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Comment by puranjay | Hacker News Reader

So in my country, we have our own version of affirmative action called caste-based reservations. Basically, if you belong to a certain caste, there are seats reserved for you in every government institution (schools, universities) and public sector jobs.

One of the smartest people I know belongs to one of these castes. She is brilliant at her job but constantly worries whether she got in because of her brains or because of the reservations.

There is STILL a serious need for reservations and affirmative action in my country, but man does it screw with people.

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>>There is STILL a serious need for reservations and affirmative action in my country, but man does it screw with people.

I come from the same country.

Reservation policy has denied hordes and hordes of exceptionally smart, hardworking and merit people their rightful chance of doing good in life. It continues to. This has been one of the key reasons for mass exodus of these people to foreign lands. The damage is irreversible. Those people are lost for ever. And worst, they do so well outside India that more and more smart people are incentivized to leave the country for the better.

The damage to the Indian economy and the STEM ecosystem in India in general is incalculable.

Also by and large, at least from the past few decades(of economic boom and social progress) these reservation policies have no meaning at all.

I just wanted to record my position on this because I in no way support what you're saying. I fully support reservation for people who belong to traditionally marginalized communities when it comes to education. The only way you can make me reconsider is to make education free of cost and open to all candidates regardless of merit.

However, you do raise a good point. Reservation policy should not extend into the work force. I am more in favor of literal handouts of cash rather than forced diversity in the workplace. Come to think of it, basic income can't come soon enough. I don't mean we need to end diversity programs in the workplace but the way it was explained to me was these were recruitment programs and not hiring programs. Considering gender or caste or color of skin as one of the conditions for employment should be illegal in all nations.

>>I fully support reservation for people who belong to traditionally marginalized communities when it comes to education.

This was the original vision of the people who designed the reservation system in India. Their idea was some people where so behind in the social strata that merely expecting them to make up on hard work would take it forever to work. But this policy should have some expiry conditions. Else it leads to absurd conditions like it does in India.

There are cases where the father is a well earning rich doctor, and the kids still get reservations. There is a guy who has just done his MBBS, and yet he qualifies for reservation for a MD seat. Entry and qualifying marks/percentages are lower for reservation seats, so you have a condition where exceptionally good performers and bad performers are both in the same peer group in a class, and then the bad performing group routinely does bad and loses out.

>>Reservation policy should not extend into the work force.

Once you create a entitled group of people, you can't succeed them in stopping them from asking special privileges in other places.

> Considering gender or caste or color of skin as one of the conditions for employment should be illegal in all nations.

Given research showing that the most diverse teams are, on average, more successful than less diverse teams [1], should gender or caste or color still never be considered?

People bring more to their workplaces than algorithms and programming languages, their life experiences and worldview can positively influence the whole company.

The employer should encourage new ideas, create an environment where everyone feels empowered to contribute, and facilitate education and improvement for all employees.

Algorithms, programming languages, technology stacks, etc. can all be taught. The perspective an employee brings to the company can not be taught.

I think we would agree that gender, race, and ethnicity are crude proxies for a "unique worldview". There are so many metrics that could be considered: education, location history, age, previous work, hobbies, etc. Even more can be gleaned from a conversation.

A good hiring manager should know that too, and should select candidates who truly complement the team, not just check the boxes for race and gender.

[1] https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter

> The only way you can make me reconsider is to make education free of cost and open to all candidates regardless of merit.

This is true for some countries and the problems and solutions are still the same.

And how would you right the wrongs that the caste system has done to countless people? Even today people get ostracized because of their supposed caste, even though the system has been illegal for many years. There was even an interview on NPR about this last week: http://www.npr.org/2017/08/05/541844695/ants-among-elephants... - even today people in the US get asked what caste they are.

Your "hordes and hordes" who have been denied their "rightful chance of doing good in life" seems more than a little overblown when you compare that to millions of people who were denied the same chance for centuries due to where their families fell in the social chain at one point.

Affirmative action policies often seem unfair to the majority, but it's often extremely difficult for that majority to consider just what the minority went through, and how much longer it will take - if it can ever happen - for them to reach parity without policies that recognize that they've been forcefully held back for their entire life, their parents' lives, and so on.

>>And how would you right the wrongs that the caste system has done to countless people?

The modern day hard working people affiliated to a particular caste be punished generation after generation for a mistake some ancestor of theirs made some 5000 years back?

>>Even today people get ostracized because of their supposed caste, even though the system has been illegal for many years.

Strictly speaking caste affiliations today are entirely voluntary. You can by all means absolve yourself of any caste/religion. People stick to a particular caste/religion for various reasons many of which are cultural and not because they forced to. Also note caste isn't a binary classification. There are castes that go as deep as farmer, shepherd, cow herder, black smith, cotton weaver, weapon maker etc etc.

Some of them do it because of the explicit benefits like reservations that come along with it.

>>Your "hordes and hordes" who have been denied their "rightful chance of doing good in life" seems more than a little overblown when you compare that to millions of people who were denied the same chance for centuries due to where their families fell in the social chain at one point.

This my experience being born and living in this country for 3 decades of my biological life. The default condition for any body smart and hard working here is 'immigration abroad'.

Take any steps from your childhood. Attend any exams(which by the way decide your entire life direction), appear for any government job interview, parliaments seats etc etc. Reservations exist which will ensure many hard working people ever succeed.

The system actively brutally punishes smart, hard working merit people to a point most people are driven to migrate foreign lands to get due returns for their work.

>Strictly speaking caste affiliations today are entirely voluntary. You can by all means absolve yourself of any caste/religion.

They are theoretically voluntary. Practical reality, however, is very different: http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/13/48988349...

And the previous interview that I had linked to noted how often even in the US, people get asked what caste they're in.

Deeply rooted discrimination doesn't go away just because it is officially outlawed, and the effects of that discrimination don't go away just through hard work. There are plenty of smart African Americans and women in the US who can attest to still getting paid less than white males even if they did get good jobs.

This is a bit like atheism. If you denounce your religion, they can't exactly drag you back into it. But that cuts both ways, if you are an atheist, you can't expect somebody religious to throw away their religion and marry you. The world doesn't owe you a marriage on your terms.

Caste is similar, if you throw away your caste and then go for marriage, a strong caste affiliate who doesn't subscribe to your world view may reject your proposal. This isn't discrimination, everybody has a right to marry somebody whom they feel they can be comfortable with.

You will be surprised how much 'pride' people take in their caste here in India. There are many caste specific festivals and traditions people observe. Almost all caste affiliates in India are willing participants.

> Reservation policy has denied hordes and hordes of exceptionally smart, hardworking and merit people their rightful chance of doing good in life. It continues to. This has been one of the key reasons for mass exodus of these people to foreign lands.

Proof?

Proof is living here in India. Watching year after year, your seniors, neighbors, cousins, class mates, tuition mates, office colleagues burn through insane hours entirety of the whole academic life from childhood till late teenage, working for doing good in exams, scoring the top ranks that there are, and yet being denied seats in professional colleges.

The very fact that you ask for proof means you are completely disconnected from the everyday reality of life middle class hard working students face in India every single academic year.

Even today I meet freshers at IT companies who have stories of having scored in upwards of 95% aggregate marks, and best rank in competitive exams(JEE, NEET, NATA, CET etc) and lose out an engineering seat to some one who had 35-45% marks.

According to Census 2011, 4% of Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) - minorities who benefit this reservation - have a government job [0]. They form 25% of the population [1].

[0] http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/census-c...

[1] http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/scs-sts-form-25--of-po...

Firstly reservations exist beyond SCs and STs. There are a whole variety of people who get reservations. So that number is way higher.

We are talking of problems General Merit people face here.

Secondly, you are making the same mistake, we generally do in India while comparing these things. Comparing human ingenuity one-one. A good merit performer can contribute way more disproportionately compared to a bad performer.

Lastly you don't mention the problem of filling up mandatory quotas. Where you can't allocate seats to general merit folks until all reservation quotas are exhausted. In Karnataka this problem was so serious back in the day, the general merit seat counseling used to happen at very last after each reserved category exhausted their picks.

The resultant situation was so bizarre. It was literally the best students in the entire state had to pick up leftovers, while people who had performed way worse took plum picks.

I remember during our first Math lecture in the first semester, some of us used to solve problems way ahead of the remaining class. Our professor used to remark the general merit candidates in the class were basically the top ranking students who had missed out on top colleges and the performance difference in the peer group was already showing, and will continue to show in the future.

The problem here is that even a discussion about this topic is dangerous. That's unbelievable!

a persons humanity should not be in question. you can discuss the merits of a specific persons qualifications but to argue "women, as an aggregate, are poor coders because they care about people and not things like dudes do" isn't a discussion. it's just grade-school level sexism.

for someone with a PhD in biological systems, you'd expect a person to be a little more developed in their thinking...

Woman and men are, on average, different. Is this wrong?

These differences can be in factors that impact ones desire or ability to perform certain roles. Is this wrong?

This individual person, because they are a man/woman, is unfit for the role. This IS wrong.

Is it wrong to say there are differences that make women, on average, worse football players? Is that inherently bad, perhaps even blasphemous, thing to say? I don't think so.

So why can't one discuss this about other jobs? Perhaps they are wrong, Perhaps which ever group isn't worse on average. But even if they are wrong, then the way to respond is to say that their information is wrong, not that they are wrong for saying it.

We are treating the conversation itself like it is a blasphemy that shall not be uttered aloud. Instead, we should be asking 'is this information factual or not'. And we should be taking safe guards that averages aren't assigned to individuals.

> the way to respond is to say that their information is wrong, not that they are wrong for saying it.

This is what bothered me the most about Google's response. They have the data to prove that the stereotypes about women were wrong. Instead of doing that, they focused on the idea that articulating the stereotypes was wrong. Some stereotypes actually have a basis in facts. The best way to deal with ones that aren't is to use the facts. Google failed at doing this.

> Google failed at doing this.

Implying they cared about false stereotypes. They only failed if they actually wanted to do that.

My bet is this gives them negative PR to their target market, end of story.

> to argue "women, as an aggregate, are poor coders because they care about people and not things like dudes do" isn't a discussion.

Did you actually read the paper or just one of the many summaries? Because he didn't say that, and your use of quotes is inappropriate here. Also, he didn't question anyone's humanity. While I don't agree with some of the points he made and I'm for Diversity programs in general, I find these misrepresentations and personal attacks on him quite disturbing. What we need is more civilized discussion, not name-calling.

yes, I did read it. and yes, that's precisely the argument that was presented. with a nice "we should talk about it!" cherry on top.

there's nothing to discuss. women have just as much right as men to be programmers or any other "computer science" or "tech" job and they reason there AREN'T that many of them is preicsely because of the pseudo-science bona fide bullshit written in his "Manifesto".

it only takes one asshole to drive away everyone else.

You didn't read it.

I did. care to tell me what parts I missed?

Well. You invented everything you're claiming it said.

At no point did it even insinuate that women were less capable than men, what it seemed to be trying to do is note marginal statistical differences in choices by men and women and what we could do as an industry to be more accommodating to women without resorting to hiring quotas- which, he claims, may actually cause greater levels of imposter syndrome and tension amongst genders.

There was no part of the document that came close to refuting that women have a right to be in the industry. In fact. The document was the opposite, "how do we get women in tech in a non-discriminatory way?"

I should add, the fact there's "Nothing to discuss" is quite radicalising. Others can tell people how to think and they can't even discuss it civilly? That seems so against the engineering and scientific ideology we all claim to believe in.

Strongly different of what you think there are a lot of PhD in the area that agree with him. That people have different biological systems and so the expressed skills are different. The same way genes express the gender they also express different skills. What I don't understand is why this is so bad? we have different skills, let's try not to think everybody is exactly the same and focus in the skills every individual have.

> What I don't understand is why this is so bad?

It's the idea that it would be unfair that on average women cannot do as well in things men do, ignoring basic biology that genders are different and that there are things that absolutely no man can do, that women can. Even sometimes those areas which privilege females are seen as they were basically cornered into doing, and have no bearing into the fact that while there is some chauvinism, that possibly on average the desires, needs and skills may be not better or worse but different. And the women that embrace those things are positive are seen as being dominated against their will, or brainwashed into hating themselves.

In short, if a women does something that historically men used to do, then it's good. Else, and even more if it is something that historically women used to do, they are being subject to sexism.

The PhD guy should know better, perhaps too much specialization in his field made his brain go fritz.

So this is a common talking point, and I'd like to flip your case around, because the belief that people from a caste are inferior human beings isn't as widespread in the US.

So what you are really saying is there's a problem with affirmative action for lower castes, because large numbers of people assume that they are inferior. That's the problem your friend has. That's she's brilliant, and lots of people assume she isn't because of some arbitrary prejudice. This is the same arbitrary prejudice that the affirmative action seeks to remedy, and so these attitudes to affirmative action, in themselves, prove the need for affirmative action.

> because large numbers of people assume that they are inferior.

You're taking this the wrong way. It's not that they think that people who came in through reservations are inferior. It's that they don't have to work nearly as hard.

In an exam where an upper caste person might have to score 100 to get in, the reserved caste person would have to score 70.

It's about the unfairness of this system.

Which is strange because the caste system before this was wildly unfair itself.

To mitigate the damage of one unfair system, we've set up another one.

> In an exam where an upper caste person might have to score 100 to get in, the reserved caste person would have to score 70.

Are there less people in the "lower" caste? I would assume there would be more and severe competition.

Probably yes, at least the people interested in the position. Considering that distributions on both sets are the same, lowering the bar in the minor set is an unfair advantage of positive discrimination

Actually caste isn't a binary classification. And reservations don't apply only to one caste. Many castes get reservations.

The remainder bulk of the people who don't get reservations fall into this category called 'General Merit'.

Now the system fills up the reservation quotas first, leaving leftovers to general merit. General merit has way more candidates and a larger section of people who score above reservation people. The net result is you end up denying top performers seats, so that you can fill reservation quotas.

Are the lower caste people on average inferior?

If they're not, then why does it matter?

If they are, then is it a) a tragedy that should be remedied by providing better nutrition, education, opportunities, or b) are they a lower level of sub-human who we just have to put up with in menial roles?

I'll note that if you do a) then the problem of them getting in on lower grades solves itself, as they compete for the limited slots available to them. And at that point you can remove the system entirely.

> In an exam where an upper caste person might have to score 100 to get in, the reserved caste person would have to score 70.

And we all know that the way to treat people with respect is to deal with them as if they were handicapped.

> That's she's brilliant, and lots of people assume she isn't because of some arbitrary prejudice

So let's create tolerance programs for the people who has this prejudices. This will solve the problem, lower the bar for minorities it is only a treatment of the problem which won't do anything in the long term. Because if they hire you and then the cultural corporation is broken you are going to be very unhappy and probably leave the career (his actually happens)

Anyway see countries like Norway consider one of the most equality countries, and also one with the more gender inbalance in careers like tech. We should consider that some people don't like a professional and also work in way to make this profession more appealing if it is possible. But if it not possible just understand that the imbalance is natural. we

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