[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...