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Comment by ebfe | Hacker News Reader

>lack of diversity does not imply discrimination

If everyone is a blank slate and there is no genetic basis to intelligence, than yes, it does.

Their logic is correct, but it's based on a false premise. And if you call it into question, I sure hope you aren't dependent on having a job.

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Not necessarily. That model completely removes the individual and community as actors in society. What you are saying is that all accomplishment of a person is due to society "acting on that person" to make that person successful. Everything that happens can be labeled as discrimination with that kind of model, making it a completely useless model.

Is society "discriminating" against communities and individuals when some individuals and communities value education and spend more time studying than others?

Newborns may be blank slates, but college- and working-age people clearly are not. By the time we are ready to join the working world, we are already imprinted by what our culture tells us are "male" and "female" jobs, for example. I don't think of that as discrimination. It's discrimination if a female applies for a construction job and is passed over for being female, not if she never applies because she thinks construction isn't for her because that's something men do. But both lead to a lack of diversity.

No one is a blank slate, large parts of personality are heritable.

Source?

Sorry for the late response, Steven Pinker wrote a well-sourced book on the subject: https://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature/dp/1...

I agree. It's important to realize that the rationalization of a lack of diversity in the workplace is explicitly based on racist theories about intelligence, and that the discomfort that many people feel is the fear of judgment if they openly express adherence to those beliefs.

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