased against men? Likewise, there's a significant overrepresentation of Asian in tech. Does the fact that tech hotspots like the Bay Area and Seattle metro have higher than average Asian populations have no role in this disparity? Claiming to support equal opportunity while simultaneously asserting that inequity necessarily indicates unequal opportunity amounts to a long-winded way of saying that the goal is equal outcomes. And saying that unless someone believes in equivalency between equity and equality, then they believe in innate differences between groups is very reductive. There are plenty of factors here: culture, preferences, geography, and more.
    - betwixthewires 6y ago
      That's not true. It is a false dichotomy. There are a myriad of reasons you'd find different behaviors or results in different groups of people besides either ingrained innate unchangeable differences and lack of opportunity for that group. Even if you sampled two equally sized samples of equal distribution of the same kind of people (whatever that means to you) you'd find aggregate disparity to some degree. No innate differences at all, and no difference in opportunity based on group membership, you'd still find disparity. Your dichotomy is false. Additionally, I find this whole assertion I see often nowadays that there's some invisible force creating opportunity disparities between different arbitrary groups of people to be a bit hand-wavy and suspiciously convenient. To me it is comparable to asserting that the disparities are because it was the will of God. Finally, your statement is a roundabout way of saying "if you don't agree with me you're a racist and I don't talk to racists" and that is extremely dishonest. Frankly, if you don't want to talk to people you don't agree with, why are you on a discussion website at all?

sudosysgen 6y ago

Hell, if you want to take it to the limit, even Karl Marx didn't believe in equality of outcomes.

cabraca 6y ago

Isn't the idea of underrepresentation of certain minority groups or genders basically that? we hear that there are only xy % of women in tech or PoC in tech and that the goal is to get for example 50/50% women/men. Isn't this basically a discussion about equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome. 50%/50% is basically equality of outcome. We can see for example in scandinavia that you get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of opportunities.

Loughla 6y ago
I mean, if you just take it at face value, then it could be interpreted that way. I think the problem is that there isn't an easy soundbite that companies can put out to identify how they will impact equality of opportunity, so they take the easy way to seem 'woke' or whatever other adjective you want to put on it, and attack with equality of outcome. I'm not trying to have a 'no true scotsman' sort of thing, but profit-driven companies are not a great measuring tool for most social issues. I guess, what I'm saying is, that the outcome being 'only xy% women in tech with a goal of 50/50' is an easily digestible way of saying, women do not have the same opportunity as men to get into tech. But it's harder for companies to outline the steps to ensure those opportunities than it is for them to proclaim that goal. >We can see for example in scandinavia that you get unequal outcomes if you amplify the equality of opportunities. Absolutely. (I actually had to look through my post history because I wondered if you were another person who brought up that statement!) What I said to them was, "And that's fair. My argument isn't that it needs to be split and completely equal. It's that the freedom to choose needs to be equal, and the playing field needs to be level, so that who is and who isn't in 'field a' is, in fact based on merit and not arbitrary classification at birth such as gender and ethnicity."
- giantg2 6y ago
  I agree. How do you propose measuring it if not using the 50/50 metric? Are we already at the point of equal opportunity? If not, why?
  - Loughla 6y ago

toomuchredbull 6y ago

You don't know any communists in your insanely left and progressive university? I find that hard to believe. I went to a fairly right wing university and the place with lousy with communists. They mostly got better, but still.

Ajedi32 6y ago

My impression is that progressives and conservatives seem to disagree about what constitutes "outcome" vs "opportunity". For example, imagine a tech company found that 20% of it's employees were female and 80% were male, and decided to try to change this by instituting a new program exclusively focused on recruiting women. A progressive might argue that this program gives women a better "opportunity" to succeed, whereas a conservative would say that the program was created for the purpose of influencing "outcomes", and that by focusing exclusively on women the program is intentionally creating unequal "opportunities".

Loughla 6y ago
That seems like a very fair observation. I think I am inclined to agree with that assessment.

LanceH 6y ago

The left regularly trots out statistics as "proof" of racism. That something isn't equal directly indicates racism (or some other -ism). So inequality of outcome implies inequality of opportunity. It leaves no room for the possibility of equal opportunity and different outcome. Probably the biggest of these going on right now is the inequality in pay. Women are paid less (they are). This immediately implies sexism because no other explanation is even possible.

1_person 6y ago

I have met many people in left and progressive circles who literally advocate for equality in outcomes and dismiss meritocracy as various internalized not-giving-them-what-they-wantisms.

DangitBobby 6y ago

Isn't equality of outcome used to measure equality of opportunity?