When we know we have unconscious biases to people who are of the same race, gender and orientation and ourselves is it really unreasonable to take action to try to counteract this? Especially for internships where there isn't even a professional history to compare.
Yes, it is unreasonable. I am a visible minority, and am very offended when that factors in to hiring practices. It matters to me that my acceptance is legitimate and based on merit, and it tarnishes my reputation every day that others who do not meet the same standard are accepted (i.e. meet the threshold) merely due to their skin color.
Aside from that, whoever this "we" is that you're discussing, it does not include myself. You may have unconscious biases to people who are of the same race, etc., that's on you, and people on average may have such inclinations. However, you have cited no references indicating the universality of this phenomenon, nor do you possess any pertinent data on me. It would be more fair and correct to use "I" or "in general, people...".
The fact that you're a racist person is not in dispute here, we both agree. The question is whether you want to apply your prejudices in an affirmative or negative sense. My contention is that I prefer and believe it is ethically superior for hiring and acceptance practices to consciously remove, as much as possible, the influence of prejudice for each candidate.
> My contention is that I prefer and believe it is ethically superior for hiring and acceptance practices to consciously remove, as much as possible, the influence of prejudice for each candidate.
It is! But many people in charge of hiring have no interest in doing so, although they’ll claim they have. And when the numbers don’t back them up, they’ll always have a convenient excuse.
> You give them a technical test and whoever scores the most wins, if they score equally, you can pick at random.
The thing is that people don't have equal opportunity to prepare for the technical test. Thus the people who do best might not be the best for the job. Especially as a lot of value can be obtained from hiring someone with a different perspective on life, which the hiring manager might not appreciate (as the other perspective doesn't align with theirs).
> You can't conclude too much from an isolated example.
You can conclude that the effects of implicit bias are not well understood and maybe we should study it a little bit more before we treat it as absolute truth and factor it into decision making.
I don't see how I could conclude anything about how well understood implicit bias is from one or two examples of it materializing or failing to materialize.
People thought they understood it, they started applying policies around it and then their assumptions turned out to be false, hence me saying it's not well understood.
>"We should hit pause and be very cautious about introducing this as a way of improving diversity, as it can have the opposite effect," Professor Hiscox said.
To me, this quote succinctly expresses the whole problem behind the push for "diversity" (a term which I have never seen rigorously defined by its exponents) in technology fields. By trying to fix the results with artificial means, they place the cart before the horse. They attempt to fix a painting they perceive to be damaged by doodling over top of it. There appears to be no self-reflection when unintended consequences occur.
They did a study where they attempt to remove all bias, but they got results they didn't like, and so we should "hit pause"? Why should we ever hit pause on removing bias and discrimination from our society?
