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Comment by verisimi | Hacker News Reader

Unconscious bias occurs everywhere, with all people, all the time. What of it?

What I see is a great example of how 'science' can serve political agendas; an example of an answer seeking a question.

If you study 'unconscious bias' with regard to women, or race, or age, or whatever other worthy cause, what do you think you will find?

The answer is baked into the question! I've no doubt you could also study unconscious bias from a Marxist perspective too, but how does this help us understand anything, except our own preconceived biases in undertaking the study?

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The term "unconscious bias" is based on the (false) assumption that every group of human is exactly identical.

It is 100% a political term that is shoved at people to make them feel like a bad person for noticing differences where there actually are differences.

If you want to eliminate "unconscious bias" you are trying to create a society where women talk to men in the exact same way that they talk to other women, women act the exact same way around attractive men as they do around ugly men, adults talk to a 5 year old the same way that they would talk to a 95 year old.

i.e. a delusional utopia that is completely detached from nature and reality, and which has never existed in any society.

This guy gets it.

"Unconscious bias" is so embedded in corporate-speak today that nobody has stopped to actually challenge its existence or the proposed solutions. Plus the "evidence" for such bias is so shaky ("Bill said I'm raising my voice, but he only said that because I'm a woman") it can be "found" or "dismissed" very easily, depending on what political goals you have.

I find it odd that we attempt to somehow reshape the innate human psyche (which is constantly taking in information and making assumptions based on them), rather than just enforce workplace rules around how you treat people. Seems like a bit more direct, objective and actionable than diving into some deep conversation about "unconscious bias".

But regardless, the real answer why this is being discussed is: 1) HR is told it needs to be done [usually because some other company is doing it], 2) it provides cover again lawsuits if employees sue over workplace harassment and 3) it's a moneymaking business for the consultants that teach these class [a lot of money].

It’s also profitable for both companies and governments (income tax) to make women delay staying with a baby at home and focus on work instead in their most fertile and productive age (late 20s, early 30s). For men you don’t need extra motivation, as they are not making this choice anyways.

They can feed the lie of ,,having lots of time to have a baby later’’, and I’m seeing many women at age 40 realizing that no man wants to start making a baby with her at that age, because it’s just biologically not practical.

Acknowledging substantial differences in people is typically just left as an exercise for the reader, because everyone understands that part from their formative years, implicitly. The part people don't implicitly understand is how their powerful but imperfect approximation-machine brains lead them to treat others unfairly based on differences that are immaterial to a given context. That's why it's taught about.

I think maybe the term "unconscious bias" is misaligned with its use, because the fact is we have lots of biases we don't actively think about, and most of those are useful, not harmful. It's specifically the unconscious biases that are unfair to others that we need to beware.

Unconscious bias is innate to the way we think, it's real, and it's sort of measurable in a way. There's a test called an "implicit association test" where you categorize words as quickly as possible into one or the other group of categories. It attempts to measure the relatedness of categories within a group through the response time of the testee as they sort words. It's something a junior programmer can code up themselves in a day, and having taken the test in good faith and seen the results, I believe it does peak under the hood of how we think to some extent, revealing unconscious biases.

"As communications experts, we can make an important contribution to an equally authentic and individual representation of women and men in their leadership positions by uncovering biases and creating awareness."

What exactly is bad about this agenda?

I think because it’s assuming an outcome before the results? I’d say everyone is for people of both genders being treated equally.

> I’d say everyone is for people of both genders being treated equally.

But this is not true, historically, and still today. Most people in (in some cultures) may be for treating genders equally in a lot of aspects, but I don't have to go very far on the web or IRL to find people who are not for equal treatment of genders.

But for everyone who does want to treat genders equally, learning about unconcious bias should be helpful. Learning about unconcious biases enables you to question your behaviour in order to actually treat genders equal instead of just agreeing that they should be.

What about people who, themselves, do not want to be treated equally? I have found that most women I interact with do not necessarily want to be treated equally, they want to be treated with dignity and respect. These are sometimes, but often not the same thing.

Sure if people want to be treated differently go ahead. But observing some women wanting to be treated differently (this step can go wrong!) and then applying that treatment to other women is a whole different thing.

I see plenty of examples where gender-blind treatment does not appear to be the goal of people.

Some of these are biased against women while others are biased in favor of them.

Is your name a Dishonored reference?

No; it’s simply my last name, which shares a common root word (“falcon”) and the end spelling (-v, -va, -ve vs -ff, -w) varies with past regional dialect (ff or w being the Germanized form).

Neat, thanks!

Because it's one-sided and unscientific.

The kind of feminist-infected soft fields that make up those terms and agendas (HR, "Communication Studies",...) only really care about women, and by 'caring' about women I really mean they care very much about how easy it's for women to be corporate drones while thinking it's "Empowering". Have you ever heard about "Unconscious Bias Against Men"? Of course not, nobody gives a shit about men.

It's unscientific because the conclusion is already formed before the data is gathered. Women get more questions about family than men? That must mean that the interviewers think women are baby factories unfit for work, SEXISM. Women get less questions about family than men? That must mean that the interviewers think career-driven women are barren and childless and without prospect for having a family of their own, SEXISM. No matter what happens, they have already made up their mind, women are oppressed. The "experiments" and the "data" is just a dress up game to make it look as if they're doing serious science.

I think you're close but missing some important info. An enormous amount of women have faced unfair (or worse) situations with negative (or worse) personal outcomes for just the fact of being women. We can fairly call that oppression I think.

The promoters of the disputed language, in light of the priors, mis-apply* probable reasoning such that for any case of a negative outcome for a woman, it must be oppression.

*in some cases intentionally, in some cases unintentionally

>An enormous amount of women have faced unfair (or worse) situations with negative (or worse) personal outcomes for just the fact of being women.

You can replace 'women' in this statment by any number of other group tags and still preserve the truth of the statment :

--------

An enormous amount of men have faced unfair (or worse) situations with negative (or worse) personal outcomes for just the fact of being men, like

- forced military service,

- genital mutilation (amusing fact : searching this term in google only turns up results about female genital mutilation in all pages),

- and child labor.

I leave it as an exercise to you how you can correctly apply the template to a random group label of your choosing.

--------

So 'Women Most Affected' sentiments like yours serve only to illustrate the curious asymmetry with which injustice against men and injustice against women are treated. An asymmetry that, while not created by feminism and allied ideologies, is certainly much exploited and streamlined and stroked by them.

>The promoters of the disputed language

Oh, but it isn't a problem of language. The inherent delusion of feminism is that women are especially oppressed, in ways that fundamentally differ quantitatively and qualitatively from men. Expressing this delusion in any language will output biased and dumb nonsense, lobbyism dressed up as 'fighting for justice'.

In other words, you can't say 'Women Most Affected' in more intelligent or naunced language. Every way of expressing a delusion will turn out to be ridicoulous and unfair and easily-detected.

>'Women Most Affected'

This is not my position. My position is "Some Women Affected". Some covers a very large group. I'm not making any quantitative or qualitative comparison to other groups; I think it's probably impossible.

>You can replace 'women' in this statment by any number of other group tags and still preserve the truth of the statment

I agree.

>genital mutilation

We seem to share the same position on this. I happen to be a victim.

> inherent delusion of feminism

I don't think assertions about what is or isn't inherent to feminism are possible. It's a term that identifies different sets of (often contradictory or opposite) beliefs depending on who you talk to. Most frequently, it's just moral cover for a person's own beliefs about what constitutes fairness, dignity, and respect.

I also observe that most people I meet who identify as feminist (or progressive) use the term equality to mean "fairness, dignity, and respect" which is confusing to people who engage rhetorically with them.

>This is not my position. My position is "Some Women Affected".

Ok. I think you're honest, but the people you're defending are not. If 'some' women are affected, then women deserve only 'some' of the collective attention of society. Therefore 'Unconcious Bias Against Men' should be a recurring headline in media as the other headline for women is. Therefore 'Male Genital Mutilation' should be an important and widespread topic of discussion and not an obscure piece of arcane trivia that google doesn't bother to index in the first 10 pages. Etc, etc, etc.

>I don't think assertions about what is or isn't inherent to feminism are possible.

Oh I think they are. Feminism is at its core a cluster of interlocking beliefs that women are fundamentally and deeply oppressed by men, that women are locked in an eternal conflict with men, and that this war can only be fought on the gender-wide level, with no room for compromise or exceptions unless those made by men. Show me a piece of feminist media\publication (time limit : 20 min), and I will show you those implicit claims in its (sub)text.

It's very easy to see if you know what to look for.

>It's a term that identifies different sets of (often contradictory or opposite) beliefs depending on who you talk to.

Which is exactly why it should be derided and avoided by all honest people, it's a vacuous identity. Vacuous identites are a tool for the dishonest to use the stupid.

>it's just moral cover for a person's own beliefs

I like this framing, specifically the term 'Moral Cover'. It encapsulates the cowardice inherent in Feminism: instead of coming right out and stating their values in reasonable (but debatable) definitions, moral cowards prefer to cover their beliefs inside vague rituals, cloudy language, and metaphysical confabulations about "Patriarchy", the invisible force that men supposedly have the power to deploy to harm and persecute women anywhere anytime.

>fairness, dignity, and respect

But wouldn't this be trivial ? Do you need an ideology to tell people you want to be treated with fairness, dignity and respect ? Do you need anything else besides the Golden Rule ? Do you need think tanks and Affirmative Action and UN committees ?

This is called a motte-and-bailey maneuver[1]. I'm not accusing you of engaging in it, just that you have fell for it.

Feminists have plenty of other claims and demands besides "fairness, dignity and respect", namely the cluster of beliefs that I summarized above. This is the "Bailey", a pleasant but indefensible territory\claim. As long as feminists are not pressed or forced to argue their case, they can occupy the Bailey. When under attack, however, feminists can retreat to the much more trivially trite "fairness, dignity and respect", this is the "Motte", a very well-defended fort but a useless place to live. They can hide behind those trivially defensible claims till the attack subsides, then they can return to their Bailey again. It's a useful pattern to be aware of.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

I will read more on the motte and bailey.

'Biases' is a poorly defined term. So is the goal of 'creating awareness. In most cases, given historical persecution of 'othered' identities, people understand that agenda as a positive thing and it certainly is.

However, it also gives cover to people to play power games, treat others like shit, and feel morally righteous about it. "I'm just expanding your awareness about your unconscious biases. I'm helping you."

The whole point of science is to eliminate unconscious bias.

Eliminating unconscious wrong beliefs about the world is literally why science is a thing.

Sure, but many would argue that social science regularly fails to meet contemporaneous standards for epistemological rigor that physical sciences do.

Try to quantify or define unconscious bias. How many dimensions does it have?

Are there any provable social laws (in the sense of theorem::law, not lawyer::law)?

>> "Sure, but many would argue that social science regularly fails to meet contemporaneous standards for epistemological rigor that physical sciences do."

Many would argue, but what's their qualification? Where's the meta research implied in your comment that supports your view that social science regularly fails to meet contemporaneous standards for epistemological rigor that physical sciences do?

I don't have meta research. It is unnecessary given any individual can make the observations themselves by trying to answer the questions I asked. Physics, math, chemistry, they all obey laws and phenomena can rigorously proven (more or less). There are no identifiable social axioms.

Science is not about expert qualifications, it is about asking questions.

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