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It's not a straw man. People make this argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7813953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7813953 https://news.ycombi
by yummyfajitas 12y ago
It's not a straw man. People make this argument:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7813953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7813953
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434585
You can find lots more with a quick search. It's more or less the standard response when some naughty person asks "why do we care about diversity?"
- ceejayoz 12y agoNeither of those argue it's impossible to appeal to other demographics. They argue that diverse viewports are generally beneficial, and thus it's something worth caring about.
- yummyfajitas 12y agoIf most/all of our wildly successful tech companies lack diversity yet successfully cater to those groups, they are evidence against this hypothesis. Let me carefully emphasize that I said "suggest", not "prove beyond a shadow of a doubt".
- ceejayoz 12y agoNo, that's not evidence against the hypothesis, as the hypothesis is not "companies with little diversity cannot appeal to diverse audiences". The hypothesis is "diverse viewpoints can help better understand and meet the needs of diverse audiences".
- yummyfajitas 12y agoIf diverse viewpoints helped, then we'd expect a higher proportion of companies with diverse viewpoints to be successful. If that occurred, it would be (weak) evidence in favor of the hypothesis. In contrast, the relative scarcity of such companies is (weak) evidence against the hypothesis. That's just how probability works.
- im3w1l 12y agoSince we stopped arguing about absolutes, what kind of numbers are we talking about? How big is the effect size? Does it suffer from diminishing return? I.e. is it enough to have about n women to hear all ideas worth hearing from the womanly perspective? Or perhaps it is not an amount but a proportion?