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Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

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Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#111

Post by malandrew »

blululu wrote: post #62
tuna-piano wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your nepotism example and "preponderance of talent and success is hard to quantify precisely" are nice arguments and give me something to think about, thanks. But when you say "I'm not sure if meritocracy makes sense"... you are really saying that instead of trying for meritocracy, they should just use skin color? How do you feel about the idea of blind auditions for orchestras (auditions where the candidate…

Well I'm not really advocating for choosing people based on skin color or gender per se. Rather that in a cases where there is an surplus of talent for the role we should consider making a choice based upon serving the interests of society more broadly. Sometimes this will fall along racial lines. For example, having doctors of color to serve communities of color has demonstrable positive health outcomes for society…

> we should consider making a choice based upon serving the interests of society more broadly. Sometimes this will fall along racial lines.

This line kind of contradicts this line:

> Well I'm not really advocating for choosing people based on skin color or gender per se.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#112

Post by malandrew »

gowld wrote: post #59
TheGrim999 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this will be hard to accept, but no matter how many people tell me that minorities are being killed because of the color of their skin, I've noticed that not a single one of these people ever include any facts or data to back up that claim. Sure, black people are killed by police. So are white people. So are people of every race. All the actual data I've seen is that black people are killed less frequently, in…

Surprisingly little data in this post complaining about not seeing data.

From former Harvard professor Roland G. Fryer Jr. who is an expert in this area:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2807729

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#113

Post by malandrew »

mullingitover wrote: post #83
Avicebron wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is a great example, very mono-cultural (relative to the US, I know there is different great diversity in China) and (personal experience) a bit racist or dismissive of Non-Chinese. Yet they absolute crush it with almost everything they do? How do we square that circle and say well..if everyone just looked different we would be better off. Minus the white people, they shouldn't be around anymore.

It's pretty easy to pick this apart. China is actually quite diverse culturally, but communism has long had a focus on equality. They're demonstrating that equality is a competitive advantage.

I've lived in China and the US and it doesn't even come close to the diversity of thought as the US. That said, they still crush it despite the lack of diversity of thought. With the US diversity of thought also comes the diversity of work ethic. China doesn't have that issue. A lot of the diversity of thought China has typically comes from expatriates that have returned home after meaningful experiences living abroad. This alone demonstrates that genetics is a terrible proxy for diversity of thought. What matters is cognitive diversity and diversity of experience.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#114

Post by perl4ever »

MattGaiser wrote: post #39
blululu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>What person from an underrepresented group wants to be chosen just because of their group status? Isn't that highly patronizing for someone who likely had worked hard to get to where they got? Do you want to be "pretty great for a xxxxx person!" or just "one of the best". For comparison, consider the case of people who get their jobs via nepotism. The people who are hired for nepotism are seldom concerned with the…

> The people who are hired for nepotism are seldom concerned with the fact that they were chosen because of who their parents were. Nepotism is personal and hidden. It isn't a rule everyone knows about, but something done on an individual level. If people could spot nepotism as easily as they could spot race and knew about confirmed corporate nepotism as easily as they knew about diversity initiatives, it would carry…

>I have never seen a form ask about family members.

You haven't? Because I definitely have seen it. I'm not sure it's universal, and I know people do go to work for companies where their relatives work, but it's something that is asked on applications I've filled out, and as far as I know, is perfectly legitimate to factor into decisions.

Furthermore, race, that I can remember, always has a disclaimer that it's kept separate without identifying the person and used for reporting on diversity. And you can decline to select an answer too.

My view is that if there is a bar set that is reasonable and results in competent people being hired, then how people are selected within that set doesn't matter that much. Maybe with the caveat that I wouldn't want everyone to use the same preferences such that every employer would exclude me.

I don't see why I should be threatened by either nepotism or affirmative action. If I'm at a disadvantage, then I can take pride in having to work a little harder. Conversely, people give you more credit if they are aware you are disadvantaged, even if it's unspoken and unofficial.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#115

Post by perl4ever »

perl4ever wrote: post #114
MattGaiser wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The people who are hired for nepotism are seldom concerned with the fact that they were chosen because of who their parents were. Nepotism is personal and hidden. It isn't a rule everyone knows about, but something done on an individual level. If people could spot nepotism as easily as they could spot race and knew about confirmed corporate nepotism as easily as they knew about diversity initiatives, it would carry…

>I have never seen a form ask about family members. You haven't? Because I definitely have seen it. I'm not sure it's universal, and I know people do go to work for companies where their relatives work, but it's something that is asked on applications I've filled out, and as far as I know, is perfectly legitimate to factor into decisions. Furthermore, race, that I can remember, always has a disclaimer that it's kept…

>as far as I know, is perfectly legitimate to factor into decisions

I mean, to prevent nepotism.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#116

Post by malandrew »

Avicebron wrote: post #69
Natsu wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird that people act like this is the only solution to correct past injustice, too, when there's a much simpler racially-neutral method. You just help all disadvantaged persons equally. Inasmuch as any particular identifiable group is thereby disadvantaged, they're disproportionately helped by this neutral method. If only people of race X were poor, then helping all poor people would be isomorphic to helping al…

Yeah it's a weird contortion of the mind that a vast majority of people are willing to make. Like the issue is poverty and opportunity, for every race, but no, suddenly there is this disproportionate rush to be "anti-racist" by being racist, it's so obviously orwellian 2+2 = 5 i'm surprised it hasn't been made the headline of every major media

https://www.thedailybeast.com/antiracism-our-flawed-new-reli...

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#117

Post by js2 »

jeffdavis wrote: post #105
rukittenme wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the GP would use your source to prove his point as well. An absolute disparity of 2.8x but it does not consider the level of violent crime a particular racial category commits. Your source also suggests unarmed white people are nearly twice as likely to be shot than unarmed Hispanics. Doesn't that contradict the narrative of racist motive by white police? I have to wonder how many people were killed by police…

If you go to the WaPo database: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic... And select 2018, you'll see a total of 991 people killed by police. If you also filter by race, you'll see that 229 were black and 454 were white. I'm using 2018 because it's the most recent year with good FBI stats to compare to. According to the FBI, were 14123 murders in 2018: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/c…

Police brutality is one problem.

Systematic racism and segregation is another problem.

The first problem exacerbates the second. We have to fix both.

Re: Want to Solve Venture Capital's Diversity Problem? Start with Pension Funds

#118

Post by OminousWeapons »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #88
OminousWeapons wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The classic argument in favor of diversity for diversity's sake is that people frame expectations for themselves based on what they see around them. If there are no members of group X in a field, then many people in group X will assume that field is not for them. At a societal level, we miss out if people who would have been highly productive in a field choose not to enter it behind assumptions about inclusion. By in…

That’s always been a really silly assertion backed by a very small number of cherry picked examples. How does anything we buy in the US even work at all, considering it’s all made in China by people of a different culture and race with zero diversity and zero representation of the customer? We shouldn’t accept arguments like this, no matter how uncomfortable the righteous want to make us feel for thinking critically.

> How does anything we buy in the US even work at all, considering it’s all made in China by people of a different culture and race with zero diversity and zero representation of the customer?

Because most products are targeted very widely and are for general purpose use. For general purpose products, my second comment does not apply. What I am saying is that if your product is targeted to a niche group of people who tend to occupy a specific demographic that you aren't in, then it makes sense to have members of that demographic on your team because they can provide you basic data that you might not know. This is to gain a business advantage, not to pacify diversity proponents, and I don't think it is at all a contentious statement. If you were going to start a healthcare startup and no one on your team had a healthcare background, that would probably be concerning. Are you guaranteed to fail without that user input? Not necessarily, but you will likely have to work a lot harder than you would otherwise need to in order to properly understand the space. Similarly, if you were going to start a shampoo company catering towards black women and your team was all white guys, it would probably be a good idea to bring a black woman onboard to help steer product development.

> That’s always been a really silly assertion backed by a very small number of cherry picked examples...We shouldn’t accept arguments like this, no matter how uncomfortable the righteous want to make us feel for thinking critically.

These are not particularly value adding comments and detract from your argument. Please stick to attacking my argument rather than trying to attack me personally.

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