[ccffpphh]

Sorry to kind of jump off of you here, but what do you mean by "diversity is good"? Diversity of what? If we have 5 people that all think the same but they're all different races, is that good? Is that better than or worse than 5 people of the same race with diversity of thought?

From my point of view, I believe diversity of thought enables groups of people to consider new ideas and positions that wouldn't be considered, i.e. thinking outside of the box, but I don't understand why this is extrapolated to different races, gender identities, immigration statuses, sexualities, etc. I am not claiming you brought them up but they tend to be common "diversity" points the modern populace loves to clamor around.

Why do any of those imply anything about how people will think? We've all seen some creative people that are of our own race, or that were also our own sexuality, etc.

All of this is of course at the expense of speed, in that greater variance in thought/ideas leads to slower movement, which I think is important in business (a solo or very tight knit organization can move much faster).

[causality0]

Diversity of thought isn't really something we do anymore. If you pay attention you'll notice how you always have to put things in a particular way depending on the group you talk to. You have to avoid mentioning certain other groups. You have to couch your position in friendly terms, or talk about a problem that primarily affects one group as if it affects everyone equally, or vice-versa. People have a laser-focus on whose flag they perceive you to be flying and it's almost impossible to get anything done when they decide you're playing for the wrong team.

[nickff]

Many (but not all) diversity advocates are looking for evidence to back up their preference for racial, gender, and other forms of non-ideological diversity, so they make the (often true) assertion that people of different backgrounds bring different perspectives. This is ideology searching for evidence (often known as 'motivated reasoning').

[scooble]

I remember when this was known as ‘prejudice’, in the strict sense of pre-judging aspects of a person (such as their perspective) based on e.g. their race.

It was considered to be a bad thing, so it’s been very strange to see it used as a premise by diversity advocates.

[lopmotr]

I've seen it justified as every single member of the marginalized group has some life experience that no member of the majority/powerful group has. So although it's a prejudice, it's a correct one. That's different from traditional prejudices that aren't true for every individual.

[waterhouse]

Just to note, it is possible for an academic who is not part of a group to interview many members of the group, and combine other sources of information, and end up knowing more about "the experience" of that group than most individual members of that group. Because it's not a single experience.

It is even possible that, say, the black son of a black doctor, raised in a rich neighborhood, knows less about the plight of blacks in ghettos than the white son of a white janitor, raised in a ghetto with lots of blacks—even if the latter made no deliberate study. One could also consider Africans who immigrated to the United States as adults. They do have the experience of being a certain race, but that may not imply nearly as much as people seem to think. (In fact, I would hazard a guess that the members of "marginalized groups" that do get hired for the highly professional jobs that diversity advocates talk about, are very disproportionately likely to have come from well-off backgrounds, and to have no direct ghetto experience.)

[joshuamorton]

> Just to note, it is possible for an academic who is not part of a group to interview many members of the group, and combine other sources of information, and end up knowing more about "the experience" of that group than most individual members of that group.

This is a common fallacy. Statistics don't substitute for qualia. (much as we say the plural of anecdote is not data, it is also not firsthand experience or even necessarily understanding)

Further, "Having experience with the ghetto" isn't what people are discussing when we discuss the importance of diversity. There are still common experiences between wealthy racial minorities and poor ones, that white Americans don't experience. Try reframing this fallacy in terms of say, women and men, or gender minorities. It doesn't work.

[waterhouse]

Nor do qualia substitute for statistics, or for different qualia. Almost every woman will have the experience of menstruation, yes, but, for example, how many of them have been sexually harassed by a man? Some of them have never had that experience, others have had it dozens of times. If you have a woman in your group and you assume she knows what it's like for women in general, you may be very wrong. Yet that assumption seems pretty common—I've seen a decent number of accounts of people who belong to some group, complaining that progressives assume they speak for everyone in that group. There's an example upthread.

I'm not saying everything can be gotten vicariously through research, but a lot of things can be. And then the question becomes, which specific things do you want, and what's the best way to get them? I think the diversity discussion rarely gets that far—and if it did, strategies would end up very different.

[afiori]

but on the other extreme you have a different common fallacy: Here meet Person A! Person A shares a couple of macrodemographics traits with Person B so they are automatically and authority on B's experience (and probably already friends)

something to consider is that in most demographic groups there is a similar internal diversity than the entire population. so yes there are many experiences shares mostly by only women and also by most women, but this does not mean that many will be completely alien to that experience.

in my opinion any kind of diversity effort needs to be based on our shared humanity and a belief that we can learn from each other (without treating the other neither as a saint nor an enemy)

[scooble]

I find that claim very implausible. I would also be very concerned as an anti-racist if I found myself sharing a premise (e.g. black people just have a different perspective to white people) with racists, no matter what the rationalisation. Particularly since it would legitimise discrimination in contexts where that perspective was seen as undesirable.

Also, the act of prejudice was seen as wrong, not particular prejudices.

[joshuamorton]

Note that they didn't say perspective, but "experience". People with vastly different perspectives can share perspectives.

> Also, the act of prejudice was seen as wrong, not particular prejudices.

From your statements you appear to be prejudiced against people you judge to be racist. Are you saying that is morally wrong?

[scooble]

They invoked experience to support a claim about perspectives.

I consider racism morally wrong and therefore people who act in a racist way are acting in a way that is morally wrong. This is a valid inference, not prejudice. Prejudice might be if my inference was not valid, e.g. that racist people are sexist. That would be wrong.

[OminousWeapons]

I think at a high level they are right. It probably is true that being a different race or sex or whatever results in different experiences on average which inform worldview. The problem is that any differences that might arise are largely out of scope of work. My domain knowledge, acuity, communication style, and professionalism really have nothing to do with experience relating to race, sex, orientation, or any other factor these people are concerned about.

In reality these diversity programs are basically societal anti-discrimination programs in disguise. While those types of programs aren't necessarily bad, proponents know that if they pitched them purely in this way they would never get management buy in because that's largely not work related; hence all the ill supported talk about diversity automatically yielding better teams.

[DoofusOfDeath]

I can accept ideology seeking evidence, as long as everyone is clear about that. If it results in good evidence (either way) that holds up to critical analysis, all the better.

[throw_m239339]

> Sorry to kind of jump off of you here, but what do you mean by "diversity is good"? Diversity of what? If we have 5 people that all think the same but they're all different races, is that good? Is that better than or worse than 5 people of the same race with diversity of thought?

Some people got fired for framing the problem exactly as you framed it:

https://nypost.com/2017/11/17/apples-diversity-chief-lasts-j...

The irony is that the person that was fired was part of that "minority" the ideologues who wanted her head are supposed to support at first place.

[AlexTWithBeard]

Diversity of everything: race, age, sex, alma mater, native language...

I think the key message is: limiting your hiring to a specific race is equally as stupid as limiting it to MIT graduates or to people who grew up in Queens.

[waterhouse]

This is a motte. "Limiting your hiring to a specific race" means excluding everyone outside that race because of race. I think everyone here agrees that's stupid, and today almost no one is openly doing that. It's not the "key message" because 99% of those hearing it already agree, and the 1% who disagree probably aren't changing their minds and don't have much power anyway.

The key message (the bailey) that diversity advocates tend to push these days is that, if you just go about hiring in what you normally think is the best way, and you end up with hires of only one specific race (or of a few races, but none of a certain few other races), then you are doing something wrong and bad, and you should change your hiring process so you end up with people of more races, even if that means sacrificing some of the goals for which you originally optimized your hiring process.

[joshuamorton]

> This is a motte. "Limiting your hiring to a specific race" means excluding everyone outside that race because of race. I think everyone here agrees that's stupid, and today almost no one is openly doing that.

Intentionally perhaps not, but that doesn't mean that they aren't doing so unintentionally. As a silly example, if you restrict yourself to hiring Stanford CS grads, you'll have a hard time hiring more than a few Black people each year. If you aren't offering the best possible offers, and going out of your way to court those handful of students, you may not end up with any.

> then you are doing something wrong and bad

This isn't a bailey. To continue the above example, you have a few options. You can court those specific students, maybe that's a bad idea. Alternatively, you can look in more places. Hire from other schools, like state schools especially in the southeast. You'll find a ton more candidates, many of whom are just as qualified as those from Stanford. And you'll end up with a more diverse workforce along just about any axis you could pick.

You didn't sacrifice anything except the ability to say "we only hire Stanford grads", which isn't really a sacrifice.

[scooble]

You seem to be talking about diversity in the hiring pool being good whereas your interlocutor was questioning whether diversity in hirings was a good.

[raxxorrax]

Companies outsource work to foreign countries in a heartbeat and did so for decades and you have to search very hard to find a company that hires by race.

Your education needs to fit reality at least somehow.

[andreskytt]

In system architecture, there’s entire fields of research exploring ways to expand the space from which we pick our solutions. It is not about variety of opinions but about a variety of ways of thinking about problems. More options means more creativity, more chances of a novel approach, better chances of standing out. Having a culturally (gender, race, native language, education, age, you name it) diverse team is a really efficient way to gain that. So diversity of perspective is directly financially beneficial for certain organizations.