[hcayless]

It’s astonishing to me how obviously intelligent people can just be put into the mental equivalent of an unrecoverable flat spin by ideology. The essay is interesting, but then just flips into silly mode. DEI is not the Spanish Inquisition. The idea that we should try to hire, retain, and promote people besides white men seems straightforwardly good to me. Obviously it’s hard to execute on, particularly without making some people uncomfortable. Such groups will make mistakes or be ineffective at times, but they’re not some sort of thought police. It’s quite hard to understand the opposition to them without hypothesizing that it’s simply racism.

[netbioserror]

>It’s quite hard to understand the opposition to them without hypothesizing that it’s simply racism.

We have two criteria here: Hire on merit and try pick the best person for the job; or, subsume merit to picking based primarily on skin color and/or ethnicity. One man's "hire people besides white men" is another's "hire using racist criteria and violate every hard-fought and hard-won civil, moral, and ethical principle of the past century of US history."

[hcayless]

Binaries are cool and all, but maybe it's better for your organizational health to have (for example) your company look something like the population they're selling to? Maybe not everyone gets the same level of boost in their education? Maybe they've overcome some adversity and that will make them a better, more resilient colleague, but it also meant their grades weren't as high? Like I said, this isn't easy stuff, and binary thinking doesn't really help.

[mwbajor]

" look something like the population they're selling to"

Would the car have been any less useful to african people if it was invented by a black henry ford?

[hcayless]

Of course not. What does that have to do with anything? People with different lives and experiences will have different perspectives that are likely to be helpful. We all care deeply about the things that directly affect us and our loved ones and less about the things that do not. You can cover more bases with a diverse workforce and avoid making dumb mistakes. I don’t get why this is controversial.

[verall]

I have to wonder if this comment is made in good faith -

Are cars and other goods tailored to the needs of local markets?

Are they adjustable for different people's shapes and sizes?

How long was it before car chairs were adjustable to be driven by women, and how much longer until regulators started considering women-sized crash dummies?

Sure, your skin color doesn't mean much to a car, but it does to an automatic faucet, a skin-toned band aid, face login (or whatever apple calls it). There are obvious benefits to hiring or doing studies within your target market.

[mwbajor]

Answer the question, would the car be different if Henry Ford was black? Would the AC induction motor be different if Tesla was Hispanic? Would the transistor be different if Shockley was Asian? Shall I go on? Believe it or not, it doesn't just apply to White people. The most important products don't care about what you look like.

"Are cars and other goods tailored to the needs of local markets?"

I would argue they always were. The color of a band-aide does not change its main functionality. Neither do any of your other examples. Humans all need a car with 4 wheels and band-aides that stick.

[xethos]

> I would argue they always were.

I would posit we can't even get healthcare without bias for people that aren't straight white men. There are subtle differences in body composition between men and women, doubly so for larger (or smaller) body types, but ignoring those differences isn't exactly something from the far-flung past [0].

Otherwise we can quibble over how treating everyone as an average can and has cost lives [1]. People are different, and very small differences can have unexpectedly outsized impacts on usability.

> The most important products don't care about what you look like

The product doesn't care, but this site is awash in stories about how management or engineering should have just talked to the damn floor workers. Worked together, instead of dictating from on-high that the machine in question works well in the lab, and is an elegant, cost-effective solution - that the people actually in the shop know will fail immediately.

DEI (when done right) is not diversity hires. It's accepting others have different ideas that you may not have seen.

[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28343109/

[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-disc...

[miffel]

I would insist that you try to open up your worldview slightly and accept that sometimes having a team with more than just white men can be desirable and lead to better outcomes for the end product. Maybe bandaids are not the best example, but consider pulse oximeters[0].

There are many examples like this if you care to look for them. I would recommend the books Weapons of Math Destruction and Invisible Women for some very well done research on the way that you can codify human biases in processes that should neutral.

I would also personally recommend that you give an earnest try to understanding why so many people argue for diversity. A genuine attempt. Even if you don't fully change your mind on it I think you will find it easier to approach the world with a little more compassion for people who don't look like you.

[0]: https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/commentary-more-health-inequalit...

[darkerside]

Bandaids are a bit of an ironic example. They were probably made the skin color of their majority customers, and not that of their inventors, but someone might have been in a position to ask whether there should be more than one color.

[verall]

Why answer? Your argument as far as I can read it is "Physics exists, therefore DEI is bad". Can you help me fill in the gap?

What is your clearly rhetorical question getting at?

[darkerside]

You said you were astonished. Parent poster is just explaining how some people view the world in an attempt to make it a bit less astonishing to you. Why not read it through that lens instead of calling it a binary strawman?

[kurikuri]

> We have two criteria here: Hire on merit and try pick the best person for the job; or, subsume merit to picking based primarily on skin color and/or ethnicity.

The word ‘merit’ is doing a lot of work here. What traits/aspects of a person would you use to calculate into their merit? I’ll argue that between two people who’ve crossed a finish line at the same time, the one who started furthest from that line is more meritorious. From a hiring/placement perspective however, especially during the first screening, there isn’t a good way to determine a candidate’s starting line.

The dichotomy is a bit wrong as well, but I’ll get into that once we get past the first hurdle (for the curious, it is about a selection bias after an initial screen).

[add-sub-mul-div]

The most eye opening aspect of this issue is how many people find the all white male default to be normal and self evidently meritocratic, and a deviation from that is what they instinctively consider to be contrived.

[lordloki]

That only shows your flawed understanding of the issue. Nobody is saying that everything was meritocratic throughout history and that's why the most successful people in the west were white. However, there was a move towards meritocracy that did help many people in disadvantaged groups and throwing that away is foolish and short sighted. Meritocracy was a hard fought win by people who were not white and or male, throwing that away now will not lead anywhere good. It wasn't in societies best interest before meritocracy, why would it be now?

[lordloki]

If you want to understand the opposition, you should start by reading and listening to the arguments put forth instead of assuming racism. The fact that you seem to default to that conclusion is showing that your not listening to opposing opinions, and instead utilizing your inherent bias to make a judgement call. Which then reinforces your idea that the other side has no argument, is racist, and therefor should be ignored.

[throw7]

We've been digging this hole for awhile that it seems like we've hit china. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but things are coming to a head (vis-a-vis recent supreme court rulings) and we're not togetherizing we're dividezizing.

I don't think it's hard at all to understand the opposition. Just reread what you wrote what the straightforward good is. I mean to say, be wary of the paving stones you're laying on your path.

[rmbyrro]

> particularly without making some people uncomfortable

I guess because racism is a crime in most modern societies and living in prison is uncomfortable?

[heresie-dabord]

> intelligent people can just be put into the mental equivalent of an unrecoverable flat spin

I can't recommend the article either, it's just a casually-interesting premise to which the author then attaches a trailer of the usual half-wit cries of oppression by some invisible conspiracy threatening the author's narrow comfort zone.

But in doing so, the article does illustrate the characteristics of the loud and untethered lunacy of the libertarian, petroleum-inhaling populist factions that are occupying so much space in social discourse today.