Introduction

I hate talking about diversity. I hate watching other people talk about diversity more*. My first reaction to the (most) recent thread in the EA Facebook group about diversity was 'oh God, not this again'**. So I have a lot of sympathy for the view, most commonly expressed by social conservatives, that as a society we should spend a whole lot less time thinking and talking about diversity and a whole lot more time deciding on merit. On a purely selfish level, I would enjoy life more that way.

The reasons why I hate this topic are varied, and some of them are too petty or personal to be worth expressing here, but a few of the more intellectual reasons are relevant:

This whole area is a communication minefield; words like 'diversity', 'political correctness', and 'social justice' mean dramatically different things to different people. Without active efforts to avoid said mines, participants in such a debate are likely to end up disputing definitions.
The Mind Projection fallacy is deadly on a topic where views tend to be both strongly entrenched and strongly based on (divergent) personal experiences. Large gaps in experience lead to large inferential distances, and large inferential distances make persuasion difficult. That is, it is difficult even when you know they exist, never mind when you don't.
The above combine in a nasty way. Opaque or incomplete arguments can get uncritical support from those who agree with the conclusions, partly because their knowledge or experience allow them to unconsciously 'fill in the blanks' and partly because of the halo effect. And lots of arguments, in any debate, on any side, are opaque or incomplete. The danger is that you end up with two groups talking past each other, neither of them having the ability and willingness to bridge the gap, yet both increasingly confident in 'their' position as they are reinforced by 'their' group. Which in all probability they just shouldn't be.

Reading the above, you could reasonably ask: why am I of all people writing a post about diversity? Because at some point I looked at the world and considered the evidence. Unfortunately for me, my best guess is that diversity is rather important. In particular, I think that it is too important to be left to the type of discussion I just described

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AGB

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