| > By the way, one reason people react strongly to objections like yours is that a very direct interpretation is that you believe the distribution of people in high status jobs actually does accurately reflect differences based on race and gender. I think this is partly true. But then, a similar interpretation of "pro-affirmative action" is that one believes that whatever bad thing happens to a minority is never their fault. I think both are only partly true. The problem with affirmative action is that it (I don't know if it's always the case, but it seems to be often so) specifically considers minority status. It is obvious, I think, that this is not the kind of criteria a computer, say, would consider if it were to look only for the most qualified applicants. On the other hand, you or someone else in the thread made a good point: this pro-minority bias can be seen as an effort to counter the systematic bias against "outgroups". The problem is that I don't think we know the effect size of each of those: how strong is this systematic bias? In a protected status agnostic society, would all professional fields perfectly mirror population rates? I don't think so. We know there are metal disorders/illnesses that impact cognitive functions (Down's syndrome) and obviously genetics is partly responsible (do Down syndromers have similar rates of Down syndrome babies?). Similarly, I don't think the success of Asians and Jews is due to some form of societal bias in their favor. In the end, the question is whether the anti-bias bias is correcting towards 0 or in the other direction (i.e.: protected status is very important, just the other way). I don't know what the answer to this one is. |