[lexcorvus]

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.

[nl]

Bob: Can you give me an example?

nl: Sure.

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]

Bob: What? But that doesn't count because...

[1] http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/orchestrating-impartiality-impact...

[lexcorvus]

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!)

[mannykannot]

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.

[rewqfdsa]

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.

[baddox]

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.

[lexcorvus]

could easily be either

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.

[lexcorvus]

Hey rewqfdsa, maybe shoot me an email some time. Address is in profile.

[superuser2]

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.

[devalier]

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.

[rewqfdsa]

Which is more plausible?

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.

[drumdance]

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?

[WildUtah]

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.

[drumdance]

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.

[WildUtah]

http://www.advancedfootballanalytics.com/index.php/home/rese...

[gammarator]

> you're essentially postulating a giant unconscious conspiracy

Let me introduce you to the extensive scientific literature on implicit bias: http://www.aas.org/cswa/unconsciousbias.html

[rewqfdsa]

If the bias reflects a real Bayesian prior, it isn't the kind of bias that's unjust.

[skj]

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.

[WildUtah]

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.

I don't agree.

[lexcorvus]

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.

[1]: See, e.g., http://www.mercurynews.com/census/ci_29048321/q-jesse-jackso...

[lexcorvus]

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.)

[chei0aiV]

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."

[devalier]

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...

[lexcorvus]

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.