Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomrod | Hacker News Reader

Economist here. This will bake in bias that affirmative action and other programs seek to counter. Inequality of opportunity unfortunately isn't countered by this approach. Why? The same group(s) facing discrimination at the employment point also face discrimination earlier in life, or have baked in social discrimination (such as the US justice system overpenalizing blacks relative to whites/Asians, or Ivy League admission rates for Asians versus other groups).

It would be nice to build a group-blind world, and the more we adopt these specific approaches the better can can iterate towards. However, care should be taken to ensure the baked in biases don't further entrench.

View on HN

The idea for Helsinki is to stop discriminating, not to solve inequality.

Correct. However, the problem is the existing discrimination is not remedied, and is instead perpetuated, under a fully blind approach.

Inequality is another discussion than bias and discrimination, in my view. Inequality is solved by implementing encouraging measures. Discrimination is resolved by removing entrenched barriers.

Explain how inequality of opportunity is not countered by this approach?

Of course people are a sum of everything that happened in their life, but this is a way to make a particular job application much more fair, based on capability to do the job rather than irrelevant physical details. This is not meant to solve everything at once.

The very examples you post are about situations that would be helped if there was blind judgement.

I don't get it.

Yes, it would be much better if we are able to remove discrimination earlier in life.

But this is not a either/or solution between affirmative action and equal opportunity.

But if the assumption that positive reinforcement make a better just society for future generation then doesn't it mean equal opportunity will make also have the same positive effect albeit a little less ?

I think what the GP is stating is that if we only assess accomplishments and we do it at this stage (later in life after many different phases) those systematically disadvantaged will not be competitive (example: If you went to a crummy public school you have a harder time getting into an ivy league, harder time getting a prestige internship, getting a premium job, etc)

Affirmative action laws were introduced to address this, but the trend toward meritocracy counters them.

My guess; we end up with the worst of both worlds: One stream blind to these factors and a bunch of regulated exceptions.

GP here. You nailed it.

I'm sorry, but this sounds absurd. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying implies that employers should hire people that are less qualified for a job just because they belong to a group, members of which on average are more likely to be discriminated earlier in their lives than others?

Engineer here, and no, blind hiring will not bake-in any biases, because that's exactly the problem this approach solves - it aims to hire the best candidates regardless of their race, origin, religion, accent and other irrelevant characteristics.

My first paragraph I tried very carefully to avoid normative/"should" statements.

The identification of the issue is at hand. Consider Computer Science. Historically far fewer women go through the training for a variety of personal reasons and societal pressure. So, on the margin, blind/anonymous hiring ignores that upstream delta between females in population and skilled females in hiring pool. Whether this is desirable or not is not my point, only that this is "baked in bias" perpetuating down the line.

It's noble to build a society where we value blindness on characteristics irrelevant to hiring. Doing it piecemeal can result in furthering these baked in biases.

A better approach would be to split the skills validation (blind) from the move-forward decision (adhering to whatever inter-generational correction schema the society has decided upon) where the only pool of eligible move-forwards meet the established skills validation. In this way, you only get skilled candidates, and you can satisfy whatever other characteristics that need satisfaction.

We should all heavily invest in the pipeline problem through outreach and what not, but I'm genuinely curious: what happens if the underrepresented minorities don't make it past the blind skill validation?

That's a great question, and one I don't have a great and proper solution for. My splitting suggestion above I consider better than blind-only, but it certainly is not bullet-proof.

I ask because Github attempted this while organizing ElectronConf a year ago, but it turned out their blind submission review process[1] resulted in an all-male panel. Someone noticed and got upset[2], after which Github canned it. There was an HN discussion about it too[3].

Now we can speculate how many submissions were from people that don't identify as male (was it 50 or less%? Github hasn't released details to my knowledge). The issue though is that once the results (of what appears to be a fair process) didn't match the desired narrative, people screamed sexism and made mostly emotional arguments.

You've mentioned an "inter-generational correction schema" elsewhere in the thread. In most institutions, this essentially gets instated as quotas which embitters the majority in the system (including the people they target to enable because it's assumed they had to get past a "lower bar").

[1] https://archive.is/8SsNp#selection-381.122-494.0 [2] http://archive.is/NrLqE [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868

Indeed, and I agree. I've tried to be careful from assuming specific norms, trying to think through the positive/observational aspects instead.

Applying the selection quota to the hiring pool that passes skills would get around the "quota-implies-less-skilled" issue.

At what point do we decide that a difference in culture may make some careers more or less attractive to a group on average than a different population, and that that is OK?

What if it's a cultural difference that has negative effect on the population in question?

Do you respect the difference, or try to change things so that those in said population who would prosper under different outlooks can do so?

This is a serious question, and I genuinely don't have a good, general answer. I can see this line of thought being used to superficially validate any bias one cares to in a "that's just how things are" kind of manner, which helps no one.

But we also have to acknowledge that differences will lead to, well, differences. How do we differentiate between negative and neutral causality?

I think it's perfectly permissible for different cultures to value different careers; I believe the argument is that there shouldn't be any other imposed barriers (ex: due to discrimination) for them to re-calibrate their value system and have the option to pursue other things.

The way I see it is you're trying to solve this problem in the wrong place, just like you said, the real issue lies elsewhere and this is precisely where we should direct our efforts to fix it. If fewer women decide to pursue a technical career, then perhaps we should learn why and counteract. By implementing an artificial counter-bias you're merely hiding the real problem by obscuring the data, while the symptoms and root causes remain intact.

A counter-bias on the conditional step could indeed assure a correction.

Let's formalize it a bit, I think this helps clarify.

Let A be the hiring propensity, B be job preparation (education, experience, what have you), and C be the "blinding factors" Helsinki is trying to address.

As a model we would like the joint propensity for everyone to be normalized. In other words, P(A,B,C) would be about the same.

The joint propensity P(A,B,C) would be expressed as

P(A,B,C) = P(A | B,C) * P(B | C) * P(C) [0]

Helsinki is making the first term, P(A | B,C) independent of their "blinding factors", or, in other words, P(A | B,C) = P(A | B).[1]

The remaining terms P(B | C) and P(C) are unaffected. It is P(B|C) differential that many arguing for what I call non-autarky "social corrections" (we do something as a society).

Since Helsinki's decision affects _only_ the conditional probability P(A| B,C), the other factors are still at play, and P(A,B,C) remains at issue.

There is nothing that can be done by Helsinki's hiring department for P(B|C) in the short term -- people are dealt the hand they have, life isn't fair, and so on. Completely true.

By blinding themselves, they set P(A|B) to be flat on C and no "equalization" of P(A,B,C) can be observed.

A truly egalitarian society would have P(B|C) = P(B). However, we aren't there. C, what Helsinki blinds themselves to, matters for qualifying life experiences.

The model that is being argued for by you and others I believe is formalized as a conditional independence model, namely that the propensity of hiring is independent of race, conditional on life preparation: P(A,C | B) = P(A|B) * P(C|B).[2] Note though: bias still persists: P(C|B) = P(B|C)*P(C)/P(B) -- we can't get away from that P(B|C) term in either model, and we know qualitatively that P(B|C) != P(B), hence why a correction can be positively argued for (rather than solely from emotion or duty).

Anyhow, that's the model in mind, and I'm open to being wrong/corrected. Thoughts?

--------------------

After thinking about it more, it seems that the ultimate goal of Helsinki is to make P(A|B,C) = P(A|B), not the latter model.

--------------------

[0] Chained conditional probabilites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_rule_(probability)

[1] Independent variables definition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independence_(probability_theo...

[2] Conditional independence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_independence

Thank you for formalising this, I get your point and I see what you're signalling, but I disagree with the solution you're proposing. Let me explain why. Firstly, I never said Helsinki's approach will completely solve the problem of inequality and you're right about that, nonetheless I perceive it as an improvement over the standard recruitment process. Your math makes sense, although I think the initial conditions are incorrect, because if I understand correctly your assumption is that the attributes hidden by the blinding factors would have had a positive impact on the "land a job interview or not" decision. On the other hand, I believe the opposite is far more likely, and this is precisely where we disagree. Also, I completely condemn the notion of attempting to fix the problem with affirmative action, primarily because it attempts to solve inequality(evil) with deliberate and explicit discrimination(greater evil). Don't forget that discrimination and prejudice is where it all started.

Edit: I should have been more precise when referring to blind hiring. I meant completely blind hiring, including the "on-site" interview stage(making it "blind" could be difficult). Obviously you're also correct about the earlier life experiences which could have been impacted by numerous factors, but my perception on that is the same as with law, it shouldn't be retroactive because you can't change people's past. Besides, each case is different and applying counter-biases here is like blind shooting.

>On the other hand, I believe the opposite is far more likely, and this is precisely where we disagree.

If I understand where you are coming from, "landing the job interview" are the direct factors Helsinki is choosing to be blind to, like name and so forth. Am I understanding that right? If so, let me clarify the point -- the factors that Helsinki _will_ judge resumes on -- experience and so forth -- are pre-conditioned on your name (etc.). So the fact that one makes the initial cut is still driven by the factors Helsinki chose to be blind to.

> Also, I completely condemn the notion of attempting to fix the problem with affirmative action, primarily because it attempts to solve inequality(evil) with deliberate and explicit discrimination(greater evil).

I get where you're coming from on this. The method I propose, if Helsinki uses the blinding methodology, is to impose any "corrective"/affirmative actions after the the blind evaluation of skills. That way every person is ensured to be qualified (avoiding the critique of "diversity hires"). One possible (and usually a default) "corrective" approach is autarky/doing nothing.

And... that's my whole point! I appreciate the discussion.

> Engineer here, and no, blind hiring will not bake-in any biases

Yes, it will: if you're born to a well-off family, you'll go to better schools before college. Due to this, you'll have a better chance at succeeding in college, have more resources to delve deeper into your field of study, better manage studying abroad, &c. All of these factors will make your list of skills more attractive to employers.

Compared to someone who was poor who went to worse schools, didn't study abroad, and couldn't afford to spend more time on their field of study due to having to work to pay for college. This will make your list of skills less attractive to an employer.

Right out of the gate, there is a bias against people who grew up poor in the hiring process.

> it aims to hire the best candidates regardless of their race, origin, religion, accent and other irrelevant characteristics.

It does so by devaluing repressed classes of people. This is a societal cost to benefit businesses.

The example you showed is absolutely wrong. Based on it, the one from high class has more skills and more experience than the one from lower class. So of course, you will hire the one with more skills. That has nothing to do with class but with the general expertise of an individual.

EDIT: I have missed the whole point of the parent comment.

> That has nothing to do with class but with the general expertise of an individual.

That expertise is a direct result of class. I feel like I've sufficiently explained how class-based biases will still slip through this system, so respond to it directly and tell me _how bias is not present_ in that system.

> Based on it, the one from high class has more skills and more experience than the one from lower class. So of course, you will hire the one with more skills.

I never said businesses ought do x, I just said that certain classes will be biased against in this attempt at a bias-less recruitment process which will produce negative outcomes for society.

> I just said that certain classes will be biased against in this attempt at a bias-less recruitment process

You're right. I've missed your point. You're correct that this will have negative results.

> That expertise is a direct result of class

On average, it's important to note.

This is how I mainly take it. A lot of comments about how this will make it "bias free!" and "nondiscriminatory" when really what it will do is give advantaged people even more advantage. Those who were not able to go to the better school and get more life experiences and obtain connections are going to be even further behind.

There seems to be this implied belief that there's a conspiracy in the West to hire white males above all. This simply isn't true. By having access to race and gender and even age in some cases it allows us to select for a diverse set of candidates. So although we may not (or we may!) end up with an outcome that is as diverse as the set we started with, we at least made the effort to give different people an equal opportunity.

If I'm only allowed to recruit based on the best credentials then those with a socioeconomic advantage will continue to.

You have no idea what someone's advantage in life is, and you're turning "diversity" into "diversity of race and gender" which is about nothing but immutable physical characteristics. Life is not constant. People move through various conditions all the time. Are you going to deny someone who grew up poor and then got a scholarship to Harvard?

Putting people into permanent "social classes" is far worse than letting people use their abilities and become competent independently.

> Are you going to deny someone who grew up poor and then got a scholarship to Harvard?

This is the exception to the rule and not really relevant to anything I said I think? What about the kid who grew up poor and could have gotten into Harvard but didn't go because their parent was sick and couldn't afford care and they attended a local college to be home with them? This is more likely.

> Putting people into permanent "social classes" is far worse than letting people use their abilities and become competent independently.

I agree - letting people use their abilities to advance themselves is best. If anything, I support blind screening of applicants. But I think the approach here has different intentions than what will very possibly occur - those with access continue to compound that.

What about it? Life isn't fair.

There are trillions of decisions and situations in your life that accumulate, and there is absolutely no way you or anyone else can judge that to engineer some kind of fair outcome. It is good intentioned but not realistic, and it ends up causing far more bias because you think you're doing the right thing, while basing it on a faulty perception.

> What about it? Life isn't fair.

Right, which means we shouldn't cry when it turns out to be unfair as you are here.

> There are trillions of decisions and situations in your life that accumulate, and there is absolutely no way you or anyone else can judge that to engineer some kind of fair outcome.

When have I even once said there should be "fair outcomes"? I don't believe in equal outcomes. I do believe in equal opportunities.

> It is good intentioned but not realistic, and it ends up causing far more bias because you think you're doing the right thing, while basing it on a faulty perception

What is the "faulty perception"? I'm simply stating that if the goal is to have a diverse workforce then removing the heuristics we are told make us diverse from the recruiting process makes it difficult to achieve this goal. If I want to fill a position and my company has given us a goal of eventually having the ideal diverse workplace without sacrificing the quality of our people then I need tools to do this. I will use the, possibly arbitrary and political, heuristics they give me (age, gender, race, etc) and ask my recruiting staff to give me a group of 12 candidate for in-person interviews.

From these 12 there must be at least 1 attribute from each heuristic across the group. So maybe we say there are 3 races we optimize for, 3 age bands and 2 genders. This means that my set of 12 could have a black woman who is 41, for instance, and a white male who is 25, and an Asian male who is 55. This has all of these covered and the remaining 9 candidates can be any combination. But at least I have committed to creating an equal opportunity in the way the company and a large part of society see as "diverse". Even if I don't agree with it 100%.

Does this create far more bias when the goal is to create the ideal, diverse workforce? By systematically including certain biological features of people in the candidate pool are we at least ensuring we gave a diverse group of individuals an equal opportunity?

You're defining diversity as only diversity of race and gender, irrelevant and unchangeable physical characteristics that have nothing to do with a person's individual character. You're making decisions not on competence but on subjective biases and your perception of wrongs that have nothing to do with merit.

There is no "ideal diverse workforce". By forcing a particular set number of people in each arbitrary group, you are absolutely designing for an outcome, not opportunity. You did not give anyone who applied an opportunity to be hired, you demanded a specific "heuristic across the group" based on nothing but what someone looks like, on biological features that nobody has control over.

This is completely opposite of making things as fair as possible, and I am truly lost at how you are rationalizing this.

> You're defining diversity as only diversity of race and gender

I didn't make the definition. The company leadership makes it based on internal feedback, advice and general societal beliefs in what "diversity" means.

> irrelevant and unchangeable physical characteristics that have nothing to do with a person's individual character

I agree - everyone should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. However, it is difficult to judge someone's character alone from a CV.

> You're making decisions not on competence but on subjective biases and your perception of wrongs that have nothing to do with merit.

Every person I'd hire deserves to be hired. There are no bones thrown to fill a quota (which doesn't exist). However, to help achieve the goal of a "diverse workplace" a systemic method needs to be incorporated to ensure that a diverse set of candidates were given an opportunity to join the interview pool. With a large enough pool we can reasonably assure that every hire is hired on merit alone as they will be competing with other people that have different immutable physical characteristics. This also means if the hires tend to all look a certain way I can reference the systemic method used to ensure that in fact we actually removed bias from the selection process by ensuring certain attributes were included in the overall pool.

> There is no "ideal diverse workforce".

Ask 1000 people and you'll get 1000 answers.

> By forcing a particular set number of people in each arbitrary group, you are absolutely designing for an outcome, not opportunity.

No, you are creating a pool that is defensible in terms of who you end up hiring. No one is guaranteed a job because they are in the candidate pool. They will compete with their cohort on equal grounds.

> You did not give anyone who applied an opportunity to be hired, you demanded a specific "heuristic across the group" based on nothing but what someone looks like, on biological features that nobody has control over.

See, this is where you're making a mistake. The specific heuristic across the group includes everyone. It doesn't say "not white males in their 20's" - in fact 9 out of 12 candidates could be just that so long as the other 3 candidates somehow cover every other enumeration of attributes. But with a large enough pool you can ensure that each characteristic the company determines is "diverse" is somehow included in the candidate pool without diluting it in terms of merit. This doesn't mean the outcome looks anything like the candidate pool.

> This is completely opposite of making things as fair as possible, and I am truly lost at how you are rationalizing this.

Fair enough - I don't know your thoughts but it could be from the point of view you're looking at if from. To me, you sound like someone who thinks a systematic method of candidate pool selection sounds like exclusion of certain people. And it would be if we excluded certain candidates because they didn't possess an arbitrary diversity attribute. However, this process is inclusive because it demands that each enumeration of each diversity attribute be included at least once. And with a large enough candidate pool (this is key - you need to do the work here interviewing enough people) this means there are still very many seats for the dominate attribute enumeration - white guys that are youngish as it happens to be.

However, it would be an illegitimate candidate pool if there wasn't a white person in it, or a male in it, or a young person in it as well! That would be exclusionary.

This is a pragmatic approach to fulfilling a diversity goal (regardless of if my personal beliefs are different) while ensuring that there is no exclusion, that the quality of hires remains at the level desired and most importantly that nobody who is hired or anyone they work with has any reason to believe they only got the job because they won diversity bingo.

Regardless of who made the definition, that's the definition you're following.

We're going in circles here as long as you fundamentally believe diversity of physical and biological details is important. If that's what you want to enforce in your workforce, even though it is meaningless to the job, then you're designing for an outcome, and not opportunity. Inclusive does not exist in a vacuum; to include some means to exclude others.

Not the parent commenter, but for what it's worth, I appreciate you taking the time to write your responses in this thread. I am honestly baffled (and a little alarmed) that more people don't understand the points you are making.

Many of us understand, but disagree with the points.

Disagree I'm fine with- hashing things out together is how we all move forward. What concerns me is how quickly a full moral judgement appears to have been passed on what is a sticky, thorny issue.

> What concerns me is how quickly a full moral judgement appears to have been passed on what is a sticky, thorny issue.

I think this is quite valid. Especially from the progressive side I guess I'd say, there's a certain moral altruism that has no regard for other ideas or even the questioning of certain ideas and ideals. And to me, a lot of it is certainly a feeling of moral superiority that self legitimizes certain values from the authority of a middle and upper middle class socioeconomic position with complete disregard for the working and lower classes. The classes which served the progressive side so well until they became inconvenient.

My points are only trying to find a balance such that we can still live in a world with merit; where we can compromise a bit by ensuring there is a measurable opportunity available but yet the outcome is up to the individual.

To be frank, my dissenters here are people I probably agree with more from an idealist vantage. But I also understand that when working in a larger social system we need to be considerate of other points of view and to create systems that the reasonable people on "both sides" can live with. It's when we play to the unreasonable that extremism gains foothold.

I think your first paragraph in particular really nails one of the big problems of the modern left in the US. If you haven't, yet, I recommend reading I Can Tolerate Anything but the Outgroup:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

It raises, I think, some very interesting points. Not so much in the way you may agree with it or not, but in terms of how to frame the problem itself.

Thanks for the link - well written and thoughtful and full of truth. And I agree with the conclusions quite a bit.

Please explain why?

From my perspective what makes sense is we have large groups of people that believe diversity as defined by certain attributes is important. We also have large groups of people that don't. And both groups have some good and some poor reasons for their beliefs. Both "sides" are legit. So how do we reconcile this?

To me, the most agreeable aspect of each side is that:

1) We live in a diverse society whether we like it or not, which has a history of certain exclusion and we should try and improve on that to make all of our lives more peaceful.

2) Not everyone has an advantage or disadvantage because of certain immutable attributes and we should be conscious of this as well. Social engineering is less engineering than politics.

The idealist approach is to optimize one way or the other; mainly for political reasons which results in resentment and bitterness. The pragmatic approach is to try and create a system that is defensible one way or another - even if it is flawed in both regards. The perfect system is impossible anyhow and a matter of opinion.

So, you design a system that takes into account both points above. You ensure you interview across certain enumerative attributes generally agreed upon as important. But you don't optimize across it as it can turn into an exclusionary system in its own right with awful side effects such as legit resentment, meritless and simply political. You don't exclude any of the apparent important diversity attributes - they all are important. You also create a reasonable metric around what this means. This ensures you, in some way, have at least given the opportunity to a vast range of of people. It doesn't mean you've given an outcome to anyone.

The trick becomes in keeping it honest - that you don't assume that a certain set of attributes is more important than another. Where a lot of similar systems get it wrong is they define that a certain subset of attributes must be included. They should demand that over the entire pool all attributes must be included. And only to a limit and after that it's fair game.

I'm only saying that we should at least try and ensure we speak with everyone in terms of various individual attributes that are generally accepted, albeit arbitrary, when opening an opportunity. And that's it. What is alarming about this? How is this not pragmatic? Who is this stealing from? How is this bad for anyone?

I've repeated it several times. Your presented idea of diversity is about physical characteristics. Things we cannot change and yet define us forever. Diversity defined by how you look is not diversity that matters in any sense, and people who believe it does (which is a loud minority) are either ignorant or willingly malicious.

Inclusion and exclusion are two sides of the same thing. If you forcefully include group X, then you are by definition excluding group Y as a reaction. Therefore, the only truly fair design is to not preference anyone by any physical attribute, and in this case only judge for positions based on competence and merit.

First, and most importantly, thank you for the friendly reply.

Regarding your questions, I can't think of a clearer explanation that the comment that I initially replied to. Fundamentally, the core argument is that the moment you start using immutable characteristics as part of your heuristic, you've already lost- there will be resentment, because now, by definition, you've given something to someone that they did nothing to earn, and that position is coming from someone else.

That these exact things happened in the past, and happen now, doesn't mean that reversing the arrow makes things better- it just breeds a new generation of the same thing.

In terms of how do we move forward as a society, and speaking strictly as just my own opinion: we need to focus on what our commonalities are, not our differences, and go from there.

I had the great luck of growing up as the child of a diplomat, and thus getting to see a much wider variety of countries and ways of life than most people do. One of the most important lessons I took from the experience is that people are far more alike than different, even in areas that have had little previous cultural exchange. It takes some time to find out how to translate across different givens, but once you understand the shared local model of how things work, people's decisions make sense.

The catch is that if you don't agree with some of the base assumptions, then some decisions will seem utterly abhorrent, and the same is true in reverse. Some are mutually exclusive, in that there is no such thing as a middle ground. That is the problem of diversity, and it is a very real one.

So, moving forward- these schisms exist because the world used to be far more closed off from itself than it is today. I'm only in my mid-40's, and yet when I was a child, a letter to the US and back was a 3-month round trip. Now I can hop on any of a dozen free webcams if I felt so inclined and look at who is walking down the street where I used to live. All we can do is start talking to those now so close, find out what we can agree on, and try to forge something we can all live with.

(I realize this is a bit further afield than the original subject of applying for jobs, but I think a friendly reply deserves an honest answer.)

> really what it will do is give advantaged people even more advantage.

Small quibble: it will persist the existing advantage through the offer stage. Then income differentials could/would apply. The blind approach is not a guaranteed proximate cause towards increasing bias, but rather an entrenchment of existing bias.

But, agree that amplification begins shortly after point of offer.

Obviously. That's the entire point of hiring, as a business owner I want to hire the candidate that will deliver the best results. There is no doubt that certain people are privileged early in their lives, that's how it has always been, is and will be. The world is not a utopia where everyone is wealthy, healthy and equal, people in China are politically oppressed, children all over the world are starving and Russia gradually invades Ukraine leading to another all-out war. Doing worse in a job interview doesn't mean you were discriminated, it means that you need to revise the material and reapply.

Your comments do a good job of articulating the emotional arguments people use to support affirmative action. But the problem with affirmative action is that it seeks to counter bias by introducing more bias. It's a form of damage control in that it ignores the root causes of the problems it tries to address.

You argue that removing identifying marks unfairly tips the balance toward those who will be better prepared for the job (i.e. those who did not grow up poor). But assuming a particular test is the best measure of one's on-the-job performance, how can changing that test for some (based on things that identify them as "repressed") create any societal good? You're only pushing the problem out in front of you, and you'll eventually meet it again, but in a different form.

The problem is that people grow up poor, and that poverty creates severe disadvantage. Let's fix that problem at the source (there are a lot of NPOs that try to do this - free after-school programs, etc.) and keep hiring standards constant and unbiased.

Poverty can't be solved by changing admissions and hiring standards to avoid rejecting poor-performing people who grew up poor. That approach only creates new problems.

> Your comments do a good job of articulating the emotional arguments people use to support affirmative action.

This is unfair: I never said anything about affirmative action, made normative claims, or appealed to emotion. I stated why this test would still have bias towards poorer classes.

The narrative I was concerned with pointing out was that class characteristics could be biased in similar ways to physical characteristics and that mechanisms seeking to remove bias of physical characteristics will still allow bias for class characteristics.

By emotional argument I meant an argument whose strength lies in its effect on emotions, as opposed to its rational strength. Perhaps that's a weasel term. But I tried to back up my assertion that introducing bias can't remove bias.

> mechanisms seeking to remove bias of physical characteristics will still allow bias for class characteristics.

If by "bias for class characteristics" you mean "objective standards", I call that nonsense. By definition, an objective standard will cease to be objective once a subjective-based alteration is introduced.

If an objective standard happens to favor one class over another, it's not the standard's problem. The problem lies in whatever caused that class to do worse.

Yeah, I don't get that approach either. Is the parent comment suggesting that employers need to assess the opportunities given to a particular applicant and then weight them accordingly? Like if they come from a poor/disadvantaged background and still have 90% the skills and experience of another candidate, well that's more impressive? How does the parent expect an interviewer to come up with these valuations of opportunity?

"Like if they come from a poor/disadvantaged background and still have 90% the skills and experience of another candidate, well that's more impressive" - Potentially, yes.

the point is that current measures of 'best' skew heavily towards certain race, origin, and background

Implementing a counter-bias will not solve the problem but introduce artificial noise which will obscure data and hide the real issues.

Aren't you just pointing out the symptom instead of the real problem we need to be tackling?

> The same group(s) facing discrimination at the employment point also face discrimination earlier in life

It is being pointed out, but it's not solely pointing out the symptom.

The goal of Helsinki here is to make the hiring decision independent of direct factors they blind themselves to (name, sex, etc.). However, the factors they condition on (education, experience) are impacted by these factors, so the hiring decision won't be independent of the factors.

The "best" thing to do is to correct the inherent bias, as you're pointing out as the real problem. We agree. This isn't something Helsinki can do in a vacuum, so if they want to achieve their goal of true "blindness" to the above factors, they have to take into account their impact on their "seen" factors somehow.

I put the formalized model I have in mind in another comment on this thread, which walks through my thought process here.[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18548270

Reply on news.ycombinator.com