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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> Because humans are pattern matchers

Agree, but then you would think that engineers (when it comes to working with other engineers) are a little more rational than the average folks and can go beyond superficial observations.

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I would think that engineers would also respect that cognitive operations have a cost just like computer operations.

If a cognitive bias lets you arrive at a conclusion 10 times faster and is right lets say 90 percent of the time, is that strictly worse than being super fair and objective as the thinking pattern you employ? I think if you had a process at your job that is 10 times faster and was what right 99.9 percent of the time you would absolutely be for using that process over the one that reaches a 100 percent accuracy rate but was vastly slower for anything that isn't fatal to your career.

Large parts of society seem to reward thinking fast and making quick decisions, and would prefer a quick decision even if its wrong. We have 2 pressures here. Making the decision quickly, and then making the "correct" decision. Your circumstances will determine which is correct at the time. But saying to always stick to one and avoid the other doesn't seem super rational to me.

You just matched all engineers to a pattern you observed.

That's brilliant! (as is the observation that humans are naturally pattern matchers)

In fact, I would argue that engineers tend to be people with stronger pattern matching capabilities, because that's exactly how most engineering problems are solved.

But these are not 'superficial' observations. People of Indian ethnicity are more likely to be the product of (tier B) Indian educational system (which is based on Brahminical rote memorization), Indian culture (always say yes to your superior), Indian incentive structure ("how many people are you managing?").

The last job I worked at, more than 50% developers on the floor were Indian (like either fresh H1b or intra-company transfers), so I noticed that I would get 'lost' in the crowd. A non-Indian person will immediately notice other non-Indian person, and ignore me. It wasn't their fault because most Indians on my floor never bothered to say 'hi' or 'bless you' or even acknowledge anyone who wasn't Indian. But then, I'd also ignore other 'pattern breaking' Indians (until, like me, they made themselves stand out).

> > Because humans are pattern matchers

> Agree, but then you would think that engineers (when it comes to working with other engineers) are a little more rational than the average folks and can go beyond superficial observations.

You are saying pattern matting is irrational? If one is to apply pattern matching in an absolutely rational way, they would not make abitrary judgements that some traits are/are not superficial. They should just take the fact as is, then make their hypothesis, then prove or disprove it then act upon the result.

Engineers tend to be more empirical and less idealistic, not to mention not uncommonly somewhat autistic.

They are more likely than the average bear to apply Bayesian probability, which comes alarmingly close to confirming stereotypes in most cases.

All in all no-one is beyond bias. Most of interview judgment comes from system 1 thinking. Meaning you feel some way about the candidate. And you only use system 2 to justify what you are feeling. So you use system 2 for cherry picking instead of determining whether candidate is good or not.

That could not have possibly be born out of observing engineers ...

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