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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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when two or more candidates appear to be equally qualified, and one belongs to a historically marginalized group, that candidate should be chosen

I feel like whoever came up with this policy was trying to pull a fast one. To the extent that it has any "affirmative" effect, it is unjust. If it is non-discriminatory as its advocates claim... it does nothing. Just like Google's 2nd-chance interview thing called out in Damore's famous memo.

2. Situations where several candidates are, in fact, equally qualified, and only one belongs to a historically marginalized group, are not actually that common.

Much less than uncommon, I think. Rather, nonexistent. Skill is continuous, not discrete. What "equally qualified" actually means is that it would cost more than it's worth to measure qualification finely enough to differentiate.

So the mechanism of this kind of affirmative action is to make mistakes favor historically marginalized groups, which might be worse for those groups' reputation than naked quotas. This kind of thumb on the scales means you'll more often meet surprisingly incompetent "marginalized" co-workers, and surprisingly competent "non-marginalized" ones. Eventually this will stop being a surprise. Quotas, one hopes, are satisfied by overpaying "marginalized" employees, which invites resentment, but at least it doesn't seed FUD.