Do you think there is strength in diversity and something that should be sought

[pmv]

And this is where markets can come into play! Let ideas stand against other ideas and battle it out. Allow for diversity of thought (not action) and see what wins. There will be vastly more "good" ideas than "bad". Let someone come to the right answer rather than to force it upon them as a general rule, but not always

Hmmm, yeah, but a market needs agreed rules to be able to operate. What happens when people have different ideas about what those rules should be?

 

[jackstar7]

I'm not pro-hemophilia, if that's what you're asking... because it seems like you are...

 

[Homerboy]

Diversity is great when you have a common goal. Too many folks don't have any goal other than making it to the weekend though.

Thanks for reminding me it's only Wednesday...

 

[UglyCasanova]

What about diversity in terms of wrong and right ideas? For example, the belief of flat earth is strangely gaining popularity. Is it good for society to have these things in it?

That’s a good point, is it actually diversity of ideas that we are in search for? Political beliefs for instance, is having a group with different political beliefs stronger or are we just looking for diversity in terms of race and gender?

 

[bshole]

Diversity would've helped Japan pull itself out of its 20 year long population and economic decline but instead they're more interested in sexualizing children and right wing nationalism.


If the US was anything like Japan, I would leave.

Given that our gun murder rate is 100 times theirs, I take it that you enjoy the enhanced chances of being shot up in a random shooting sprees.

Does it bother you that Japan is NOT invading every 3rd world country it runs across like America does?

 

[realibrad]

Hmmm, yeah, but a market needs agreed rules to be able to operate. What happens when people have different ideas about what those rules should be?

Why would you need rules about ideas? Actions sure, but ideas?

 

[realibrad]

That’s a good point, is it actually diversity of ideas that we are in search for? Political beliefs for instance, is having a group with different political beliefs stronger or are we just looking for diversity in terms of race and gender?

Ultimately that is what I think people mean when they say diversity. The funny part is that they believe having x number of people from race y means diversity, which means diversity of ideas. That would imply that ideas are based on race and that you could not have those ideas in non racial or social diversity. Same thing for gender.

They are linking ideas with race and other factors, but then saying that assuming things about people based on those same things is wrong. Irony.

 

[Sunburn74]

How so? It may be true but what about it makes it good other than "it just is".

You can think about it from a simple biological point of view. If a virus comes along, if we have the same genetics we all die. The more mixed the genetics,the more likely people who can resist will stay alive and find a cure or can be used to find the cure.

This applies to everything actually. On a a basketball team you have centers and point guards. A team with all centers would be last in the NBA. The team with all point guards would also be last. In fact currently the best team right now in the NBA has players who are so diverse that at any given time most players can play nearly all 5 positions.

In business, research and medicine this is true. In business and research creativity matters when it comes to surviving problems your company faces or when it comes to carving out niches or even entirely new industries. It is not an accident that 40% of Fortune 500 companies in the US are started by either immigrants or first generation children of immigrants. Essentially they see needs, niches, issues that have been there the entire time and filled them, issues that people born in US culture only could not see. If you're born with only US food, you may not realize you and a lot of people love chinese food and thus you will never start the Chinese food industry. And so on and so on. In research the same is true: researchers all see the same problems but the approaches are different and how you approach a problem just often dependent on culture. Three boxing judges can watch the same fight and score things differently. In boxing that is a problem but in research that is a boon because one of those different view points may trigger a major breakthrough in a field.

Diversity is a big deal. Again just start with biology and take it from there.

 

[woolfe9998]

Most empirical research shows that diversity is simply an objective positive when it comes to business decisions, so yes. For example here:

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/52/18524.abstract



Lots of other examples too. Basically as dank69 was suggesting, diversity is a hedge against groupthink, allowing teams and markets to function more efficiently by not locking people into bad ideas or correlating errors.

I don't disagree with the research here, but its application and rationale are extremely specific. The context has to do with ethnic diversity in financial markets helping to avoid price bubbles.

I think there is a danger of overstating the value of diversity when it becomes diversity for diversity sake. I'm all for it when it's backed by solid research. What I think often happens, however, is that people on the left are conflating their desire for inclusion of disadvantaged groups - an admirable concern, to be sure - with what is most effective and works best. In a given case, diversity might or might not be an advantage.

 

[Atreus21]

Whether it be race, sex, religion, whatever, what is your opinion on there being an inherent strength with "diversity" and is it something that we should push for as a society? What happens when someone who is in the majority is harmed because of it, does the benefits outweigh the costs?

When talking about immigration for instance you’ll often hear that the US is stronger due to having a very diverse population rather than a homogenized one. Where does that strength come from or is it just a marketing tool? Japan for instance isnt diverse at all but they have a well functioning society and are doing just fine (comparatively) economically. Is their homogenous society a weakness or a strength?

Same for sex, companies (Google being the one in the news) have diversity officers and push for hiring more women. Is there a value in doing so other than public relations and do you think there is any weakness that comes along with not necessarily hiring the best/most capable but hiring to hit a target quota?

Question I guess not being should we attempt to right the wrongs of the past which I get, but it’s being sold as a strength and I'm wondering if that is really true or not.

Diversity for its own sake is a recipe for injustice and prejudice. Men should get what they deserve because of their actions, not because of their appearance, or membership in a group.

 

[fskimospy]

I don't disagree with the research here, but its application and rationale are extremely specific. The context has to do with ethnic diversity in financial markets helping to avoid price bubbles.

I think there is a danger of overstating the value of diversity when it becomes diversity for diversity sake. I'm all for it when it's backed by solid research. What I think often happens, however, is that people on the left are conflating their desire for inclusion of disadvantaged groups - an admirable concern, to be sure - with what is most effective and works best. In a given case, diversity might or might not be an advantage.

To be clear that's just one example, there's a lot of research out there that also shows superior returns on equity more generally when it comes to having more diverse corporate boards, etc.

There's no need to overstate anything, in many ways the results are common sense in that if everyone comes from the same background they are likely to think alike, meaning they are more likely to miss opportunities because they share blind spots. It doesn't mean that diversity is the greatest thing ever but all else being equal for most things it's a positive.

Interestingly enough one of the cases it might not be the best is in countries as a whole, assuming you value a robust safety net. Research also indicates that racism among the dominant cultural groups inhibits a strong social safety net as they tend to conclude that it's for the undeserving Others in their society even if the dominant group benefits as well. I think that's a lot of what you see in conservative America where you so frequently hear conservatives talk about the deserving and undeserving poor. 'Deserving' almost invariably looks and acts like them.

 

[Commodus]

It's a bit amusing to say "see, look at Japan! It's homogenous and it's working well!" Only the answer is "not really." It's hard to advance in Japanese society if you're not Japanese; foreign brands like Samsung tend to struggle (it'll actually hide its name when marketing Galaxy phones); and the country isn't nearly as influential as it was in the '80s and '90s. There are also deep-seated cultural problems, such as overworking habits that make Americans seem relaxed.

As for why you need diversity: for one thing, there are cultural and practical issues a homogenous group may not consider when designing a product.

Take Uber as an example. Even if you discount the harassment problems created by its male-dominated culture, it also led to functional problems with its app: the company hadn't really considered tools to help prevent and report sexual assault and harassment from drivers because, of course, those are far less common problems for men. Why would anyone be worried about the mere act of hopping into an Uber car by themselves? It wasn't until incidents that the company improved its code, but it probably would have been aware of those problems very quickly if there were more women in key positions in the design team.

 

[fskimospy]

Diversity for its own sake is a recipe for injustice and prejudice. Men should get what they deserve because of their actions, not because of their appearance, or membership in a group.

Since diversity appears to be associated with superior business outcomes it most certainly seems like it should be pursued for its own sake. After all, the goal of the business is to perform as well as possible.

Regardless, the idea that we should have some sort of true meritocracy misses the fact that nobody actually behaves that way in real life as people tend to overvalue those who look and act like them.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Diversity would've helped Japan pull itself out of its 20 year long population and economic decline but instead they're more interested in sexualizing children and right wing nationalism.


If the US was anything like Japan, I would leave.

If the US was like Japan, why would that make you want to leave Russia?

 

[Starbuck1975]

A diversified population is good for many of the same reasons that a diversified portfolio is good.

Some of the most successful organizations in the world are not very diverse at all. How does diversity make them more successful than the heights they've already achieved being homogenous?

 

[Starbuck1975]

Ironically, Los Angeles, NYC, Seattle etc - all quite diverse - are the most powerful cities in the nation.

Yet the successful companies driving the power in those cities are not particularly diverse at all.

 

[pmv]

It's a bit amusing to say "see, look at Japan! It's homogenous and it's working well!" Only the answer is "not really." It's hard to advance in Japanese society if you're not Japanese; foreign brands like Samsung tend to struggle (it'll actually hide its name when marketing Galaxy phones); and the country isn't nearly as influential as it was in the '80s and '90s. There are also deep-seated cultural problems, such as overworking habits that make Americans seem relaxed.

As for why you need diversity: for one thing, there are cultural and practical issues a homogenous group may not consider when designing a product.

Take Uber as an example. Even if you discount the harassment problems created by its male-dominated culture, it also led to functional problems with its app: the company hadn't really considered tools to help prevent and report sexual assault and harassment from drivers because, of course, those are far less common problems for men. Why would anyone be worried about the mere act of hopping into an Uber car by themselves? It wasn't until incidents that the company improved its code, but it probably would have been aware of those problems very quickly if there were more women in key positions in the design team.

That's absolutely an example of when diversity is a beneficial thing. There are loads of examples like that. E.g. the tech products that haven't considered racial differences such as the face-identifying cameras that failed to recognise darker-skinned faces, or the way you can sometimes tell when a TV show doesn't have any women on its writing team, because its female characters behave in unrealistic ways that seem to be how a man imagines/wants a woman to behave.

But I think there's truth in what fskimosky says above. Diversity can be very useful to those at the top of any political entity or organisation, because it makes divide-and-rule so much easier, and it makes it much harder for those ruled to organise resistance from below. And elites can cooperate with each other across divides of language and culture more easily than can those they rule over.

It's a mixed-bag, really.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

A diversified population is good for many of the same reasons that a diversified portfolio is good.

A diversified population is bad for the same reasons that walking into a pharmacy and sampling one of everything is bad. Introducing every known chemical into a water supply is a recipe for disaster even if many of them are beneficial. It only takes one pathogen.

And that's the side of the argument the delusional people who think the world is a giant Coke commercial where we're all just a few open borders away from holding hands and singing "I'd like to teach the world to sing..." in a field of daisies refuse to accept. Inclusion is fine, diversity works, but it must be approached with a little common sense. Diversity as a goal is fine, doing it blindly expecting it all to work itself out is a stupid idea.

 

[fskimospy]

Some of the most successful organizations in the world are not very diverse at all. How does diversity make them more successful than the heights they've already achieved being homogenous?

Are you saying that eschewing diversity has enabled higher organizational performance? If so, what's your empirical evidence for this?

 

[herm0016]

Regions with high diversity tend to be liberal
Liberals are weak pussies
Ergo, diversity is weakness

Fairly certain that's the basic idea behind right-wing xenophobia.

Boulder Colorado is an enclave of extreme homogeneity, and an outpost for liberal thinking.... they keep out minorities by keeping the housing prices very high using zoning laws such as height restrictions and co-op restrictions and high taxes, ex our 2 cent per oz. sugar tax. the city has proposed a per employee tax as well, so the more people you provide high paying jobs too, the more taxes you pay to the city. They forgot to exempt kombucha from the sugar tax though! haha.

 

[JimKiler]

OP, yes diversity is a strength, otherwise we could have all died when the black plague was ravaging the earth.

 

[realibrad]

You can think about it from a simple biological point of view. If a virus comes along, if we have the same genetics we all die. The more mixed the genetics,the more likely people who can resist will stay alive and find a cure or can be used to find the cure.

This applies to everything actually. On a a basketball team you have centers and point guards. A team with all centers would be last in the NBA. The team with all point guards would also be last. In fact currently the best team right now in the NBA has players who are so diverse that at any given time most players can play nearly all 5 positions.

In business, research and medicine this is true. In business and research creativity matters when it comes to surviving problems your company faces or when it comes to carving out niches or even entirely new industries. It is not an accident that 40% of Fortune 500 companies in the US are started by either immigrants or first generation children of immigrants. Essentially they see needs, niches, issues that have been there the entire time and filled them, issues that people born in US culture only could not see. If you're born with only US food, you may not realize you and a lot of people love chinese food and thus you will never start the Chinese food industry. And so on and so on. In research the same is true: researchers all see the same problems but the approaches are different and how you approach a problem just often dependent on culture. Three boxing judges can watch the same fight and score things differently. In boxing that is a problem but in research that is a boon because one of those different view points may trigger a major breakthrough in a field.

Diversity is a big deal. Again just start with biology and take it from there.

There is something you are missing. The diversity in that case only helps those that have the resistance. If you have a long term persistent threat, all organisms that do not pick up that trait will die. Nature is in constant battle between defense.

 

[fskimospy]

There is something you are missing. The diversity in that case only helps those that have the resistance. If you have a long term persistent threat, all organisms that do not pick up that trait will die. Nature is in constant battle between defense.

Yes, but you're proving his point. Without that diversity the entire society dies. With it, the society survives. That's about as compelling a case for diversity as anyone could imagine.

 

[realibrad]

OP, yes diversity is a strength, otherwise we could have all died when the black plague was ravaging the earth.

No.

 

[realibrad]

Yes, but you're proving his point. Without that diversity the entire society dies. With it, the society survives. That's about as compelling a case for diversity as anyone could imagine.

Well, there comes a time when nature tires to not increase diversity. Too much diversity would mean populations would eventually change so much that they could not breed. Further, nature "selects" things that it knows works and tries not to "select" things that fail. Nature has a habit of trying something and when it does not do what is best, drops it. At no point will nature go back and keep at something if it fails as there would be no way for a dead creature to pass on that failed thing.

Nature does value both diversity but also not too much. Its a balance but not a 50/50 split for sure.