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Viewpoint diversity is very, very important. But for a large contingent of the workforce, their viewpoints are already represented in the numerous implicit and

by uoaei 5y ago

Viewpoint diversity is very, very important. But for a large contingent of the workforce, their viewpoints are already represented in the numerous implicit and ideological supports that our society has developed, without them even needing to be present: this is called "hegemony". If you do not acknowledge this is the case, then DEI efforts can seem very unfair. But one should be careful not to allow emotions and sensitivities to creep in, to do the ideological work for you. Your status is not threatened by people of different backgrounds coming together and critiquing the processes and pathologies that dominate today (and that white men typically grow up in, and so are already comfortable navigating to the point they assume that it is the natural way of things). It will make everything better for everyone if we take the time to put effort into including (injecting) the diversity of viewpoints that you find so valuable, and that is precisely the aim of DEI.

gameman144 5y ago
This seems like a well articulated case that you're making, though I'd like to argue from the opposite perspective for a bit. > If you do not acknowledge this is the case, then DEI efforts can seem very unfair. This is a non-trivial objection. I struggle to think of many acceptable scenarios in which we have to choose between acknowledging something which we don't believe as true, or living in an unfair system. Likewise, I don't know of any people personally who object to DEI efforts to make fields more appealing to a wider audience, or bringing in more diverse perspectives, or even critiquing existing processes. The main objection that I see is against the policies which are enacted in pursuit of that goal. For instance, saying "our engineering team is largely Asian, we might be missing other perspectives" is a good call-out, and I can think of nobody who'd oppose calling that out. Enacting a policy that said "for the next engineer in this team, let's make sure we hire a non-Asian employee", that is the source of a lot of the umbrage with DEI efforts. In my experience, opponents largely agree with the goals (more diverse viewpoints), but disagree with the methods (pandering in the best case, and preferential treatment by group in the worst case.) You are correct that there is no inherent cost to learning about and bringing in different perspectives. There is a cost of the efforts to bring in those perspectives if they mean that I lose a job that I would otherwise have gained. Moreover, an even bigger concern is that these decisions aren't being made based on perspective, but only on immutable identity (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender). In these cases, the cost is even greater, since one can't address the situation by bringing in more perspectives; if the company says "we need more non-Asian employees", it is a really big cost (and one you can't avoid) if you happen to be Asian, regardless of how many heterodox opinions you might otherwise bring. Nobody I know opposes thegoals of DEI, but it's not hard to see how policies enacted which disadvantage people based on immutable characteristics might be reasonably considered unfair.
- blindmute 5y ago
  You know people like that; they just don't say it because it's career suicide. I am opposed to the goal, in principle, of seeking a diverse team. One, it has not been proven or even shown somewhat that a diverse team is more successful. Two, it has been more than proven through human history that people get along better with people culturally similar to them. How can we simultaneously hold the belief that massively successful corporations systematically exclude minorities, and that you need minorities to be more successful? No field needs to be more appealing to any audience than it already is. Software does not need to have more women or black people in it; that has nothing to do with software. Basketball doesn't need more Asians; teaching doesn't need more men; chess doesn't need more women; the entire concept of a group needing more of something else, as though every group must be diverse, as though cultures and genders have no inherent preferences at all, is strange and absurd. The goals of DEI are useless, and any policy made to actively reach those goals is a waste of time and resources, at best.
  - uoaei 5y ago
    > One, it has not been proven or even shown somewhat that a diverse team is more successful. This is just a wildly baseless assertion on the scale of disinformation, not even misinformation. It's not worth the time to go into the rest of this comment but the quote above summarizes it well.
    - blindmute 5y ago
      It is one of those things that gets "proven" by one or two politically funded studies that shows a mild effect size with tiny sample, then magnified 100x in headlines until it is "common knowledge". There is no such proven source like you believe and imply. The effect sizes shown are on the order of those showing eggs raise cholesterol, eggs don't raise cholesterol, dietary fat causes obesity, sugar causes obesity, chocolate is healthy, chocolate is unhealthy, masks work, masks don't work. It's noise; the data is trash. There is not even any historical or anecdotal reason to believe it's true, in this case. It exists in the mind of the public entirely because it's politically expedient for it to do so.
sprayk 5y ago
DEI is never focused on viewpoint diversity, though, it's focused on racial, ethnic, gender, disability, etc diversity. The latter kind of diversity does not imply the former. > one should be careful not to allow emotions and sensitivities to creep in, to do the ideological work for you Attributing all questioning/resistance of DEI to emotions and sensitivities is pretty condescending. GP was clear and reasoned about the contradictions they saw in DEI efforts, and your dismissal of them is quite frustrating and unproductive. Also, are you saying that the work that needs to be done is, in fact, ideological? Ideology should be nowhere near this.
- uoaei 5y ago
  > DEI is never focused on viewpoint diversity, though, it's focused on racial, ethnic, gender, disability, etc diversity. The latter kind of diversity does not imply the former. I strongly agree, but then, how do you measure the diversity a person will contribute before you have incorporated that person into your organization? Obviously a moving target like "viewpoint diversity" cannot be acquired in that setting, so we resort to proxy measures. I would say race and class diversity achieves that better than alternatives. > Attributing all questioning/resistance of DEI to emotions and sensitivities is pretty condescending. Didn't imply "all", but it is certainly a factor, just as it is a factor in literally every other concern. As well, it is certainly no worse than the bad faith, straw man arguments all across this post, so in the interest of equity let's make sure to point those out, too. > Ideology should be nowhere near this. Ideology is everywhere, all of the time... it's the stuff worldviews are made of. My point in the previous comment was specifically about the chronic lack of acknowledgment of that very crucial issue, and the resulting line of criticism that starts from an inappropriate place. Of course, someone who believes their viewpoint is natural, inevitable, or rational will reject this concern as irrelevant. That is the treachery of ideology -- everything you say and do is contextualized on your own personal model, so much so that it is like the stories of the fishes talking about the water. It is so all-encompassing that it cannot be distinguished until your own exposure to a critical mass of alternative viewpoints has made it clear just how few people you share a common ground with. The backlash we see here and elsewhere against DEI is coming from those who are insulated from truly alternative viewpoints to the point that they cannot conceive of valid arguments for the other side. They judge the validity based on their brand of rationality which is of course correlated very strongly to the kinds of things they have exposed themselves to thus far. There is no diversity in seeing a million faces and meeting a million people, if those people already think and speak with concepts derived from the same foundational framework as you. Disagreeing about how many cops to have is a policy issue; disagreeing about whether to have cops is still basically outside the Overton window, so people have not really been exposed to the substantive arguments at scale that make a conversation about that productive. The aim of DEI is to bring that conversation into the workplace, where real material consequences are felt and where everyone is together (ostensibly) working in good faith toward a common goal. It is saddening but not surprising to see the reaction to this initiative.
LeroyRaz 5y ago
The point is that DEI groups can seem very homogeneous, without diverse viewpoints, and they can weild large amounts of power. Posters above you have illustrated how issues of DEI are not investigated, if they happen to not fit into the agenda of the DEI group, e.g. examples of Ageism, or things that discriminate against rather than for white men. Such effects exist, as the OP article illustrates. To say that the DEI groups don't need any white voices because they are some form of silent majority is to elevat the white voice too, which itself seems inequitable and problematic wherever you stand. What is your point? As you seem to have not engaged with the viewpoints above, it seems you are more reacting against perceived sentiment, rather than trying to discuss ideas
- uoaei 5y ago
  > is to elevat[e] the white voice too Elevate?? We are not assigning authority to the white voice, we are assigning hegemony. It is a material fact that whiteness and maleness are the centers of Western philosophy, and everything else is measured based on deviance from that perceived center. There are by now centuries of literature on the matter. > if they happen to not fit into the agenda of the DEI group What you call "agenda" I call "bandwidth". Think about it: a fledgling DEI group, small to start, must tackle a lot of metastasized workplace issues. But they're not going to get anything done by spreading their forces too thin. So they focus first on what will make the most material effect with the least effort: call it "productivity". Ageism does fall down the list of priorities, for the simple matter that older people tend to have a larger net worth and so are more insulated from material consequences writ large. It is those who are poorest who need insulation from poverty first, who get help first: this is called "triage". The rising tide starts at the lowest point, right? Without directly asking for everyone's net worth, which is extremely illegal as I'm sure you know, we must resort to proxy measures. Would you join an engineering team who was constantly switching contexts instead of focusing in on particular features during particular sprints? No, that would be counterproductive. Afford your colleagues the same consideration, even if their goal is not a webapp but compassion in the workplace.
  - camelite 5y ago
    Whiteness and maleness are not and cannot be material facts and it is a category error to insist otherwise, nevermind elevating them as the axiomatic center of your worldview.
camelite 5y ago
But the dei perspective is the one that is hegemonic at this point. Something off a paradox for those possessed of it, displayed in such absurdities as believing that viewpoint diversity is the (precise) aim of dei.

by uoaei 5y ago

gameman144 5y ago

This seems like a well articulated case that you're making, though I'd like to argue from the opposite perspective for a bit. > If you do not acknowledge this is the case, then DEI efforts can seem very unfair. This is a non-trivial objection. I struggle to think of many acceptable scenarios in which we have to choose between acknowledging something which we don't believe as true, or living in an unfair system. Likewise, I don't know of any people personally who object to DEI efforts to make fields more appealing to a wider audience, or bringing in more diverse perspectives, or even critiquing existing processes. The main objection that I see is against the policies which are enacted in pursuit of that goal. For instance, saying "our engineering team is largely Asian, we might be missing other perspectives" is a good call-out, and I can think of nobody who'd oppose calling that out. Enacting a policy that said "for the next engineer in this team, let's make sure we hire a non-Asian employee", that is the source of a lot of the umbrage with DEI efforts. In my experience, opponents largely agree with the goals (more diverse viewpoints), but disagree with the methods (pandering in the best case, and preferential treatment by group in the worst case.) You are correct that there is no inherent cost to learning about and bringing in different perspectives. There is a cost of the efforts to bring in those perspectives if they mean that I lose a job that I would otherwise have gained. Moreover, an even bigger concern is that these decisions aren't being made based on perspective, but only on immutable identity (e.g. race, ethnicity, gender). In these cases, the cost is even greater, since one can't address the situation by bringing in more perspectives; if the company says "we need more non-Asian employees", it is a really big cost (and one you can't avoid) if you happen to be Asian, regardless of how many heterodox opinions you might otherwise bring. Nobody I know opposes thegoals of DEI, but it's not hard to see how policies enacted which disadvantage people based on immutable characteristics might be reasonably considered unfair.

blindmute 5y ago
You know people like that; they just don't say it because it's career suicide. I am opposed to the goal, in principle, of seeking a diverse team. One, it has not been proven or even shown somewhat that a diverse team is more successful. Two, it has been more than proven through human history that people get along better with people culturally similar to them. How can we simultaneously hold the belief that massively successful corporations systematically exclude minorities, and that you need minorities to be more successful? No field needs to be more appealing to any audience than it already is. Software does not need to have more women or black people in it; that has nothing to do with software. Basketball doesn't need more Asians; teaching doesn't need more men; chess doesn't need more women; the entire concept of a group needing more of something else, as though every group must be diverse, as though cultures and genders have no inherent preferences at all, is strange and absurd. The goals of DEI are useless, and any policy made to actively reach those goals is a waste of time and resources, at best.
- uoaei 5y ago
  > One, it has not been proven or even shown somewhat that a diverse team is more successful. This is just a wildly baseless assertion on the scale of disinformation, not even misinformation. It's not worth the time to go into the rest of this comment but the quote above summarizes it well.
  - blindmute 5y ago
    It is one of those things that gets "proven" by one or two politically funded studies that shows a mild effect size with tiny sample, then magnified 100x in headlines until it is "common knowledge". There is no such proven source like you believe and imply. The effect sizes shown are on the order of those showing eggs raise cholesterol, eggs don't raise cholesterol, dietary fat causes obesity, sugar causes obesity, chocolate is healthy, chocolate is unhealthy, masks work, masks don't work. It's noise; the data is trash. There is not even any historical or anecdotal reason to believe it's true, in this case. It exists in the mind of the public entirely because it's politically expedient for it to do so.

sprayk 5y ago

DEI is never focused on viewpoint diversity, though, it's focused on racial, ethnic, gender, disability, etc diversity. The latter kind of diversity does not imply the former. > one should be careful not to allow emotions and sensitivities to creep in, to do the ideological work for you Attributing all questioning/resistance of DEI to emotions and sensitivities is pretty condescending. GP was clear and reasoned about the contradictions they saw in DEI efforts, and your dismissal of them is quite frustrating and unproductive. Also, are you saying that the work that needs to be done is, in fact, ideological? Ideology should be nowhere near this.

uoaei 5y ago
> DEI is never focused on viewpoint diversity, though, it's focused on racial, ethnic, gender, disability, etc diversity. The latter kind of diversity does not imply the former. I strongly agree, but then, how do you measure the diversity a person will contribute before you have incorporated that person into your organization? Obviously a moving target like "viewpoint diversity" cannot be acquired in that setting, so we resort to proxy measures. I would say race and class diversity achieves that better than alternatives. > Attributing all questioning/resistance of DEI to emotions and sensitivities is pretty condescending. Didn't imply "all", but it is certainly a factor, just as it is a factor in literally every other concern. As well, it is certainly no worse than the bad faith, straw man arguments all across this post, so in the interest of equity let's make sure to point those out, too. > Ideology should be nowhere near this. Ideology is everywhere, all of the time... it's the stuff worldviews are made of. My point in the previous comment was specifically about the chronic lack of acknowledgment of that very crucial issue, and the resulting line of criticism that starts from an inappropriate place. Of course, someone who believes their viewpoint is natural, inevitable, or rational will reject this concern as irrelevant. That is the treachery of ideology -- everything you say and do is contextualized on your own personal model, so much so that it is like the stories of the fishes talking about the water. It is so all-encompassing that it cannot be distinguished until your own exposure to a critical mass of alternative viewpoints has made it clear just how few people you share a common ground with. The backlash we see here and elsewhere against DEI is coming from those who are insulated from truly alternative viewpoints to the point that they cannot conceive of valid arguments for the other side. They judge the validity based on their brand of rationality which is of course correlated very strongly to the kinds of things they have exposed themselves to thus far. There is no diversity in seeing a million faces and meeting a million people, if those people already think and speak with concepts derived from the same foundational framework as you. Disagreeing about how many cops to have is a policy issue; disagreeing about whether to have cops is still basically outside the Overton window, so people have not really been exposed to the substantive arguments at scale that make a conversation about that productive. The aim of DEI is to bring that conversation into the workplace, where real material consequences are felt and where everyone is together (ostensibly) working in good faith toward a common goal. It is saddening but not surprising to see the reaction to this initiative.

LeroyRaz 5y ago

The point is that DEI groups can seem very homogeneous, without diverse viewpoints, and they can weild large amounts of power. Posters above you have illustrated how issues of DEI are not investigated, if they happen to not fit into the agenda of the DEI group, e.g. examples of Ageism, or things that discriminate against rather than for white men. Such effects exist, as the OP article illustrates. To say that the DEI groups don't need any white voices because they are some form of silent majority is to elevat the white voice too, which itself seems inequitable and problematic wherever you stand. What is your point? As you seem to have not engaged with the viewpoints above, it seems you are more reacting against perceived sentiment, rather than trying to discuss ideas

uoaei 5y ago
> is to elevat[e] the white voice too Elevate?? We are not assigning authority to the white voice, we are assigning hegemony. It is a material fact that whiteness and maleness are the centers of Western philosophy, and everything else is measured based on deviance from that perceived center. There are by now centuries of literature on the matter. > if they happen to not fit into the agenda of the DEI group What you call "agenda" I call "bandwidth". Think about it: a fledgling DEI group, small to start, must tackle a lot of metastasized workplace issues. But they're not going to get anything done by spreading their forces too thin. So they focus first on what will make the most material effect with the least effort: call it "productivity". Ageism does fall down the list of priorities, for the simple matter that older people tend to have a larger net worth and so are more insulated from material consequences writ large. It is those who are poorest who need insulation from poverty first, who get help first: this is called "triage". The rising tide starts at the lowest point, right? Without directly asking for everyone's net worth, which is extremely illegal as I'm sure you know, we must resort to proxy measures. Would you join an engineering team who was constantly switching contexts instead of focusing in on particular features during particular sprints? No, that would be counterproductive. Afford your colleagues the same consideration, even if their goal is not a webapp but compassion in the workplace.
- camelite 5y ago
  Whiteness and maleness are not and cannot be material facts and it is a category error to insist otherwise, nevermind elevating them as the axiomatic center of your worldview.

camelite 5y ago

But the dei perspective is the one that is hegemonic at this point. Something off a paradox for those possessed of it, displayed in such absurdities as believing that viewpoint diversity is the (precise) aim of dei.