5 ms·

"Prove that you're not a witch" is a very old tactic - and it's the opposite of the modern standard of guilt.

by crassus 13y ago

joe_the_user 13y ago
The "mismatch" in dialog about this stuff is perhaps telling. One person says (essentially): "organization need to take systematic efforts to avoid bias in hiring". The other person say (essentially): "you can't prove we're sexist, this is a witch hunt".
- hacker789 13y ago
  Not quite. One person says, "We deliberately handle women with kid gloves. A under-qualified woman has a better chance than an under-qualified man." A feminist activist responds, "But you still hire more men! Therefore, it's almost a given that you're biased against women in other ways. Fix it." The original person says, "Wow. We just can't win with you people."
  - joe_the_user 13y ago
    If that happened, I could understand it. If you claim the thread above is summarized by that, you're hallucinating. I simply said that bias can be invisible and it useful to have formal methods for catching it. I don't see myself as a "feminist activist" by any means. I think the feminist activists who do sometimes uncritically toss around accusations of bias aren't really helping. But when I notice people reading my nuanced position and hallucinating a feminist rant, it increases my sympathies. It also doesn't speak well of people's abilities to see their biases (I wouldn't claim perfection for myself of course but the argument seems involve the claim that some people have no need for formal methods to correct their biases. I beg to differ, everyone needs that).
    - belorn 13y ago
      > but the argument seems involve the claim that some people have no need for formal methods to correct their biases. I beg to differ, everyone needs that Demanding that everyone has a formal method to correct biases only provable in statistics, really do go back to the "Prove that you're not a witch" argument a few comments ago. The exact same proof can be found against different color of skin, names and clothes. It can be found in parents who has more than one children. Statistical proven biases exist everywhere. Yet, a formal method should only really be needed once the bias is found to actually exist on a individual level. Everything else would be insane.
      - nitrogen 13y ago
        Yet, a formal method should only really be needed once the bias is found to actually exist on a individual level. Everything else would be insane. Wouldn't a better approach be incorporating formal, rational methods into everyone's individual thought processes from the beginning? In other words, I believe adopting the overt rationality advocated by the likes of http://lesswrong.com/ http://lesswrong.com/ would almost automatically correct a lot of societal problems caused by bias.
- smsm42 13y ago
  Unfortunately, we have a bunch of experience with statistically-based bias measures, and it often turns out to be exactly "prove you're not a witch" scenario. While in this particular case failure to prove probably leads to nothing but a blog post or a comment or two, in many other cases it leads to regulations and enforcement actions that can be very unpleasant for the target. It can have some justifications where we know the bias exists. However, in this case we do not know it, so when people feel the onus of the proof put on them, they don't like it.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
lkrubner 13y ago
It is interesting that whenever this subject is brought up, someone will eventually introduce the subject of guilt. Can you articulate why you responded in this way? Do you feel that you have been accused of something? What exactly would the metaphorical equivalent of being a "witch" mean in this context? I'll point out that we could have a conversation about diversity in hiring without ever introducing the subject of guilt. This is a bit off-topic but I am fascinated about the exact reasons why some people react to conversations as if they have been accused of something. I think you might want to consider that nothing is useful is gained if you introduce the concept of "guilt" into a conversation where it is not needed. I'll offer an example that has already been discussed on hundreds of blogs. You may recall in 2007 that John Kenzer interviewed Alex Payne? (I am sorry that the interview seems to be offline: http://www.radicalbehavior.com/5-question-interview-with-twitter-developer-alex-payne/ http://www.radicalbehavior.com/5-question-interview-with-twi... but it is in the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20070416091128/http://www.radicalbehavior.com/5-question-interview-with-twitter-developer-alex-payne http://web.archive.org/web/20070416091128/http://www.radical...) and Alex Payne offered some common sense observations about the difficulty of scaling Rails: "Running on Rails has forced us to deal with scaling issues ... far sooner than I think we would on another framework. Once you hit a certain threshold of traffic, either you need to strip out all the costly neat stuff that Rails does for you ... or move the slow parts of your application out of Rails, or both." You may recall that David Heinemeier Hansson's response was overheated and irrational. He said that Alex Payne was blaming Rails for all of the problems at Twitter. But Payne had never blamed Rails for anything, he merely talked about how they were struggling to make it scale. (I am sorry to say that David's response appears to be offline now: http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/arc/000608.html http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/arc/000608.html , and the Internet Archive doesn't have it: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/arc/000608.html http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://david.heinemeierhansson..... As a side note, let us all mourn how many important conversations get erased off the web.) Many smart commentators pointed out that there was no need for David Heinemeier Hansson to introduce the concept of blame into that conversation. Alex Payne's words could have simply been taken as a constructive starting point for a larger conversation about how to scale Rails. But for some reason Hansson felt the need to frame the conversation in terms of accusations and guilt. The same is true about this conversation, and your reaction. We can have a constructive conversation about increasing diversity in hiring without ever introducing the concept of guilt. And yet, every time this subject comes up, someone feels the need to frame the whole thing in terms of accusations and guilt. The level of defensiveness on display is remarkable.

"Prove that you're not a witch" is a very old tactic - and it's the opposite of the modern standard of guilt.

by crassus 13y ago

"Prove that you're not a witch" is a very old tactic - and it's the opposite of the modern standard of guilt.

The "mismatch" in dialog about this stuff is perhaps telling. One person says (essentially): "organization need to take systematic efforts to avoid bias in hiring". The other person say (essentially): "you can't prove we're sexist, this is a witch hunt".

hacker789 13y ago
Not quite. One person says, "We deliberately handle women with kid gloves. A under-qualified woman has a better chance than an under-qualified man." A feminist activist responds, "But you still hire more men! Therefore, it's almost a given that you're biased against women in other ways. Fix it." The original person says, "Wow. We just can't win with you people."
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  If that happened, I could understand it. If you claim the thread above is summarized by that, you're hallucinating. I simply said that bias can be invisible and it useful to have formal methods for catching it. I don't see myself as a "feminist activist" by any means. I think the feminist activists who do sometimes uncritically toss around accusations of bias aren't really helping. But when I notice people reading my nuanced position and hallucinating a feminist rant, it increases my sympathies. It also doesn't speak well of people's abilities to see their biases (I wouldn't claim perfection for myself of course but the argument seems involve the claim that some people have no need for formal methods to correct their biases. I beg to differ, everyone needs that).
  - belorn 13y ago
    > but the argument seems involve the claim that some people have no need for formal methods to correct their biases. I beg to differ, everyone needs that Demanding that everyone has a formal method to correct biases only provable in statistics, really do go back to the "Prove that you're not a witch" argument a few comments ago. The exact same proof can be found against different color of skin, names and clothes. It can be found in parents who has more than one children. Statistical proven biases exist everywhere. Yet, a formal method should only really be needed once the bias is found to actually exist on a individual level. Everything else would be insane.
    - nitrogen 13y ago
      Yet, a formal method should only really be needed once the bias is found to actually exist on a individual level. Everything else would be insane. Wouldn't a better approach be incorporating formal, rational methods into everyone's individual thought processes from the beginning? In other words, I believe adopting the overt rationality advocated by the likes of http://lesswrong.com/ http://lesswrong.com/ would almost automatically correct a lot of societal problems caused by bias.
smsm42 13y ago
Unfortunately, we have a bunch of experience with statistically-based bias measures, and it often turns out to be exactly "prove you're not a witch" scenario. While in this particular case failure to prove probably leads to nothing but a blog post or a comment or two, in many other cases it leads to regulations and enforcement actions that can be very unpleasant for the target. It can have some justifications where we know the bias exists. However, in this case we do not know it, so when people feel the onus of the proof put on them, they don't like it.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

lkrubner 13y ago

It is interesting that whenever this subject is brought up, someone will eventually introduce the subject of guilt. Can you articulate why you responded in this way? Do you feel that you have been accused of something? What exactly would the metaphorical equivalent of being a "witch" mean in this context? I'll point out that we could have a conversation about diversity in hiring without ever introducing the subject of guilt. This is a bit off-topic but I am fascinated about the exact reasons why some people react to conversations as if they have been accused of something. I think you might want to consider that nothing is useful is gained if you introduce the concept of "guilt" into a conversation where it is not needed. I'll offer an example that has already been discussed on hundreds of blogs. You may recall in 2007 that John Kenzer interviewed Alex Payne? (I am sorry that the interview seems to be offline: http://www.radicalbehavior.com/5-question-interview-with-twitter-developer-alex-payne/ http://www.radicalbehavior.com/5-question-interview-with-twi... but it is in the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20070416091128/http://www.radicalbehavior.com/5-question-interview-with-twitter-developer-alex-payne http://web.archive.org/web/20070416091128/http://www.radical...) and Alex Payne offered some common sense observations about the difficulty of scaling Rails: "Running on Rails has forced us to deal with scaling issues ... far sooner than I think we would on another framework. Once you hit a certain threshold of traffic, either you need to strip out all the costly neat stuff that Rails does for you ... or move the slow parts of your application out of Rails, or both." You may recall that David Heinemeier Hansson's response was overheated and irrational. He said that Alex Payne was blaming Rails for all of the problems at Twitter. But Payne had never blamed Rails for anything, he merely talked about how they were struggling to make it scale. (I am sorry to say that David's response appears to be offline now: http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/arc/000608.html http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/arc/000608.html , and the Internet Archive doesn't have it: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/arc/000608.html http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://david.heinemeierhansson..... As a side note, let us all mourn how many important conversations get erased off the web.) Many smart commentators pointed out that there was no need for David Heinemeier Hansson to introduce the concept of blame into that conversation. Alex Payne's words could have simply been taken as a constructive starting point for a larger conversation about how to scale Rails. But for some reason Hansson felt the need to frame the conversation in terms of accusations and guilt. The same is true about this conversation, and your reaction. We can have a constructive conversation about increasing diversity in hiring without ever introducing the concept of guilt. And yet, every time this subject comes up, someone feels the need to frame the whole thing in terms of accusations and guilt. The level of defensiveness on display is remarkable.