Hacker News Reader

Comment by tothepixel | Hacker News Reader

In my opinion we should judge people solely on the relevance and quality of their presentations at conferences. Why should anything else matter? I think everyone agrees with this for the most part. It's just unfortunate that some people feel the need to supply unequal treatment to certain genders/races by creating quotas.

View on HN

I think a lot of people on HN and reddit agrees with your opinion. We should judge people on quality and merit. Unfortunately, studies have shown the people who claim this tend to be even more biased.

See bottom of this page. http://managingbias.fb.com/ It's kind of like when people say "I don't see race."

That's a bit... ad-hominum. Maybe I'm mis-reading it, but for me it parsed more or less as "I'm not saying you're a racist, but people who say what you're saying are racists...."

If that interpretation is wrong, please do correct me.

I'd like it if arguments could stand on their own, not be dismissed because someone falls into a particular category.

>I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

and all that.

Useful reading: http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html

The post you're responding to is making the argument "Claiming that you aren't unbiased does not make you unbiased. Trying to be unbiased does not necessarily make you unbiased."

That's certainly not ad hominem at all.

The post you're responding to is making the argument "Claiming that you aren't unbiased does not make you unbiased. Trying to be unbiased does not necessarily make you unbiased."

No, it goes farther and very clearly says it actually mskes you more biased.

That's fair, I misparaphrased. Still, not an ad hominem because its argument appeals to studies. That could be fallacious, but it's not an ad hominem fallacy.

Not to be pedantic, but its logically invalid; no fallacy is needed.

...it's like saying "if you aren't poor, you don't know how poor are treated and how unfair life is". The position of privilege one lies in makes it difficult for them to see biases happening against others, and they believe those biases don't exist.

My goal is not to insult. My goal is to share. When people are insulted then they are not receptive to new information. Maybe I should have phrased it differently. Thank you for pointing it out. It's something I am actively working on.

Interesting, thanks for sharing this. That's an odd duality that I wasn't aware existed.

It's a problem that many people aren't aware of, and it's a very compelling argument. The eventual goal should absolutely be to completely ignore irrelevant factors (gender, race, etc) when evaluating anything (such as a conference proposal), and evaluate only based on merit; the question is over the best way to get to that point, and there's quite a bit of evidence to suggest that attempting to ignore it right now doesn't actually work.

The concept of evaluating exclusively merit is completely sensible. Doing so in practice is not trivial. And there are indeed published studies showing that attempting to do so not only fails but produces more bias.

It’s not enough. You cannot just magically wish the world to change and hope everything will turn out alright. You actually have to put in the work. There may be systematic reasons at work that make sure everything is as fucked up as it currently is and we cannot just wish them away. The world is not fair or just and merit is a bullshit metric that does not work at all.

How could we change that for the better? I think quotas are certainly a nice stopgap that can help move us forward and out of this fucked up shit we are currently in. It’s a hack, sure, a dirty one, even, but as far as hacks go I think it’s quite nice.

If you are really convinced that merit based selection is even possible (all a question of degrees, right?) targeted outreach (i.e. actually asking many interesting people to submit something, not just waiting for submissions) combined with a blind review process could also work quite nicely. I know of conferences where that alone (i.e. purely merit based selection, but preceded by targeted outreach – so of those who submitted something really only the very best presenters were selected) actually worked nicely and led to dramatic shifts in – their case (because they decided to tackle gender first, but there are obviously many other angles) – gender balance.

>It’s a hack, sure, a dirty one, even, but as far as hacks go I think it’s quite nice.

And a hack that can backfire when people start incorporating the existence of the quota into their judgment about someone. For example, in a place where a quota exists to ensure a minimum number of A are hired, people will begin to assume that B's are more competent. And if the quota is actually working, they will be correct. (It is possible for A-ism to be so bad that the average B is worse than the average A even given the quota, which may mean it is even worse for A as people will often not realize this is the case and think that the average B must in all cases be better than the average A when there is a quota helping A.)

There's also the issue of "corrective" quotas creating new forms of discrimination (against asian Americans, for example: http://www.wsj.com/articles/asian-american-organizations-see... ). I think targeted outreach and blind evaluation of applications are less prone to result in new problems.

Is it considered a new form of discrimination and not the desire effect because it is Asians and not Caucasians who suffer the greatest penalty? If that is the case, that alone tells you all you need to know about if this process is racist or not.

Good point. Even acknowledging the idea that whites can be discriminated against in certain circumstances is verboten.

That honestly seems like an unimportant little diversion that doesn’t matter.

Only used by people who really think there is no problem, used to argue in bad faith.

But, ok, can you suggest an alternative that’s not just proving up the awful status quo? I love more elegant solutions!

>That honestly seems like an unimportant little diversion that doesn’t matter.

Because any (to continue my example) A-ism that is caused by the quota is counted together with preexisting A-ism. Thus, while it does not appear a big deal, it may be a major deal.

The inspiration for the original article was an (accomplished) A being deeply bothered by the phenomenon you have described as "an unimportant little diversion."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com