3 ms·

Most obvious reason is that ecosystems are most resilient when diversified. Supporting diversity as an aspect of culture, especially at scale, has many benefits

Most obvious reason is that ecosystems are most resilient when diversified. Supporting diversity as an aspect of culture, especially at scale, has many benefits, including: equality, alternative perspectives, economic resilience & performance, opportunity & threat awareness, geographical risk management, respect for diversity in nature, multilingual capacity, cultural awareness, etc. Why would diversity not be good?

dijit 4y ago
> Why would diversity not be good? (responding to this statement, and this statement only): When creating systems, using a diverse array of standards instead of just one creates problems. For example: using metric units and imperial units. Heterogeneity in standards is desired in those circumstances. When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive. When designing corporate identity: a diverse set of art-styles would likely give a muddled or non-professional look of a company. (though in certain circumstances this can be desirable if you are going for an "indy" look).
- O__________O 4y ago
  Agree, there clearly exceptions, though issue is that each of those situations either has a reasonable resolution or that lack of diversity just postpones cultural conflicts among cultures. Basically, if lack of inclusion issue for significant subset of a population, then it’s an issue. If there two cultures that are naturally wholly independent of each other, attempting inject diversity is clearly flawed. On the flip side, unable non-statistically significant diversity would lead to a chaotic state. Basically, there’s no optimal state, but a diverse system will always outperform a heterogeneous or chaotic system on average, only edge cases that are the exception.
  - abduhl 4y ago
    >>Basically, there’s no optimal state, but a diverse system will always outperform a heterogeneous or chaotic system on average, only edge cases that are the exception. China’s rise as a superpower would seem to directly contradict your statement. It seems like the truth is the opposite of what you say: a heterogenous system will always outperform a diverse/chaotic system unless there are edge cases which introduce shocks to the system.
    - O__________O 4y ago
      China is only heterogeneous in name, it’s not in practice. Case in point, China’s response to Covid over time, both at the national level and on a case by case basis. The are no global systems of governance that are wildly adhered to which are actually literal forms of anarchy; anarchy being the common description on a chaotic system of governance.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  > systems Those are things. It’s kind of arguing that you don’t want flour in your salt. Purity is fine for things. > When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive. This is a positive aspect if you get to learn from that and communicate in a way that is better understood in non-homogeneous groups. Think a space station shared between countries. Or a town office that needs to regularly communicate with the general public. You will also be saved from further issues if you were ready from the start to deal with an array of cultural norms, instead of assuming a single culture and later realize that people came from a much more complex background than you imagined. > corporate identity That’s an interesting one. It’s a thing, but then people are working for that corporation. Having an identity strongly anchored in a single specific culture (let’s go for the worst: your PR department shares articles of the CEO hunting elephants. Or your whole company site is in Rococo style) will be detrimental compared to a bland, very generic and more embrassing identity.
  - dijit 4y ago
    > > systems >Those are things. idk, I feel like we're talking about "Diversity" as a concept, I accidentally answered without any context w.r.t. the rest of the discussion and just kind of left it (with a little disclaimer in parens). > > When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive. > This is a positive aspect if you get to learn from that and communicate in a way that is better understood in non-homogeneous groups. This largely depends, if you want global domination of a product then sure, but if you're a bunch of tool makers and you all know your audience of tool users then there's no benefit at all to have someone offended by the word "tool" in your workforce. Regarding corporate identity: I've always been against the whole "bring your entire self to work" ideology that seems to have come out of Google. That only works if you have a heterogeneous idea of where things are going, otherwise you just lose yourself to infighting and disenfranchisement. Better: Have a strong corporate image, then people will self-select if they can stomach what your company stands for. To be honest I was talking about branding anyway, but since you mentioned people anchoring themselves to a corporate identity then it opened my eyes to a bigger need for heterogeneity in that environment.
snapplebobapple 4y ago
This misunderstands diversity (and to some extent ecosystems and evolution) quite a bit in the context of a business. When a business is competing on ideas (aka most businesses) the relevant type of diversity that breeds resilience is not the superficial things (skin color, gender, disability status, etc), it's diversity of actual ideas and that really needs to be layered on top of both extreme competence and be present in an environment that strongly supports sharing those diverse ideas. I don't see any of that in the way diversity is currently being practiced, it looks very much like an oppressive mono-culture, which is extremely fragile.
- O__________O 4y ago
  While I believe I understand your point, to me it pretends there is no link between culture that supports and understands diversity in general or among physical traits, ideologies, etc — and one the embraces diversity of ideas. Issues you raise is more about how compliance is not the same thing as diligence, which is only observable if culture fails to be diligent or never intended to be so.
  - snapplebobapple 4y ago
    I think the disagreement and/or misunderstanding is around the incorrect assumption that diversity policies are promoting diverse ideas via increasing hiring of different cultures rather than promoting diversity of outward appearance while enforcing a mono-culture via intolerance of ideas that clash with a broad narrative that tends to be pushed by the people pushing these policies (i.e the people who read and support the LA times writing an article about how Larry Elder is the black face of white supremacy). I also personally think it's weird to talk about a culture failing or not, it's the individual that matters as far as competency is concerned, which certainly makes it the relevant data point for a business.
    - O__________O 4y ago
      Policies by definition are a compliance mechanism, they are not means of breeding true diligence. Said another way, there are no laws for the crimes that are never committed. At the point policies are reflection of diligence, it would be clearly be false to claim skills gained implementing culture of diligence in some aspects of diversity would not be transferable to another domain of diligence in diversity; in fact, referenced this via “respect for diversity in nature” when I listed benefits of diversity. Benefits are unrelated to implementation flaws, edge cases, etc.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dijit 4y ago

> Why would diversity not be good? (responding to this statement, and this statement only): When creating systems, using a diverse array of standards instead of just one creates problems. For example: using metric units and imperial units. Heterogeneity in standards is desired in those circumstances. When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive. When designing corporate identity: a diverse set of art-styles would likely give a muddled or non-professional look of a company. (though in certain circumstances this can be desirable if you are going for an "indy" look).

O__________O 4y ago
Agree, there clearly exceptions, though issue is that each of those situations either has a reasonable resolution or that lack of diversity just postpones cultural conflicts among cultures. Basically, if lack of inclusion issue for significant subset of a population, then it’s an issue. If there two cultures that are naturally wholly independent of each other, attempting inject diversity is clearly flawed. On the flip side, unable non-statistically significant diversity would lead to a chaotic state. Basically, there’s no optimal state, but a diverse system will always outperform a heterogeneous or chaotic system on average, only edge cases that are the exception.
- abduhl 4y ago
  >>Basically, there’s no optimal state, but a diverse system will always outperform a heterogeneous or chaotic system on average, only edge cases that are the exception. China’s rise as a superpower would seem to directly contradict your statement. It seems like the truth is the opposite of what you say: a heterogenous system will always outperform a diverse/chaotic system unless there are edge cases which introduce shocks to the system.
  - O__________O 4y ago
    China is only heterogeneous in name, it’s not in practice. Case in point, China’s response to Covid over time, both at the national level and on a case by case basis. The are no global systems of governance that are wildly adhered to which are actually literal forms of anarchy; anarchy being the common description on a chaotic system of governance.
makeitdouble 4y ago
> systems Those are things. It’s kind of arguing that you don’t want flour in your salt. Purity is fine for things. > When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive. This is a positive aspect if you get to learn from that and communicate in a way that is better understood in non-homogeneous groups. Think a space station shared between countries. Or a town office that needs to regularly communicate with the general public. You will also be saved from further issues if you were ready from the start to deal with an array of cultural norms, instead of assuming a single culture and later realize that people came from a much more complex background than you imagined. > corporate identity That’s an interesting one. It’s a thing, but then people are working for that corporation. Having an identity strongly anchored in a single specific culture (let’s go for the worst: your PR department shares articles of the CEO hunting elephants. Or your whole company site is in Rococo style) will be detrimental compared to a bland, very generic and more embrassing identity.
- dijit 4y ago
  > > systems >Those are things. idk, I feel like we're talking about "Diversity" as a concept, I accidentally answered without any context w.r.t. the rest of the discussion and just kind of left it (with a little disclaimer in parens). > > When collaborating: having a diverse array of cultural norms can cause friction when people interpret phrases as pleasant vs passive aggressive. > This is a positive aspect if you get to learn from that and communicate in a way that is better understood in non-homogeneous groups. This largely depends, if you want global domination of a product then sure, but if you're a bunch of tool makers and you all know your audience of tool users then there's no benefit at all to have someone offended by the word "tool" in your workforce. Regarding corporate identity: I've always been against the whole "bring your entire self to work" ideology that seems to have come out of Google. That only works if you have a heterogeneous idea of where things are going, otherwise you just lose yourself to infighting and disenfranchisement. Better: Have a strong corporate image, then people will self-select if they can stomach what your company stands for. To be honest I was talking about branding anyway, but since you mentioned people anchoring themselves to a corporate identity then it opened my eyes to a bigger need for heterogeneity in that environment.

snapplebobapple 4y ago

This misunderstands diversity (and to some extent ecosystems and evolution) quite a bit in the context of a business. When a business is competing on ideas (aka most businesses) the relevant type of diversity that breeds resilience is not the superficial things (skin color, gender, disability status, etc), it's diversity of actual ideas and that really needs to be layered on top of both extreme competence and be present in an environment that strongly supports sharing those diverse ideas. I don't see any of that in the way diversity is currently being practiced, it looks very much like an oppressive mono-culture, which is extremely fragile.

O__________O 4y ago
While I believe I understand your point, to me it pretends there is no link between culture that supports and understands diversity in general or among physical traits, ideologies, etc — and one the embraces diversity of ideas. Issues you raise is more about how compliance is not the same thing as diligence, which is only observable if culture fails to be diligent or never intended to be so.
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  I think the disagreement and/or misunderstanding is around the incorrect assumption that diversity policies are promoting diverse ideas via increasing hiring of different cultures rather than promoting diversity of outward appearance while enforcing a mono-culture via intolerance of ideas that clash with a broad narrative that tends to be pushed by the people pushing these policies (i.e the people who read and support the LA times writing an article about how Larry Elder is the black face of white supremacy). I also personally think it's weird to talk about a culture failing or not, it's the individual that matters as far as competency is concerned, which certainly makes it the relevant data point for a business.
  - O__________O 4y ago
    Policies by definition are a compliance mechanism, they are not means of breeding true diligence. Said another way, there are no laws for the crimes that are never committed. At the point policies are reflection of diligence, it would be clearly be false to claim skills gained implementing culture of diligence in some aspects of diversity would not be transferable to another domain of diligence in diversity; in fact, referenced this via “respect for diversity in nature” when I listed benefits of diversity. Benefits are unrelated to implementation flaws, edge cases, etc.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]