[realusername]

I thought my argument was nuanced and progressive by supporting people regardless of their genders/sexual orientation/religious group.

I don't like much to divide people across arbitrary lines which are often artificial, especially in the modern day where we have so much sub-culture that it's difficult to find anything in common in people supposedly from the same "group".

[rosser]

> by supporting people regardless of their genders/sexual orientation/religious group.

Here's the thing, the position that people should be judged on their merits, and "regardless of" those things is something I completely and unreservedly agree with.

In the real world, however, that just isn't the case. The overwhelming evidence of implicit bias in, for example, blinded résumés doing better than non-blinded when the candidate is a minority or woman puts the lie to that being the case.

Then, consider the research demonstrating that one of the most effective ways to correct insular and/or incorrect ideas about another group is to interact with members of that group. We're largely operating on internalized, false narratives when we pass on a résumé with the name "Linda" on it, but say, "I want to interview this guy" if it doesn't have a name on it. Exposure to the people we have those narratives about shows us how wrong they are. We need to over-correct for the tendency, in order to encourage the exposure.

"Where a man is judged on the context of his character" (yes, MLK, gender-bias is a thing) is a wonderful world, and one in which I very much wish to live. We have some difficult, uncomfortable work to do before we get there, and all the pushback I see about encouraging the participation of women and minorities in tech tells me it's likely to be even longer and harder than I'd thought.

[realusername]

I agree with you on the issue (the research part), just not the way to solve it.

So first, it's not because woman or black people are discriminated against by racist or sexist people that they make a distinct "group" themselves, they probably have as much in common as two random people in the street.

Secondly, affirmative action, like you are advocating here is also creating pretty bad side-effects. If you make the criteria for hiring much more favorable for women/black people/whoever you think is discriminated against, you just give more fuel to the discrimination. People will just think "Is this women hired because she is competent or just because it's a woman?", and now they have a legitimate reason to think that because they can point to official policies. I would also add that it's pretty bad for the people benefiting from the affirmative action since they are just reduced to their gender/skin colour/disability, they are just hired to fill a quota and they probably would want to be recognised for their skills or their thoughts instead.

Then as a last point, the team can be as diverse as the field in it, if you have 10% woman in IT, you cannot achieve 50% woman everywhere, it's just basic maths. The efforts should be concentrated in tech school.

[rosser]

I said "over-correct for the tendency", you heard "affirmative action."

As another follow-up to another comment of yours suggests, there are probably many ways to accomplish that end without quotas, or any number of other similar approaches. Asserting the problems with those doesn't negate the principle. "The crude, tip-the-scales-a-bit approach we've tried so far has some problems. I guess we shouldn't try to fix this stuff..."

Huh?

But the specific thing I, personally, want to see people do about this stuff is simple: to question their own narratives about it.

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool." — Feynman