However, if we are predominately white males, why are we?
Ignoring the obviously political issue of “concern”, it’s fun to consider this question on a purely intellectual level. If you’re a white male, why are you? Is the anthropic answer (“just because”) sufficient? At what size of group does it cease to be sufficient? I don’t know the actual answer. Some people think that asking “why am I me” is inherently meaningless, but for me personally, this doesn’t dissolve the mystery.
The flippant answer is that a group size of 1 lacks statistical significance; at some group size, that ceases to be the case.
I asked not from a political perspective. In arguments about diversity, political correctness often dominates. I am actually interested in, among other things, whether a lack of diversity is a functional impairment for a group. I feel strongly that it is, but I can’t back up that claim with evidence strong enough to match my belief. For a group such as Less Wrong, I have to ask what we miss due to a lack of diversity.
The flippant answer is that a group size of 1 lacks statistical significance; at some group size, that ceases to be the case.
The flippant answer to your answer is that you didn’t pick LW randomly out of the set of all groups. The fact that you, a white male, consistently choose to join groups composed mostly of white males—and then inquire about diversity—could have any number of anthropic explanations from your perspective :-) In the end it seems to loop back into why are you, you again.
Ignoring the obviously political issue of “concern”, it’s fun to consider this question on a purely intellectual level. If you’re a white male, why are you? Is the anthropic answer (“just because”) sufficient? At what size of group does it cease to be sufficient? I don’t know the actual answer. Some people think that asking “why am I me” is inherently meaningless, but for me personally, this doesn’t dissolve the mystery.
The flippant answer is that a group size of 1 lacks statistical significance; at some group size, that ceases to be the case.
I asked not from a political perspective. In arguments about diversity, political correctness often dominates. I am actually interested in, among other things, whether a lack of diversity is a functional impairment for a group. I feel strongly that it is, but I can’t back up that claim with evidence strong enough to match my belief. For a group such as Less Wrong, I have to ask what we miss due to a lack of diversity.
The flippant answer to your answer is that you didn’t pick LW randomly out of the set of all groups. The fact that you, a white male, consistently choose to join groups composed mostly of white males—and then inquire about diversity—could have any number of anthropic explanations from your perspective :-) In the end it seems to loop back into why are you, you again.
ETA: apparenty datadataeverywhere is female.
No, I think that’s a much less flippant answer :-)
It’s come to my attention that you’re female. Apologies for assuming otherwise, and shame on you for not correcting me.