3 ms·

Except that the long hair, the pink beard or the bald woman are choices. For people who are female, gay or black it's not a choice.

by mtrimpe 14y ago

Jach 14y ago
Since when is baldness a choice? Does Rogain work in 100% of the cases? Can any bald person afford it? I guess for chemo patients the choice is baldness or death? Or are you suggesting they can always buy a toupee or a hat and can wear it all the time? If that is admissible, then any female can always get a sex-change operation, right? A Star Trek fan with a comment on Captain Picard: "Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness." Gene Roddenberry replied, "No, by the 24th century, no one will care." (Though I think Roddenberry at first did care.) This is the attitude zxcdw is taking. It doesn't matter if something is a choice or not, if it's irrelevant to the context under consideration then it's irrelevant. Long hair, baldness, gender, sexuality, race, all seem irrelevant under the context of tech jobs and conferences. If there is discrimination based on irrelevant details, that's a problem with who is doing the discriminating, and giving an artificial leg-up to the discriminatee is a less effective solution than finding a suitable punishment (fired, stern talking to, etc.) to the discriminator. I'm in favor of giving incentives for the behavior of not caring about these things instead of giving incentives to discriminatees to be over-sensitive. Where I may be in disagreement with zxcdw (I don't know) is that I have no problem with discrimination on relevant details. If someone is dumb, I wouldn't want to hire them for any technical job. (Similarly I wish we'd get rid of minority grants and artificial leg-ups like effectively adding SAT points to a new university student applicant. RyanZAG's comment on this page could have replaced 'conferences' with 'universities' and 'speakers' with 'students' and still be a coherent argument.) If it just so happens that all humans are not equal (something I believe), there may indeed be clusters of people that have a high correlation with one relevant detail (such as fitness for a particular line of work) and another supposedly irrelevant detail (such as their gender or race or sexuality). One can notice such clusters but it would still be improper to start caring about the irrelevant details just as much as the relevant ones. Edit: mgkimsal made a good comment above on how things such as gender and cultural background can be relevant to contexts like conference speakers, where one might otherwise assume them to be irrelevant.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  I assumed this referred to intentional baldness, i.e. shaving your head. As far this discussion goes my main concern was that conflating chosen traits with inherited ones is derailing the discussion. They are very different with completely different forces are at play since 'chosen traits' are by definition acts of social signaling while 'inherited traits' are just that: inherited.

Except that the long hair, the pink beard or the bald woman are choices. For people who are female, gay or black it's not a choice.

by mtrimpe 14y ago

Except that the long hair, the pink beard or the bald woman are choices. For people who are female, gay or black it's not a choice.

Jach 14y ago

Since when is baldness a choice? Does Rogain work in 100% of the cases? Can any bald person afford it? I guess for chemo patients the choice is baldness or death? Or are you suggesting they can always buy a toupee or a hat and can wear it all the time? If that is admissible, then any female can always get a sex-change operation, right? A Star Trek fan with a comment on Captain Picard: "Surely by the 24th century, they would have found a cure for male pattern baldness." Gene Roddenberry replied, "No, by the 24th century, no one will care." (Though I think Roddenberry at first did care.) This is the attitude zxcdw is taking. It doesn't matter if something is a choice or not, if it's irrelevant to the context under consideration then it's irrelevant. Long hair, baldness, gender, sexuality, race, all seem irrelevant under the context of tech jobs and conferences. If there is discrimination based on irrelevant details, that's a problem with who is doing the discriminating, and giving an artificial leg-up to the discriminatee is a less effective solution than finding a suitable punishment (fired, stern talking to, etc.) to the discriminator. I'm in favor of giving incentives for the behavior of not caring about these things instead of giving incentives to discriminatees to be over-sensitive. Where I may be in disagreement with zxcdw (I don't know) is that I have no problem with discrimination on relevant details. If someone is dumb, I wouldn't want to hire them for any technical job. (Similarly I wish we'd get rid of minority grants and artificial leg-ups like effectively adding SAT points to a new university student applicant. RyanZAG's comment on this page could have replaced 'conferences' with 'universities' and 'speakers' with 'students' and still be a coherent argument.) If it just so happens that all humans are not equal (something I believe), there may indeed be clusters of people that have a high correlation with one relevant detail (such as fitness for a particular line of work) and another supposedly irrelevant detail (such as their gender or race or sexuality). One can notice such clusters but it would still be improper to start caring about the irrelevant details just as much as the relevant ones. Edit: mgkimsal made a good comment above on how things such as gender and cultural background can be relevant to contexts like conference speakers, where one might otherwise assume them to be irrelevant.

mtrimpe 14y ago
I assumed this referred to intentional baldness, i.e. shaving your head. As far this discussion goes my main concern was that conflating chosen traits with inherited ones is derailing the discussion. They are very different with completely different forces are at play since 'chosen traits' are by definition acts of social signaling while 'inherited traits' are just that: inherited.