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Eric is not suggesting that the applicant pool is diverse and the selection process biased. Instead, I think he's suggesting that different selection processes

Eric is not suggesting that the applicant pool is diverse and the selection process biased. Instead, I think he's suggesting that different selection processes can result in different applicant pools: "Imagine that you were a professional musician thinking about which orchestra to audition for. You have a choice between an all-male orchestra that conducts interviews out in the open, and a mixed-gender orchestra that conducts auditions behind a screen. Which would you choose to apply to? Wouldn’t your answer be different if you were a man or a woman? I think thought experiments like this are helpful for suggesting an alternate hypothesis to the pipeline problem: that there are qualified minority applicants who are choosing – rationally – to invest their time and energy elsewhere. I am not aware of any scientific study that proves this hypothesis is correct. But I have seen enough existence proofs to believe it is likely."

pg 15y ago
The Railsconf audience images refute that explanation too. Since there is no screening process at all, potential attendees can't be deterred by biases in it.
- jdp23 15y ago
  I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that since a conference without a screening process has a non-diverse audience, Y Combinator's screening process has no effect on your diversity?
  - tptacek 15y ago
    He's saying the dev community is predominantly white and male, mooting the question of how he screens.
- moldbug 15y ago
  Whatever natural, social or political phenomenon causes this insidious effect, it is also clearly visible at (a) Burning Man, (b) Occupy Wall Street, and (c) any fashionable restaurant in San Francisco. What is this phenomenon? Of course it could be some kind of unconscious conspiracy. If it's an unconscious conspiracy, it's a pretty unconscious one. If it's a conscious conspiracy - but the thought is too terrible to think. As vile as the KKK and as insidious as communism! The Vast White Conspiracy, now on TechCrunch. We Jews are often accused (at least on the danker corners of teh internets) of conspiring unconsciously against you goyim. Indeed if you had a camera with built-in Jew-dar - I'd hate to know what it would pick up at Ruby conferences, OWS, raw-food restaurants, BM, etc. Good lord! The Mossad must prevent it! Stormfront can probably also fill you in on the percentage of Jewish lawyers in Berlin in 1932. Versus the percentage in the population, of course. In modern EEO parlance, any disparity in these figures is called "disparate impact." Hundreds of thousands of Americans today work in the disparate-impact industry - so how can we be surprised to see it on TechCrunch?
- thaumaturgy 15y ago
  Of course they can, and in fact the article touched on this: > Remember, part of the defense against the racism theory is that the applicants are already skewed before any selection is done. > I once spent time with a promising entrepreneur who was not a white man. Because their startup sold a product that a lot of tech entrepreneurs buy, many of their customers were graduates of Y Combinator. So I asked if they were planning to apply. Their response: “oh, no, it’s a waste of time. Y Combinator doesn’t accept people like me.” Where did they get that idea? Surely not from YC’s partners, who as far as I can tell are scrupulously fair in their dealings with entrepreneurs. Rather, they got that impression by inferring that there is probably implicit bias in YC’s admissions process, and that they’d be better off spending their time doing something else other than applying to YC. I realize you're talking about Railsconf and not YC, but is it really a leap of logic to suppose that there might be a similar mechanism at work at Railsconf, or other social conferences? Is it possible that individuals of certain minorities in tech -- women or various ethnicities -- are more sensitive to discriminatory undertones that other people aren't conscious of? e.g., they feel like they just won't "fit in" there, and are more inclined to spend their time elsewhere. I think the article was well-written, thoughtful, and presented solid evidence as it gradually built its case point-by-point. I think it merits more consideration than a link to Google Images.
  - pg 15y ago
    I used images of a conference audience because it's the best way I could think of to get a sample of what the hacker community looks like. If you can think of a better one, let me know. (The point of that link, for anyone who didn't get it, is that the lack of diversity Eric Ries perceives in the output of our filter is also present in the input, which implies it's not caused by bias in the filter.)
    - thaumaturgy 15y ago
      I think there is an error in logic here (and I think Ries touched on it): a bias in the input of a filter does not preclude a bias in the filter itself. A bias in the input may exist because of a bias -- perceived or actual -- in the filter.

pg 15y ago

The Railsconf audience images refute that explanation too. Since there is no screening process at all, potential attendees can't be deterred by biases in it.

jdp23 15y ago
I'm not sure I understand your point. Are you saying that since a conference without a screening process has a non-diverse audience, Y Combinator's screening process has no effect on your diversity?
- tptacek 15y ago
  He's saying the dev community is predominantly white and male, mooting the question of how he screens.
moldbug 15y ago
Whatever natural, social or political phenomenon causes this insidious effect, it is also clearly visible at (a) Burning Man, (b) Occupy Wall Street, and (c) any fashionable restaurant in San Francisco. What is this phenomenon? Of course it could be some kind of unconscious conspiracy. If it's an unconscious conspiracy, it's a pretty unconscious one. If it's a conscious conspiracy - but the thought is too terrible to think. As vile as the KKK and as insidious as communism! The Vast White Conspiracy, now on TechCrunch. We Jews are often accused (at least on the danker corners of teh internets) of conspiring unconsciously against you goyim. Indeed if you had a camera with built-in Jew-dar - I'd hate to know what it would pick up at Ruby conferences, OWS, raw-food restaurants, BM, etc. Good lord! The Mossad must prevent it! Stormfront can probably also fill you in on the percentage of Jewish lawyers in Berlin in 1932. Versus the percentage in the population, of course. In modern EEO parlance, any disparity in these figures is called "disparate impact." Hundreds of thousands of Americans today work in the disparate-impact industry - so how can we be surprised to see it on TechCrunch?
thaumaturgy 15y ago
Of course they can, and in fact the article touched on this: > Remember, part of the defense against the racism theory is that the applicants are already skewed before any selection is done. > I once spent time with a promising entrepreneur who was not a white man. Because their startup sold a product that a lot of tech entrepreneurs buy, many of their customers were graduates of Y Combinator. So I asked if they were planning to apply. Their response: “oh, no, it’s a waste of time. Y Combinator doesn’t accept people like me.” Where did they get that idea? Surely not from YC’s partners, who as far as I can tell are scrupulously fair in their dealings with entrepreneurs. Rather, they got that impression by inferring that there is probably implicit bias in YC’s admissions process, and that they’d be better off spending their time doing something else other than applying to YC. I realize you're talking about Railsconf and not YC, but is it really a leap of logic to suppose that there might be a similar mechanism at work at Railsconf, or other social conferences? Is it possible that individuals of certain minorities in tech -- women or various ethnicities -- are more sensitive to discriminatory undertones that other people aren't conscious of? e.g., they feel like they just won't "fit in" there, and are more inclined to spend their time elsewhere. I think the article was well-written, thoughtful, and presented solid evidence as it gradually built its case point-by-point. I think it merits more consideration than a link to Google Images.
- pg 15y ago
  I used images of a conference audience because it's the best way I could think of to get a sample of what the hacker community looks like. If you can think of a better one, let me know. (The point of that link, for anyone who didn't get it, is that the lack of diversity Eric Ries perceives in the output of our filter is also present in the input, which implies it's not caused by bias in the filter.)
  - thaumaturgy 15y ago
    I think there is an error in logic here (and I think Ries touched on it): a bias in the input of a filter does not preclude a bias in the filter itself. A bias in the input may exist because of a bias -- perceived or actual -- in the filter.