Re:Asian-Americans Suing Harvard Say Admissions Files Show D...
by trendia on Thursday April 05, 2018 @01:27AM
(#16762050)
The term "diversity" is being used in very different ways. The article you posted drfines it based on skill and knowledge:
> By diversity, we mean differences in how agents build problem representations which allow them to access various solutions. We deploy the concept of diversity along two dimensions: knowledge amplitude, which accounts for the level of available knowledge allowing access to poorer or richer problem representations (compared with complete problem representations), and knowledge variety, which pertains to the differences in the constituents of agents’ representations.
So it just further demonstrates the logical gap between A=B and C=D, since the studies didn't even show A=B, they showed E=F
But making the leap that this somehow means that skin/gender diversity equates to higher performance is quite a leap.
The instructor’s argument went something like this. “A bunch of studies show diversity improves outcome. A bunch of studies show people are racist against these populations. Therefore since having more of this population increases diversity, we need program XYZ.”
The class was infuriating, because the instructor kept using these studies as evidence and then directly linking it to a call for increased representation through positive discrimination for a few select minorities. Many questions were flippantly dismissed as “they’ll get their turn.” Of course this frustrates the different minorities who also wanted to be included.
I never got stuck on the logical leap of “If A then B. If C then D. Therefore A = D.”
[0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10726-011-9250-x