It’s really funny to me that your “terrible” quote and your “doesn’t seem wrong” quote are mostly the same things, just with the second emphasizing over and over that you’d be willing to change your mind.
But what’s going on here is just our old familiar dilemma of justice vs. truth. It SHOULDN’T be profitable to use someone’s skin color as a quick proxy for what’s inside their heads. That would be monstrously unfair. People can’t help their skin color. It would totally be bullshit that certain shades of human would turn out to be more likely to be late every morning. Imagine if that was also applied to gender? Holy information asymmetry Batman!
Thing is, though, these beliefs will save you money. Extend more trust to folks with the ‘good’ characteristics, less to those with the ‘bad’ ones. Hiring a clerk for your urban youth patronized Footlocker? Got 50 applicants? Odds are, the white girl isn’t in a gang. She could be, of course. If Warriors has taught us nothing else it is that anyone might be in a gang. But she probably isn’t. What about the 30 black dudes? They probably aren’t either. The majority of hu-nams aren’t. But each of them is more likely to be than she is.
So, you’ve got a simple set of rules (which I’ll snidely sum up as ‘Always prefer white dudes for everything’), which seems like, by the numbers, it would save you money. You like money. As Danny DeVito said in that movie, “Everyone does, that’s why its called money!”. But there’s a cost. You don’t want to be known as a racist/sexist/age-ist/mental health-ist (even though, you actually would be if you did this).
Solution: Use these rules and rigorously deny that you do. Call it the Silicon Valley strategy, or the Patriarchy, if you are being mean about it.
But what’s going on here is just our old familiar dilemma of justice vs. truth. It SHOULDN’T be profitable to use someone’s skin color as a quick proxy for what’s inside their heads. That would be monstrously unfair. People can’t help their skin color.
It’s really funny to me that your “terrible” quote and your “doesn’t seem wrong” quote are mostly the same things, just with the second emphasizing over and over that you’d be willing to change your mind.
But what’s going on here is just our old familiar dilemma of justice vs. truth. It SHOULDN’T be profitable to use someone’s skin color as a quick proxy for what’s inside their heads. That would be monstrously unfair. People can’t help their skin color. It would totally be bullshit that certain shades of human would turn out to be more likely to be late every morning. Imagine if that was also applied to gender? Holy information asymmetry Batman!
Thing is, though, these beliefs will save you money. Extend more trust to folks with the ‘good’ characteristics, less to those with the ‘bad’ ones. Hiring a clerk for your urban youth patronized Footlocker? Got 50 applicants? Odds are, the white girl isn’t in a gang. She could be, of course. If Warriors has taught us nothing else it is that anyone might be in a gang. But she probably isn’t. What about the 30 black dudes? They probably aren’t either. The majority of hu-nams aren’t. But each of them is more likely to be than she is.
So, you’ve got a simple set of rules (which I’ll snidely sum up as ‘Always prefer white dudes for everything’), which seems like, by the numbers, it would save you money. You like money. As Danny DeVito said in that movie, “Everyone does, that’s why its called money!”. But there’s a cost. You don’t want to be known as a racist/sexist/age-ist/mental health-ist (even though, you actually would be if you did this).
Solution: Use these rules and rigorously deny that you do. Call it the Silicon Valley strategy, or the Patriarchy, if you are being mean about it.
People largely can’t help what’s inside their head either.
I was about to nitpick your point before I remembered it’d be even easier to nitpick WalterL’s. :-)
I am sorry, do you expect our universe to be fair? 8-0