On Mon, March 11, 2013 10:08 pm, Margaret Wasserman wrote: > > On Mar 11, 2013, at 6:54 PM, Dan Harkins <dhark...@lounge.org> wrote: > >> In other words, the statement that gender and racial diversity in >> groups makes them "smarter" has no basis in fact. Do you feel that >> an all-female group is stupider than a similarly sized group that is >> equal parts male and female? Really? > > Actually, Dan, there are well-regarded academic studies that show that > groups that contain women are smarter than all-male groups, regardless of > the relative intelligence of the group members. Surprising, perhaps, but > true. Here is a pointer to a discussion of one of them: > > http://www.antonioyon.com/group-intelligence-and-the-female-factor > > There are also numerous studies, of various types, that show that more > diverse groups make better decisions and/or perform better than less > diverse groups. Here is a description of one such study: > > http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/better_decisions_through_diversity > > So, as illogical as these statements may seem on the surface, they are > well-established facts. Both of the articles I've sited give some insight > into why this is true.
I will readily admit that a group whose members have diverse backgrounds, diverse experience, and diverse opinions will generally produce better decisions than a group whose members are all of the same background, experience, and opinion. That is generally what the Northwestern article promotes (and what the papers that Rhys pointed me to earlier) say. But that is far different from saying that having less white males would make for a better IETF. In fact, the makeup of the IESG is already diverse. If it was entirely comprised of security people it would make horrible decisions. It's not, and that's because "diversity is good". Regarding the CMU/MIT study, that is very provocative. There is "converging evidence" from 2 studies of groups of 2-5 people who scored higher in "general collective intelligence" when social sensitivity was higher in the group, when group conversation was done in turns, and there were more females in the group. OK. We can all draw our own conclusions about that and "more women = smarter" certainly does get your study reported in Forbes and Business Weekly et cetera. I believe there is also a bell curve of human intelligence that shows a preponderance of men at both ends-- i.e. there are more male idiots and male geniuses. Which would seem to suggest that adding women to a group of men would, on average, increase the group's intelligence. That study also showed that east asians scored higher than whites and whites scored higher than blacks on IQ tests. An that current immigrants to the USA are less hard-working and less imaginative than past immigrants. Also very provocative. Now before anyone accuses me of any more -isms, let me say that these studies make very bad social policy recommendations. I don't think we should strive to make groups more east asian or less black or to favor past immigrants over recent immigrants. That would be wrong, and I hope we are in agreement there. It would also be wrong to strive to make groups more female for exactly the same reason. While these studies are interesting and thought provoking, I think it is wrong, and very dangerous, to use these studies to justify blanket statements about intelligence, group or otherwise. If there's some bias involved in the Nomcom's selection process then point it out and let's address it. The mere fact that there are is preponderance of white males being selected does not mean bias exists and the notion that a cherry-picked study (or selectively interpreting the results of a cherry-picked study) justifies imposing bias on the selection process to derive some ideal diversity is crazy. regards, Dan.
