On Apr 18, 2013, at 1:06 PM, Dan Harkins <dharkins(_at_)lounge(_dot_)org> wrote:
What is this "cure" of which you speak? This diversity discussion has
included statements like:
Personally, not wearing an AD hat or attempting to anticipate the conclusions
of the study group, I think the cure is to encourage more talented people to
participate who do not share the same characteristics as the existing members,
specifically with respect to age, sex, culture and/or geography. I think
discouraging participation or limiting participation of existing participants
is a bad idea, but encouraging new talented participants is always a good idea.
And then I think we need to have a kind of ongoing consciousness-raising about
how cognitive bias works, and how it might be affecting our decisions as
participants. It's not enough to simply get a 50-50 male/female ratio, for
example; if it were, the U.S. would elect female presidents slightly more than
half the time, but of course we don't.
But fixing either problem without fixing the other will not have much impact on
diversity; if we fix the cognitive bias problem (should it even exist, which I
am not asserting to be the case), that won't matter if the pool of candidates
lacks diversity; if the pool of candidates is diverse, that won't matter if we
don't correct for cognitive bias.