Racism and Meritocracy • Hacker News Board

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#61

Post by thaumaturgy » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 9:48 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #54

thaumaturgy wrote: post #51

I am racist. And sexist. I subconsciously attribute certain qualities to men and women, and to various ethnicities. Underneath all of the various common jokes -- "Asians are good at math", etc. -- there is an undercurrent of discussion where other people are admitting their biases, too. When I get on the phone with technical support and hear a thick East Asian accent, the first thing that happens is I grit my teeth.…

Underneath all of the various common jokes -- "Asians are good at math", etc. -- there is an undercurrent of discussion where other people are admitting their biases, too. That's not a bias, it's simple fact. Asians have SAT math scores 72 points higher than average, TIMSS scores 74 points higher than average, and are disproportionately represented in professions requiring significant mathematical background. http://…

Well, it can be both a bias and a fact.

I did not go so far as to say that biases have no basis in fact, because that's an argument I'm neither prepared to make, nor want to make.

I was making the point that biases exist.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#62

Post by temphn » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 9:51 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #54

thaumaturgy wrote: post #51

I am racist. And sexist. I subconsciously attribute certain qualities to men and women, and to various ethnicities. Underneath all of the various common jokes -- "Asians are good at math", etc. -- there is an undercurrent of discussion where other people are admitting their biases, too. When I get on the phone with technical support and hear a thick East Asian accent, the first thing that happens is I grit my teeth.…

Underneath all of the various common jokes -- "Asians are good at math", etc. -- there is an undercurrent of discussion where other people are admitting their biases, too. That's not a bias, it's simple fact. Asians have SAT math scores 72 points higher than average, TIMSS scores 74 points higher than average, and are disproportionately represented in professions requiring significant mathematical background. http://…

The interesting point here is that people believe that if a fact has racist, sexist, or homophobic implications it must not be true.

Reminiscent of an earlier era in which any statements that contradicted church doctrine must simply be false. Indeed, the very concept of a "heretical but true" statement was impossible to comprehend.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#63

Post by vacri » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 9:59 PM UTC

billpatrianakos wrote: post #22

philwelch wrote: post #7

One of the problems with racism in particular is that it has effects on people from birth. Past racism may have hurt their parents' socioeconomic prospects, forcing them to be born in an economically depressed ghetto with poor schools and gang violence. Even if there's no racism past that point, if their parents were prevented from ascending to the middle class, they won't pass on middle-class virtues emphasizing the…

Exactly! Maybe this is a small minority being extra loud. Thank you for saving me a lot of typing. Diversity for the sake of diversity hurts us all. You really do need to fix the underlying problems. I believe that there really are few qualified minority candidates for these jobs out there and there would be a lot more if we could fix some of the poverty and segregation that exists out there. Black people in this cou…

"pro sports as an escape from the ghetto" needs to die as a theme. There are only a few thousand professional athletes in the US across all sports, most of them men, far from all of them black - and there are something like 30 million blacks in the US.

I can't say how many of those 30 million are living in entrenched poverty, but simply seeing the discrepancy between these numbers revokes the idea that pro sports is a viable way to improve your lot if you are in a poor place.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#64

Post by thaumaturgy » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 10:02 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #57

So, how about stepping back from the issue of race because that makes people stupid: if Silicon Valley (or a large chunk of the institutions which make it up) has a persistent bias against X, regardless of whether that is invidious or just a result of suboptimal processes, and that bias is unconnected to merit, then you should be able to profitably exploit it. Silicon Valley has many biases, of varying levels of conn…

I think the article was a solidly not-stupid approach to the issue of race; I would like to see more discussion like it.

I don't think capitalism can solve all ills; even if there is an opportunity for, say, seed-stage investment for startups run by tech "minorities", there is a whole litany of necessities and problems which give it long odds of being successful. You have to find individuals who are both interested in the problem, and have the resources required to address it; they have to have the right recipe of skills; they, themselves, have to know certain people (that chumminess again); and, moreover, they have to be willing to throw significant capital at addressing a problem which might not exist in 5 years.

Or, to put it another way: I think there can be common agreement at this point that YC is not funding and accepting as many startups as they would like to, which implies that there is a strong market demand for another YC which could be as successful, or nearly as successful, as YC itself.

So why doesn't one exist?

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#65

Post by merkat » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 10:04 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #51

I am racist. And sexist. I subconsciously attribute certain qualities to men and women, and to various ethnicities. Underneath all of the various common jokes -- "Asians are good at math", etc. -- there is an undercurrent of discussion where other people are admitting their biases, too. When I get on the phone with technical support and hear a thick East Asian accent, the first thing that happens is I grit my teeth.…

"Courageously" admitting something doesn't make it OK, simply based on the speculative assertion that a lot of people do the same. We may be living in a biased society, but admitting this doesn't make it excusable.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#66

Post by projectileboy » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 10:08 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #52

pg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used images of a conference audience because it's the best way I could think of to get a sample of what the hacker community looks like. If you can think of a better one, let me know. (The point of that link, for anyone who didn't get it, is that the lack of diversity Eric Ries perceives in the output of our filter is also present in the input, which implies it's not caused by bias in the filter.)

I think there is an error in logic here (and I think Ries touched on it): a bias in the input of a filter does not preclude a bias in the filter itself. A bias in the input may exist because of a bias -- perceived or actual -- in the filter.

Sure, that's possible, but first we have to look at the skewed input before we look at any problems with higher selection processes. Hell, I even see this working shlubbo programming jobs here in Minneapolis - there simply are not many female programmers, or African-American programmers. Until we look at problems in K-12 and college, I don't see that it's meaningful to talk about racism and sexism in the valley.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#67

Post by moldbug » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 10:14 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #52

pg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used images of a conference audience because it's the best way I could think of to get a sample of what the hacker community looks like. If you can think of a better one, let me know. (The point of that link, for anyone who didn't get it, is that the lack of diversity Eric Ries perceives in the output of our filter is also present in the input, which implies it's not caused by bias in the filter.)

I think there is an error in logic here (and I think Ries touched on it): a bias in the input of a filter does not preclude a bias in the filter itself. A bias in the input may exist because of a bias -- perceived or actual -- in the filter.

This "error in logic" is also known as "Occam's razor."

Entities should not be multiplied divergently. A sufficient explanation for the fact that Y Combinator winners are mostly white is the fact that YC applicants are mostly white. As shown by the similar Ruby-enthusiast pool, which has clearly been filtered by the same phenomenon (ie, the vast racist conspiracy - known to some as "The Plan.")

Therefore, it is unnecessary to postulate the additional cause: that YC itself is in on "The Plan." Alas, when tinfoil hats go mainstream, Occam himself is powerless.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#68

Post by moldbug » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 10:17 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #61

yummyfajitas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Underneath all of the various common jokes -- "Asians are good at math", etc. -- there is an undercurrent of discussion where other people are admitting their biases, too. That's not a bias, it's simple fact. Asians have SAT math scores 72 points higher than average, TIMSS scores 74 points higher than average, and are disproportionately represented in professions requiring significant mathematical background. http://…

Well, it can be both a bias and a fact. I did not go so far as to say that biases have no basis in fact, because that's an argument I'm neither prepared to make, nor want to make. I was making the point that biases exist.

Some have coined the term "hatefacts" for these biased facts.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#69

Post by patio11 » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 10:20 PM UTC

thaumaturgy wrote: post #64

patio11 wrote: post #57

So, how about stepping back from the issue of race because that makes people stupid: if Silicon Valley (or a large chunk of the institutions which make it up) has a persistent bias against X, regardless of whether that is invidious or just a result of suboptimal processes, and that bias is unconnected to merit, then you should be able to profitably exploit it. Silicon Valley has many biases, of varying levels of conn…

I think the article was a solidly not-stupid approach to the issue of race; I would like to see more discussion like it. I don't think capitalism can solve all ills; even if there is an opportunity for, say, seed-stage investment for startups run by tech "minorities", there is a whole litany of necessities and problems which give it long odds of being successful. You have to find individuals who are both interested i…

There are a lot of investment groups which have been, ahem, inspired by the YC model. I'm totally agnostic on what degree of success any particular one or the field in general will have, but in 2022, we'll have trivially checkable empirical evidence on whether there needed to be more seed stage funding than YC was doing for itself.

long odds of being successful

Do you realize that, if you believe the odds are long against this strategy succeeding, you have to be taking the position that this isn't a serious problem in the status quo? And vice versa? I mean, you're not going to give long odds against gravity or penicillin winning, right? They're going to ROFLstomp the alternatives. If diversity is not ROFLstomping the alternatives, then we did not have a diversity problem.

Re: Racism and Meritocracy

#70

Post by thaumaturgy » Sat, Nov 19, 2011, 10:26 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #69

thaumaturgy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the article was a solidly not-stupid approach to the issue of race; I would like to see more discussion like it. I don't think capitalism can solve all ills; even if there is an opportunity for, say, seed-stage investment for startups run by tech "minorities", there is a whole litany of necessities and problems which give it long odds of being successful. You have to find individuals who are both interested i…

There are a lot of investment groups which have been, ahem, inspired by the YC model. I'm totally agnostic on what degree of success any particular one or the field in general will have, but in 2022, we'll have trivially checkable empirical evidence on whether there needed to be more seed stage funding than YC was doing for itself. long odds of being successful Do you realize that, if you believe the odds are long ag…

I realize that that is the conclusion if you believe that it is inevitable that a free market will capitalize on every opportunity.

I do not believe that this is so. I mentioned a few of the things which might prolong or even prevent such a thing from being successful even if there is sufficient opportunity for it.

I might be willing to change my position if there were a much greater number of people with the resources necessary to launch YC-like companies.