More generally about reasonable biases, in real life you need to give some credence to the impossibility of knowing the accuracy of your biases. Everyone thinks their judgements are better than the rest, and that leads to historical tragedies. That's why modern thinking has evolved into being about personal freedoms and leaving other people the heck alone instead of trying to impose one's personal judgements.

Inside of the areas where external, natural forces are available to distinguish between sides of debates, no bias is necessary to form friendships or alliances. If you find yourself on the wrong side you can switch, and it won't be "disloyal" or "traitorous" because you'd be doing it to align yourself with something that isn't artificial. (For example, knowing the correct laws of physics instead of the wrong ones.)

I disagree with the premise you're basing the rest of your argument on. I would sooner say that a successful career in general (and engineering is no different) probably only hinges marginally on some intangible measure of aptitude (rephrased: aptitude is necessary but insufficient), and mostly results from some combination of coming from a privileged background (that is, encouraged from a young age that you're capable, exposed to good education, validation, having access to a professional network, etc.) and having had opportunity to thrive (for example, a lack of financial stress allowing one to pursue a risky business venture as opposed to having had to support one's family from a young age and therefore accepting a menial job straight out of high school).

Of course, one can find examples of people from underprivileged backgrounds succeeding in the sense you're referring to, but i don't for one second believe that simply "working hard" and "making the right choices" is enough to magically rise to the top of the economic dogpile. In essence, i think your statement is an instance of the just world fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis).

I've tried to be measured and objective in my reply, but i see this as a common myth that deserves to die, so my apologies if i'm sounding abrasive.

> and having had opportunity to thrive (for example, a lack of financial stress allowing one to pursue a risky business venture as opposed to having had to support one's family from a young age and therefore accepting a menial job straight out of school

> and engineering is no different

That sounds like wishful thinking.

How do you counter the following data points that suggest the opposite:

1. Software development contains a disproportionate number of successful Indians who come from much less privilege than the average American.

2. Despite having strong social safety nets European countries do not dominate tech.

Even in these countries underprivileged migrants without access to the safety nets are disproportionately successful.

It sounds like the principle you're bringing in to play here could make anything count as xenophobic, so long as it involved a negative opinion and more than one group. This is dangerous because there are many opinions which are not xenophobic and are useful: misclassifying them as xenophobic introduces the error of "useful xenophobia," which is a very dangerous mistake.

Edit: I think I've debugged the issue. I'm treating these things like they're true and were discovered independently, and you are treating them like they're false (or at least unjustified) and spread socially. I know that in my case I've learned to not like science journalism first-hand, by reading articles while knowing about their subject matter (an incredibly surreal experience).

People are social animals, susceptible to group-think. There’s really nothing wrong with that, as long as we’re willing to accept the possibility and don’t succumb to the firehouse effect.

>It’s so common on HN for example, that it is frankly impossible all of its purveyors came up with the idea independently. That’s true even if the collective complaints have a basis in fact.

If our complaints have enough of a basis in fact, then why would it be unlikely for everyone with the right domain knowledge to realize the same thing? The idea that something can be factual but also still somehow based in groupthink belies an understanding of the word that leads back to another common criticism of the humanities...