4 ms·

> Most importantly, polling opinions about this is the worst method of determining if discrimination exists. A better method would look at objective measures li

> Most importantly, polling opinions about this is the worst method of determining if discrimination exists. A better method would look at objective measures like salary/job/hiring rate/layoff rate/etc of lower-caste Indians compared to Indians as a whole. I don’t get this at all. If we treat a group as fairly as possible and on average they perform worse than other groups, is that evidence of discrimination? Is there a hypothesis that they need to perform equally as well.?

cmeacham98 4y ago
Do you think that lower-caste Indians are inherently inferior to upper-caste Indians at IT work? Because that is what you are proposing here. The other, much more reasonable explanation, is that these differences are explained by the fact that lower-caste Indians are actually _not_ treated "as fairly as possible" by society. At the individual level exceptions exist, but when you scale out to sufficiently large populations there aren't random demographics that magically perform worse than everyone else because they're all lazy bums.
- biohacker85 4y ago
  I don't think inferiority is implied in that statement. Is there any reason why we expect different groups to perform equally? Can't some groups perform worse than others by random chance? Are there really no other factors besides discrimination that could cause this?
  - cmeacham98 4y ago
    > Is there any reason why we expect different groups to perform equally? Becuase I do not believe an Indian's caste affects their inherent ability to perform IT work. If you do believe that to be true, of course you should expect a difference even in a perfectly fair society. > Can't some groups perform worse than others by random chance? This is extremely unlikely once you get to higher sample sizes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers > Are there really no other factors besides discrimination that could cause this? Well of course there are. For example, if one group is more educated than the other they're going to perform better. I made it sound as easy as "just see if the numbers don't match up", but in real life the statisticians that do these kinds of analysis account for other factors that could impact performance, so that if there is a difference it's purely "because" of the caste.

cmeacham98 4y ago

Do you think that lower-caste Indians are inherently inferior to upper-caste Indians at IT work? Because that is what you are proposing here. The other, much more reasonable explanation, is that these differences are explained by the fact that lower-caste Indians are actually _not_ treated "as fairly as possible" by society. At the individual level exceptions exist, but when you scale out to sufficiently large populations there aren't random demographics that magically perform worse than everyone else because they're all lazy bums.

biohacker85 4y ago
I don't think inferiority is implied in that statement. Is there any reason why we expect different groups to perform equally? Can't some groups perform worse than others by random chance? Are there really no other factors besides discrimination that could cause this?
- cmeacham98 4y ago
  > Is there any reason why we expect different groups to perform equally? Becuase I do not believe an Indian's caste affects their inherent ability to perform IT work. If you do believe that to be true, of course you should expect a difference even in a perfectly fair society. > Can't some groups perform worse than others by random chance? This is extremely unlikely once you get to higher sample sizes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers > Are there really no other factors besides discrimination that could cause this? Well of course there are. For example, if one group is more educated than the other they're going to perform better. I made it sound as easy as "just see if the numbers don't match up", but in real life the statisticians that do these kinds of analysis account for other factors that could impact performance, so that if there is a difference it's purely "because" of the caste.