Cognitive roadblocks to reconciling merit and diversity
I used to be really concerned and generally opposed to such biases. But after careful thought, I&#x27;m now very uncertain.<p>I really want to know how much of this &quot;bias&quot; is actually just an informative and useful prior.<p>As an example, suppose you have two candidates from Princeton. One is black, the other is asian. With high probability, the asian candidate is smarter - he had to pass through a much more rigorous college admissions filter than the black person.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11904256" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=11904256</a><p>Now given equal evaluations, it probably makes sense to hire the Asian person over the black person. (Similar reasoning suggests you should prefer an Asian to a white person.) The reason is simply that base rates matter. Bayes rule says that P(good candidate|evidence) = P(evidence|good candidate) P(good candidate)&#x2F;P(evidence).<p>The term P(good candidate) is known as the <i>base rate</i> - as simple arithmetic demonstrates it&#x27;s important information.<p>So assuming the base rate for various groups differs, these &quot;biases&quot; might actually not be biases at all - they might be informative. If we eliminate these biases from our process, we might actually make worse decisions [1]. Unfortunately this article doesn&#x27;t address that question at all.<p>See also this body of research, which suggests that many racial&#x2F;sexual stereotypes are actually useful priors and improve human decisionmaking: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rci.rutgers.edu&#x2F;~jussim&#x2F;unbearable accuracy of stereotypes.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rci.rutgers.edu&#x2F;~jussim&#x2F;unbearable accuracy o...</a><p>I&#x27;m also curious to hear arguments about the <i>ethics</i> of using such information in decision making, assuming they are in fact informative.<p>[1] For those unfamiliar with statistics, I&#x27;ve got a simple article here illustrating the arithmetic of base rates. Clickbait title: <i>A gay person donates blood which tests negative for HIV. A straight person donates untested blood. Which is safer? The answer will SHOCK you.</i> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chrisstucchio.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;why_gays_cant_donate_blood.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chrisstucchio.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2016&#x2F;why_gays_cant_donate...</a>