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Comment by raxxorrax | Hacker News Reader

I would go further and state that there is no "diversity" problem, whatever that should mean. There is an a priori assumption that it should be 50/50 and only then a field is just. Why CS though? There are countless other occupations where that is not given. The problems with PhD and pregnancy is a university problem. So I still think it is heavily biased.

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Maybe there shouldn't be an assumption that only a 50/50 proportion is just, but there also shouldn't be an assumption that our current ratio is just fine and not indicative of any problems. I'd note that in the 80s the gender ratio for CS was around 40% women, and that it then began to decline while other STEM fields saw a continued rise. Right now the physical sciences have twice the rate of female participation than CS. Heck, at my college (University of Rochester) while our CS program had maybe 30% women, the Math program was over 50%. Is there some fundamental difference in interest between pure mathematics and computer science that I'm missing? I'd also note the high number of women in CS who report discrimination or harassment.

50/50 is kind of an arbitrary strawman, there aren't many demographics approaching that in the western world. Even in the US, the male/female split is closer to 49/51, so you wouldn't expect 50/50 there either without a small bias. There are various other demographics with an uneven distribution too - even if we decide it should be 49/51 based on the gender balance of the overall population, is that necessarily representative of the hiring pool (i.e. excluding teenagers, children, students, retirees)? Some rigorous analysis is necessary before deciding that a given ratio is Correct, I think. When the ratio is dramatically different from the general population it's at least a sign that perhaps something is wrong.

Because, unlike other field, CS, and especially ML, uniquely positions itself as a field that is setting out to revolutionize how the world is structured. You want more input than just white and Asian folks when you’re going to make such bold claims.

ML can barely look at a jpeg and tell me if it has boobs; I'm not optimistic that we could or should revolutionize how the world is structured around it.

"Why CS though?" is a weird statement here.

Why should the vast majority, or even a sizable fraction, of fields not have a gender or race balance even remotely approximating the balance of the general population? Is it not a 'should' but merely 'it's okay if they do'? If the balance was in the other direction and men or white people were being intentionally denied jobs, would that be okay?

Should it be OK for other things to be unbalanced? Should it be OK if 60% of black people can't get houses but only 10% of white people have trouble getting homes? Should it be OK if 90% of asians are turned away from emergency rooms but only 20% of mexicans are?

You can argue that race/gender genetic differences play a role but it's kind of hard to explain away the widespread imbalances here just based off DNA.

~80% of the Nurses in the US are Female, this is no doubt due to discrimination and anti-male bias according to your worldview, correct? 87% of Garbage men in the US are Men, are you fighting for better female representation in the Garbage trade?

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hr/gender-ratio-of-nur...

Yes and what gender are the doctors? Even though medicine students are 60% female? That's the issue, the prestigious more powerful jobs are largely male dominated, while the "rank and file" who takes orders (or does the dirty work) is largely female. Show me one field (that does rely on the person's ability not looks) where there are more women in the higher ranked positions and more men in the lower ranked positions.

You ignored my question.

>Show me one field (that does rely on the person's ability not looks) where there are more women in the higher ranked positions and more men in the lower ranked positions.

Nursing

The field is medicine and doctors are predominately male.

Not sure how you leaped from me asking "should it be OK for there to be an imbalance" to this. Why would it be OK? That's the question I asked in the first place.

> If the balance was in the other direction and men or white people were being intentionally denied jobs, would that be okay?

You're implying – and your argument rests on – that right now, women and non-white people are being intentionally denied jobs due to their gender or the color of their skin [1], and that this is a widespread phenomenon [2]. I would really like to see some hard evidence for that claim.

[1] As opposed to their qualification or other directly relevant criteria.

[2] I'm assuming you mean in the US, or at least in the Western world.

The OP asked "There is an a priori assumption that it should be 50/50 and only then a field is just. Why CS though?" as if CS is the only field that matters here. I responded by asking more broadly about whether imbalance should be acceptable in any field and what kind of imbalance should be acceptable. Why are you immediately assuming that my question is a thin veil over some sort of implied argument?

If you believe that racial discrimination in hiring (or otherwise) is made up, you need merely perform a google search to find many reputable articles and papers on the subject. Feel free to educate yourself.

https://www.google.com/search?q=race+discrimination+in+hirin...

There is no indication that people are being denied entry to certain fields.

None that I'm aware of. I've never even seen somebody claim to be an otherwise qualified candidate who is unable to enter a field due to demographics.

Other than high-profile lawsuits against tech companies accusing them of discrimination against demographic groups?

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/06/07/google-discrimination...

"Now the plaintiffs can request access to internal Google documents to try to support their allegations, which also include some people being “denied employment because of their actual and perceived conservative political activities and affiliations, and their status as actual or perceived Asian or Caucasian male job applicants,”"

There are myriad examples of this sort of allegation from the last decade, it's not hard to find them. They've been discussed here on HN.

OK sorry I meant there is no indication of such denial of entry BEFORE the activists take over. Once they manage to install their quota rules, it is of course not a fair playing field anymore.

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