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> Hmm. Why does no one argue for equitable balance of political views, or religions, or anything to do with ideas at all? Is anyone even measuring ideational di

> Hmm. Why does no one argue for equitable balance of political views, or religions, or anything to do with ideas at all? Is anyone even measuring ideational diversity? Probably not, no. About a decade ago, I worked with a woman who had a PhD in psychometric assessment / quantitative psych. She was crazy smart. She said there have been lots of studies of high performing teams, and of course one of the conclusions people have taken from these studies is that "more diversity is better". But she said if you actually go and read the studies, its far more complex than that. She said the data actually shows: - A diversity of backgrounds makes a team more effective. - A diversity of values makes a team less effective. It makes sense. Imagine your company sells breakfast cereal. You will be more effective if you have people from a lot of backgrounds because they will understand issues your customers will face. If everyone on your team is wealthy, you might price your product too high. If everyone on your team is poor, you might never consider having a premium version of your product for wealthy areas. If your team only speaks English, you might accidentally give your product a name that plays really badly for Spanish speakers or something. And so on. These mistakes can be avoided by having a team with diverse backgrounds. But if your team members have different values, they won't get along and your team will become less effective. Say, some people on your team want to make a product thats good for the environment. And other people on the team just want to maximise profit. Then they'll spend their energy fighting about that, and the result is a low performing team, making a confused product thats probably expensive and bad for the environment at the same time. Or, one person on the team wants everyone to like each other and someone else on the team loves competition. They'll inevitably clash. The conflict might result in personal growth - but it'll probably be bad for the team's KPIs this quarter. In essence, nobody talks about diversity of values because nobody wants it. Ironically, not even DEI proponents.

mjburgess 2y ago
My point wasn't that we should expect high performing teams to have a diversity of relevant values -- rather, that "diversity" is just a means of smuggling people of the same values in together under the guise of inclusion. In other words, its a kind of radical exclusion of those who do not prioritise this sort of diversity -- which is the vast majority of people. Looking around to see if the ethnic mix matches population statistics is bizarre to almost everyone. This is a problem when these values become extremised in a population such that to select for them is to quite significantly narrow the plurality of values which would otherwise well-coexit. Consider, eg., religious communities living together before and after liberalism -- before = civil war, after = human rights. Classical liberalism is an ideology of values pluralism which thereby permits great diversity of ideas. We should expect high-performing teams to have a diversity of relevant ideas (, and perhaps, ) of irrelevant values. The concern arises when the benefit to team cohesion arises from an echo-chambre of shared values, at a great expense, of disruptive innovation and ideational diversity. And also, on my part, just honesty about what this sort of moralist is really aiming for -- to be surrounded by people who wish for a very narrow sort of values-homogeneity. If "diversity and inclusion" were part of the pluralist fabric of liberal tolerance shared by the vast majority of people this issue wouldn't arise -- since then there could be a great actual diversity of opinon whilst values were shared. The issue is how peripherial prioritising these values is, de facto -- and hence how self-regulatingly narrow the "team" has to be. If the chief value being pushed were "tolerance", such that we had, "tolerance, respect, effort" (, say) as the new moralist fashion -- then almost none would be excluded. Consider what the impact of making "racism" a team value would be in these terms: how narrowing, homogenising, and the like. And yet, I suspect the number of people keen to work with "people as racist as they are" is not so different than "people as obsessed by diversity as they are".

mjburgess 2y ago

My point wasn't that we should expect high performing teams to have a diversity of relevant values -- rather, that "diversity" is just a means of smuggling people of the same values in together under the guise of inclusion. In other words, its a kind of radical exclusion of those who do not prioritise this sort of diversity -- which is the vast majority of people. Looking around to see if the ethnic mix matches population statistics is bizarre to almost everyone. This is a problem when these values become extremised in a population such that to select for them is to quite significantly narrow the plurality of values which would otherwise well-coexit. Consider, eg., religious communities living together before and after liberalism -- before = civil war, after = human rights. Classical liberalism is an ideology of values pluralism which thereby permits great diversity of ideas. We should expect high-performing teams to have a diversity of relevant ideas (, and perhaps, ) of irrelevant values. The concern arises when the benefit to team cohesion arises from an echo-chambre of shared values, at a great expense, of disruptive innovation and ideational diversity. And also, on my part, just honesty about what this sort of moralist is really aiming for -- to be surrounded by people who wish for a very narrow sort of values-homogeneity. If "diversity and inclusion" were part of the pluralist fabric of liberal tolerance shared by the vast majority of people this issue wouldn't arise -- since then there could be a great actual diversity of opinon whilst values were shared. The issue is how peripherial prioritising these values is, de facto -- and hence how self-regulatingly narrow the "team" has to be. If the chief value being pushed were "tolerance", such that we had, "tolerance, respect, effort" (, say) as the new moralist fashion -- then almost none would be excluded. Consider what the impact of making "racism" a team value would be in these terms: how narrowing, homogenising, and the like. And yet, I suspect the number of people keen to work with "people as racist as they are" is not so different than "people as obsessed by diversity as they are".