Pattern Matching, Racial Diversity and the Hypocrisy of Big Tech Media

I don't think so. I truly believe that a lot more people from disadvantaged populations can learn "the skills" than the numbers we currently have, to the point where it would equal out to be the same as people from other demographics. They have the inherent ability to get good good at it just like anyone else. The issue comes with those career paths and opportunities not being as often encouraged and "advertised" to them when growing up. And that's the part that needs to change.

We need more supplementary coding opportunities for children in disadvantaged communities. They need to be exposed to those opportunities. Those opportunities need to be presented as viable paths for them, and not something like "you need to learn tons of math and you will be sitting all day at a computer like a drone". If you don't already have great math skills (which most people don't) and don't have role models that encourage this (e.g., an uncle who is a software engineer), then no wonder that this pitch won't convince you to seriously consider a career in software engineering, no matter how actually capable you are.

Of course, a lot of people would scoff at this approach, as it takes time to come to fruition and deliver the results. And it isn't a flashy "bandaid" solution you can put on this issue and proclaim a loud victory, without actually making a systemic change. But big systemic changes like this take lots of time and effort, and we should be focusing on that, rather than giving it up in favor of more "bandaid"-tier solutions.

Not at all. It only implies that certain groups of people actually do learn “the skills” at different proportions than their overall share of the population. “Can” and “actually do, in the context of society”, are two very different concepts.

The pipeline argument is basically, “you can’t have a society that fundamentally fails certain groups of people throughout their entire childhood and early adult education and then expect them to magically develop the same skills and qualifications as people who didn’t have those barriers”.

It’s crazy that people see pipeline arguments as excuses for social injustice because the most damaging aspects of social injustice manifest themselves as pipeline problems. For instance, the risk of childhood lead exposure has a huge correlation with race in the United States. That’s a horrifying and disgusting fact and it needs to be fixed. But if childhood lead exposure was the only fundamental racial disparity left, you’d still see other statistical disparities arise from that.

The pipeline problem has nothing to do with ability, it's all about the hiring pool and the time it takes to change the hiring pool. Companies can't hire people that don't exist, so focusing solely on hiring practices won't get the desired outcome at anywhere near the speed the activists want (if at all). The activists are focused on completely the wrong area; it's going to take years-to-decades fixing problems much earlier in life before companies would even be able to do such hiring.

African people are afraid of the dark...just like little kids?

I don't understand what you're trying to say.

https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-percentile...

Are you flat out saying that some sexes are not intelligent enough to be in the tech industry?

If some populations are less intelligent, then it is OK to not hire them in the tech industry.

In your opinion, how do you tell the less intelligent populations from the more intelligent populations?

IQ researchers know that unless you can trace the direct origin of their findings to genes (as it's been done for some diseases), you cannot claim causation. Especially when there is also strong evidence of socio-cultural factors (environment, history, culture, nutrition, education, lifestyle, means, etc). Even the plasticity of IQ suggests that since it's not a number set in stone, it wouldn't be prudent to make wild genetic claims. Unfortunately the public at large doesn't want to hear that part, and would rather run with its own version of what I like to call "tldr science", that purports to explain why the world works the way it does with cliff notes.

In a discussion about bias against a specific genetic group, if you want to bring arguments that excuse the status quo, by basically saying that the discriminated group is just genetically at a disadvantage, you need to damn well know what you're talking about. But as it's common with many "bottom-line" numbers like IQ, people tend to look at them and make the same mistake of drawing overly simplistic conclusions to very complicated and entangled issues.

The issue at hand here is the relative invisibility of black people in the tech scene. You brought up a point. I will assume that you're in tech, as I am. Despite what we pride ourselves to be able to accomplish, nothing in that field places it beyond the grasp of 99% of humans with a functioning brain, whether those individuals belong to a low scoring group or not. It's a challenging field, yes, but you don't need genius level IQ. What you need is a favorable environment (education, food, etc) that adequately prepares you for it. And this is true for most other fields.

The fact that you ran with "IQ" to explain the phenomenon (and that you had many advocates coming to your rescue in that endeavor) is very interesting to me, as it really is symbolic of how otherwise smart people may convince themselves that they've figured something that they really don't understand that well.

As I said earlier, this is how we remain in that situation.