Yes. In general, I recommend that people try to do the best they can with themselves, and not feel guilty about relative performance unless that guilt is motivating for them.
Having to deal with biased gatekeepers isn’t the same thing as feeling guilty about relative ability, even if some of the same internal strategies would help with both.
If gatekeepers want to use this sort of effect in their reasoning, they should make it quantitative, rather than a verbal justification for a bias.
Having to deal with biased gatekeepers isn’t the same thing as feeling guilty about relative ability
Agreed; that phrase was more appropriate in an earlier draft of the comment, and became less appropriate when I deleted other parts which mused about how much people should expect themselves to regress towards the population mean. They have a lot of private information about themselves, but it’s not clear to me that they have good information about the rest of the population, and so it seems easier to judge one’s absolute than one’s relative competence.
On topic to dealing with biased gatekeepers, it seems self-defeating to use the presence of obstacles as a discouraging rather than encouraging factor, conditioned on the opportunity being worth pursuing. Since the probability of success is an input to the calculation of whether or not an opportunity is worth pursuing, it’s not clear when and how much accuracy in expectations is desirable.
How likely is this?
I don’t know enough about the population of gatekeepers to comment on the likelihood of finding it in the field, but I am confident in it as a prescription.
Having to deal with biased gatekeepers isn’t the same thing as feeling guilty about relative ability, even if some of the same internal strategies would help with both.
How likely is this?
Agreed; that phrase was more appropriate in an earlier draft of the comment, and became less appropriate when I deleted other parts which mused about how much people should expect themselves to regress towards the population mean. They have a lot of private information about themselves, but it’s not clear to me that they have good information about the rest of the population, and so it seems easier to judge one’s absolute than one’s relative competence.
On topic to dealing with biased gatekeepers, it seems self-defeating to use the presence of obstacles as a discouraging rather than encouraging factor, conditioned on the opportunity being worth pursuing. Since the probability of success is an input to the calculation of whether or not an opportunity is worth pursuing, it’s not clear when and how much accuracy in expectations is desirable.
I don’t know enough about the population of gatekeepers to comment on the likelihood of finding it in the field, but I am confident in it as a prescription.