It's disappointing to see a potentially valuable educational program frame its activities in terms of closing a diversity gap rather than simply helping people. Can you imagine a similar academy dedicated to closing the gap between whites and people of color? The latter are overrepresented in tech, and yet I know of no one concerned with that gap. (Yes, I said that people of color are overrepresented in tech. The only way to avoid this conclusion is to ignore people with recent ancestors from Asia.)
Indeed. The problem is that people frequently infer unfair rules from unequal outcomes, without taking into account the possibility of systematic group differences.
Alan: I believe in equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.
Bob: How do you know there isn't equality of opportunity?
Alan: Well, just look at how unequal the outcomes are!
At this point, Bob would be wise to change the subject, because if he pressed on, he might get this:
Bob: Can you give me an example?
Alan: Group X is underrepresented in Field Y.
Bob: Maybe Group X isn't as good at Field Y.
Alan: What? That's racist and/or sexist!
And if Bob were to make a comment to this effect on Hacker News, he's probably get downvoted. This is because most people agree with Alan, and many of them abuse their downvote privileges to punish ideas they disagree with rather than those that don't further the discussion. This degrades the quality of discourse, but at least it helps reassure the downvoters that they aren't racist and/or sexist.
To overcome possible biases in hiring, most orchestras revised their audition policies in the 1970s and 1980s. A major change involved the use of blind' auditions with a screen' to conceal the identity of the candidate from the jury. Female musicians in the top five symphony orchestras in the United States were less than 5% of all players in 1970 but are 25% today. We ask whether women were more likely to be advanced and/or hired with the use of blind' auditions. Using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed-effects framework, we find that the screen increases by 50% the probability a woman will be advanced out of certain preliminary rounds.[1]
I didn't say there are no valid examples of bias, just that many people assume unequal outcomes must result from unequal opportunity, ignoring the possibility of real group differences. Surely you know many real-life Alans who see bias every time a particular Group X is underrepresented in Field Y. Moreover, the values of X aren't random; you'll almost never hear complaints of bias regarding, say, trash haulers, or NFL cornerbacks. (But NFL quarterbacks—ah, plenty of bias there!)
Speculative explanations - i.e. assumptions - are not uncommonly offered in support of the proposition that there is no underlying bias. Nl provides a rare example of the assumptions being systematically investigated.
Right, and unwillingness to consider the possibility of group differences comes from a quasi-religious devotion to the blank slate model of human nature. The way radical egalitarians see it, we're not only equal in dignity, but in potential.
That's a pretty view, but it's inconsistent with reality, and radical egalitarians need to come up with increasingly implausible explanations to explain everyday circumstances that make perfect sense once you drop the blank slate model.
There is a simple explanation for differences in abilities between groups that has nothing to do with their genetics are so-called natural ability: the fact that groups often grow up around other members of their group. Both nature and nurture are largely in common for many groups, so it could easily be either that causes the observed differences in ability.
Or both. They're not mutually exclusive. Do Jamaican sprinters excel because they grow up around other sprinters or because they are blessed with natural ability? Yes. Simply put, or != xor.
Apply Occam's Razor to these supposed group differences. Which do you think is a more plausible reality?
A. Interviewers prefer candidates who are like themselves, interviewers are mostly white men, therefore most hires are white men.
B. The uterus and melanin both inhibit programming ability, interviewers are perfect judges of programming ability, therefore most hires are white men.
To look at the present (incomplete) evidence and decide that B is the more likely story, is racism/sexism.
B. The uterus and melanin both inhibit programming ability, interviewers are perfect judges of programming ability, therefore most hires are white men.
Serious question: can you at least steel man this point of view rather than making it a ridiculous straw man? If you cannot steel man it, what makes you so sure you really understand the argument?
For bonus points, you can also point out the glaringly obvious complication to this chain of logic: A. Interviewers prefer candidates who are like themselves, interviewers are mostly white men, therefore most hires are white men.
a) the action of natural selection, sexual selection, and the hormone environment magically stop at the blood-brain barrier, or
b) there are real group differences between human populations?
We've already eliminated all overt discrimination. If you continue to cry discrimination, you're essentially postulating a giant unconscious conspiracy. I find the idea wildly implausible. It's much simple to just accept that not everyone is equal in aptitude and ability.
Women musicians started getting orchestra positions in much greater numbers after auditions were made blind.
If biases affect how a professional musician hears music, is it so shocking to think unconscious bias might affect someone's judgment a candidate based on multiple fuzzy factors like ability, culture, and personality?
And that's just for job applications. You really think the criminal justice system has removed unconscious bias?
Criminal justice and orchestra employment are non-market phenomena. The people in charge do not benefit if the orchestra is great and are not accountable if innocents go to jail and murders spree freely and the tubas clank.
So of course the bosses pick out their friends and cronies. And a decent polity should restrain their corruption with blind auditions and accountable audits of prosecutions.
But investors should be looking for a good return on their money. They should be looking for the best investments they can find. If they're not, that is the source of bias right there.
Of course, the Wall Street industry is located in New York because you can use big city lights, strippers, and steaks to scam small town municipal pension fund managers who aren't investing their own money. Sand Hill Road is supposed to operate on different principles.
The people in charge do not benefit if the orchestra is great
Have you ever actually worked for an orchestra? I have. The Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony and other top orchestras take quality very seriously.
Do you think, say, Georg Solti or Daniel Barenboim were happy with "just pretty good" musicians? Their reputations (and fortunes, for top conductors are very well paid) depend on consistently outstanding performances.
And I don't know how you call it non-market. When you're income depends on millionaires donating vast sums of money, you damn well better care about quality.
It's like saying a football coach doesn't benefit if his team drafts the best players.
Not so. Priors/posteriors are only as good as the model they're based on. For instance, if you choose parental income as the feature it will can be a stronger signal than skin color, even though both may be good predictors. But the correlation between the income and skin color can account for the predictive power of one feature when the other features is the true cause.
So if Americans from race A commit ten times more violent crime than others and the police consequently accuse and manhandle vast numbers of innocent Americans of race A, there's nothing unjust about that? The vast majority of citizens of race A are innocent of all offenses but deserve constant suspicion and low level official humiliation and violence in a just world for no reason other than being the same color as some crooks.
accuse and manhandle vast numbers of innocent Americans of race A
One doesn't need to advocate accusing and manhandling to think the police should use statistically valid inferences in the name of justice. I myself am a member of a minority group—men—that is responsible for a vastly disproportionate share of crime, especially violent crime. You could mandate that cops ignore this reality and treat men and women with equal suspicion, but the result would be worse policing. For example, if you look at the statistics for New York's supposedly racist "stop-and-frisk" policy, you'll find that the disparity between whites and blacks is smaller than the disparity between men and women—indeed, smaller even than the disparity between white men and black women. Why have you never heard stop-and-frisk described as "sexist"?
This inconsistency is best explained politically: complaining about racial injustice against blacks is an effective route to power; complaining about gender injustice against men is not. It's the same reason you hear constant complaints about how white tech is, but not about how black sports are. Jesse Jackson can effectively shake down Apple and Intel [1], but there is no white equivalent shaking down the NFL. (Can you imagine if "increasing diversity in the NFL" meant "increasing the relative proportion of white players"? It would be a different world—not, incidentally, one I would particularly want to live in.)
Being male means people will infer based on a superficial assessment that I'm more likely to be a criminal than, say, my sister. But that inference is correct. Being a member of such a group is my lot in life, and complaining doesn't change what is.
A straightforward application of evolutionary biology to Homo sapiens yields group differences as the null hypothesis. You've done nothing but construct a ridiculous strawman to refute this. Moreover, discrimination and group differences aren't mutually exclusive—it's possible that Group X's underrepresentation in Field Y is the result of both discrimination and group differences. The only way to know for sure that it's pure discrimination is to show that group differences are negligible. This requires actually measuring them (which in fact has been done in exhausting detail [1]), but even suggesting the possibility of group differences frequently leads to accusations of racism and sexism—as you've just so ably demonstrated.
[1]: See, for example, The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. Then, once you get over your knee-jerk "That's racist!!!" reflex, take a look—I mean actually read for comprehension—The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray. Maybe add a little Cavalli-Sforza (via Steve Sailer) to the mix (http://www.vdare.com/articles/052400-cavalli-sforzas-ink-clo...). You can then graduate to basically anything by Arthur Jensen. As a topper, read "Rational"Wiki's entry on Human Biodiversity (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Human_biodiversity) and cringe at the smug, supercilious tone, endless strawmanning and distortion, and at the realization that you, too, were once taken in by the ridiculous "mainstream" views. (I certainly was.)
Thanks for literature and links. Hope I'll find the time to read this. The article from vdare.com seems really emotional to me. Not very reputable.
"Don`t believe any of this. It`s merely a politically-correct smoke screen that Cavalli-Sforza regularly pumps out to keep his life`s work — distinguishing the races of mankind and compiling their genealogies — from being defunded by the leftist mystagogues at Stanford."
"As you can imagine, this finding could get him in a bit of hot water if the campus thought police ever found out about it."
This may be a better place to start -- https://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-i... and https://jaymans.wordpress.com/about/. VDare tends to preach and agitate to the already converted, that is the peril of having to survive on donations. That said, while Steve Sailer is snarky, he is also reputable. He takes good care to not get things wrong. I've been following him for a while, and when some bit of news comes out, or some new policy gets announced, and the NY Times says one thing, and Sailer says another, Sailer almost always ends up getting proved right.
If you want a book length treatment, Michael Hart's Understanding Human History is the complete opposite of the typical, Jared Diamond, environmentalist accounts of human society. It is worth perusing - https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/har...
Understanding Human History is one of my favorite books. I finished it and immediately reread it. This was especially instructive given that a decade ago I read Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel twice as well, quite innocent of the political subtext.
Indeed, there's pretty much nothing bawdier in English literature than "The Miller's Tale" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Miller%27s_Tale).
Some Shakespeare comes close, though. Which kind of proves your point.
sex outside marriage isn't so much taboo as explicitly ruled out by definition
You're using different definitions. By "sex outside of marriage," the previous commenter means "two unmarried people having sex," i.e., what's sometimes called "premarital sex." This indeed is no longer taboo in much, probably most, of the West.
Why isn't this the top rated post? No matter what you think of the subject matter, the newspeak is running bold and thick in this piece. It's like the dihydrogen monoxide scare without the irony.
Correcting grammar and spelling errors—especially in public—is always a tough call: upon judging that an error is systematic and not a simple typo, do you help the writer avoid the error in perpetuity—even if it embarrasses them a little, and even if you'll probably get downvoted for being pedantic or offtopic? In this case, I've determined the downsides are worth the possibility of sparing the author a lifetime of error. So, without further ado:
Everything in my statement is genuine. What's more impolite, saying something, or letting someone continue to make a mistake? Like I said in my comment, it's a tough call.
Implying someone is an asshole is always impolite. Take that as you will.
A lot of people know full well the difference between "its" and "it's", but dash off HN comments because they have something contribute but not a lot of time. I've been known to forget whole verbs when writing out my comments, for example. That doesn't mean that they're fated to a lifetime of always getting it wrong: the parent comment you corrected used "it's" correctly once and incorrectly twice, and uses "its" correctly in his comment history.
The other commenters are asking you to please consider carelessness rather incompetence as a motive, and to see the forest for the trees. If everybody corrected grammar in the comments, we'd quickly see the site switch from substantive discussion to useless pedantry. Don't be that guy.
The author's email address is in his HN profile (one click away). If you truely wanted to help the author you could have done it in private. I agree with the other users who replied.
I always prefer to correct in private. Most people don't list email addresses in their profiles, so I didn't think to check. Next time I will.
By the way, despite logic, "truly" doesn't contain the substring "true", so "truely" is a misspelling. Your email address, unfortunately, isn't in your profile (and nor could I find it via opencagedata.com), so I hope (though doubt) you'll forgive a public correction.
Everything I wrote is genuine and polite (perhaps even overly so). What you wrote is distinctly impolite. Is the irony lost on you? Think of that the next time you're tempted to call someone a nasty name.
Brits are also less shocked by "fag" because of its use to mean "cigarette." In college I had a French teacher who scandalized her American class by casually dropping the word into conversation. Turns out she had learned English in England, and was unaware of the American usage.
On the one hand, applying valid generalizations is not bias. On the other hand, when dealing with individuals, one rarely has to rely on generalizations. On the gripping hand [1], treating individuals fairly can look like bias when iterated over a large enough sample size.
The solution: be rigorous about treating individuals fairly, be willing to apply valid generalizations cautiously and only when necessary, and remember that seemingly biased results might simply be reflecting real differences between groups. (This last point can be grokked by meditating, Zen koan–like, on the question "Are women underrepresented in the NBA?"—a question to which both the answers "yes" and "no" are defensible.)
Over and over, Dr. Cheryan and her colleagues have found that female students are more interested in enrolling in a computer class if they are shown a classroom (whether virtual or real) decorated not with “Star Wars” posters, science-fiction books, computer parts and tech magazines, but with a more neutral décor — art and nature posters, coffee makers, plants and general-interest magazines.
"Tech" isn't a single thing. If you want to make non-geeky spaces for tech, go ahead and do it. But lots of geeks do like tech, and they understandably make geeky environments. Why can't everyone, as the bumper sticker helpfully puts it, coexist?
I think they can. But I also think that the association of geekiness with tech isn't a random quirk of history, but rather indicates a common origin. The kind of personality and psychological profile that predisposes one to an interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics also predisposes one to geekiness. Moreover, geekiness isn't gender-blind: men are simply more likely than women to be geeks. Indeed, people on the autistic spectrum are especially likely to be geeks, and the overrepresentation of males among autistics is incontrovertible. [1]
There's nothing wrong with creating non-geeky tech spaces that cater to non-geeks (male and female alike)—indeed, I think it's an excellent idea, and not only because it's generally more welcoming to women—but let's also let geeks be geeks.
It's impolitic to notice it, but America used to be a lot like this as well. See, e.g., Bowling Alone by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam (http://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Commun...). One of Putnam's main conclusions: a principal factor undermining social cohesion (corresponding to a decline in "social capital") is diversity. We're constantly bombarded with messages that "diversity is our strength," etc., but you'll note that Japan isn't exactly diverse by our standards. Neither does it face much pressure to allow massive immigration to change that.
You may still believe in the benefits of diversity, but there are also costs. One of them is that little kids can't ride American subways alone.
