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Comment by kelukelugames | Hacker News Reader

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."

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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.

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.

...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.

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.

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