It’s entirely possible that all of the following are true:

0 - Many groups have historically and currently been victims of bias.

1 - Good anti-bias training makes us better managers and colleagues.

2 - Psychology research is on much weaker footing (replicability) than most of us would like.

3 - One of the quickest ways to limit your career at a company is to point out when they are going overboard on Diversity and Inclusion initiatives and policies.

This. I believe in bias busting, but when I created a random account to anonymously share cases of blatant illegal discrimination (not accepting resumes based on gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation) but because it was against the minority I was downvoted

> You use the word "pseudoscience" to describe the training, so it's unlikely that you're receptive to this anecdote

Au contraire... I wish I had time to rebut this but I've got some interviews slated for the next 3 hours. I appreciate your perspective, though.

I guess the only argument I can come up with of at the short moment I have left is that similar arguments are made about religion in general, even ones that the mainstream would consider to be "cults." This doesn't actually debate the point you made about my pseudoscience claim, but what I'm saying is that I might agree with you in that sense you were describing regardless of whether unconscious bias training is scientifically valid or not. (although I think there are other problems with it even if some good can come of it)

> You use the word "pseudoscience" to describe the training, so it's unlikely that you're receptive to this anecdote

Not the poster you replied to but it's possible that the quality of training was different

Yep that can be good. Sometimes.

I can't agree with you that this kind of training is very good, however. It is often very political and propagandist.

But I value taking good things from everywhere. E.g. I am not a Christian but I know there are some good things in their teachings as well

> It is often very political and propagandist

I don't get the "political" angle - what's political about getting people to think about others? maybe it's a bit heavy-handed in a corporate-do-goody-virtue-signaling way, but "political"? it's not like you're doing workshops arguing what the upper marginal tax rate should be

Some people also have insights from their astrological readings.

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and again. Doesn't mean it's less blind.

> I remember catching myself in some meeting talking over a quiet woman who had probably been wanting to talk for quite a while.

As a man who used to be very quiet/timid, and get talked over constantly, I'm fairly unsympathetic to this specific anecdote as having anything at all to do with bias.

Quiet people get talked over. Period.

If they only started noticing quiet women, but not quiet men, it sounds like the "unconscious bias training" just trained into them a new unconscious bias!

"Unconscious bias" is a really strange thing to call pseudoscience. What would it even mean for unconscious bias to be pseudoscience? That believing oneself to be unbiased is absolute proof of being unbiased?

There's unconscious bias, which is real (that really is a job of the human brain, actually), and then there's unconscious bias testing and training. Like I mentioned elsewhere, I've got ~ 9 minutes until an interview I'll have to attend for multiple hours so I can't adequately respond, but my perspective on unconscious bias is one of skepticism that said bias can be reliably tested for and whether the training is free of negative side effects.

What would it even mean for a human to be completely unbiased? We're big bags of heuristics with a thin skin of pseudo-rationality on top. We can remind ourselves to check our reasoning and maybe we'll make a habit of it but we can't unpick a lifetime of happenstance learning mixed with eons of evolved neural circuitry. We'd be better off just reminding everyone to try to be kind, have empathy and make a point of using good manners.

It was considerate of you to do that, on the other hand adults also need to learn to be assertive to succeed in social aspects of work. If you were cutting her off or not paying attention to a raised hand, sure try to change that. But otherwise you are not doing her any favors for her long term career growth, where she will have to participate in meetings with confident, knowledgeable and busy people focused on work rather than psychology.

Why is it not also an option to change the way the workplace works? As another commenter already posted, assertiveness doesn't equal knowledge or importance. If our society tends to prioritize things like assertiveness in men and tends to see these characteristics as negative in women, AND if we see these things as necessary and good in the workplace, how doesn't this disadvantage women? Why do women have to change for the workplace, why can't we change workplaces to be better suited to people of different characters?

Because in a meeting of 20 people, it's not practical to constantly worry about people who want to speak but give zero indication that this is the case. Approximately nobody prefers passive-aggressive women to assertive women. If men get away with being pushy and rude more than women, that's a valid problem to address, but assertiveness has nothing to do with these things. Nobody is put off by a raised hand or a quick "excuse me".

“Other people in the world are inconsiderate assholes, therefore I should be an inconsiderate asshole to help my coworkers prepare for the inevitable. And if they can’t handle it, too bad.”

By the same token do you cheat at every game with your children to teach them the cold truth about society?

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is a very uncharitable and needlessly aggressive take.

The recommendation of «you shouldn’t let your quieter coworkers speak unless they interrupt their way into the conversation in meetings because that will set them up for failure when their future coworkers talk right over them» is a pretty uncharitable and needlessly aggressive attitude toward those quieter coworkers.

Raising one's hand to speak is generally taught in kindergarten and future coworkers will likewise expect that everyone mastered this basic skill. These days there are raise hand buttons in video conference software. When raising hand is not applicable, a quick "excuse me" is not considered a big imposition on either current speaker or person who wishes to speak next.

I used to be too shy to talk on the phone, coming to US from a country where I only had phone conversations with relatives by coming to a communication center at time prearranged via a telegram. I got over that and if someone accommodated me instead, they wouldn't have done me any favors, because things like this are generally expected and accommodations will not always be available.

I certainly don't give children participation awards for losing games played by the rules. There are rules for speaking in meetings, and they don't include passive-aggressive silence with no indication that you would like to speak. If you gave an indication through words or gestures, then yes you should be given a chance in a reasonable time.

Listening to the loudest voice in the room is often not the heuristic that finds the most valuable contributions.

And that is undoubtedly part of why "brainstorming" has been found not to be the best way to share ideas.

That's a non-sequitur, there should be only once voice in a room at a time and everyone should know how to request to speak next, for example by raising a hand. If people are choosing to not make contributions when they can, it's on them.